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Federal abortion funding to be cut in the US?
Over the last 100
years, contraception has been looked to more and more as a way for the world to
‘control’ its population. Interestingly, a contraceptive mentality has
led to abortion rates rising exponentially, despite contraception’s early claim
to avoid unwanted pregnancies and reduce abortions. For example, in New
Zealand in 2009 there were 218 abortions per 1000 live births, still births and
abortions (or 22% of pregnancies), compared to 105 abortions per 1000 live
births, still births and abortions (or 10.5%) in 1980.
However, in the United
States this week, the “No Taxpayer Funding for
Abortion Act”,
introduced in January, received support from a congressional committee,
recognizing the increasing cost to the country of so many abortions. The bill
would apply an indefinite ban on abortion funding throughout the federal
government. The Family Research Council commented that:
“Americans should
not be forced to pay for abortions, especially at a time when our country is
facing an economic meltdown brought on by a failure to stop the out-of-control
spending in Washington. Now is the time for Congress to finally restore government
neutrality to the question of abortion funding…”
If passed, the bill
would make permanent and expand the Hyde amendment restrictions on the use of
federal funds for abortions. The original Hyde Amendment was passed on
September 30, 1976 by the House of Representatives, and introduced in response
to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing
abortion.
Opponents of the bill
argue that it goes in hand in hand with the “anti-choice, anti-women
legislation that has been the topic of discussion lately” in the United States
and comment that:
“Very few [women]
will actually ensure that their [insurance] premium covers abortion, and then
those who are faced with an unintended pregnancy will end up stuck in a
situation they have no way of getting out of.”
I find it interesting
that abortion and family planning advocates consistently take the feminist, pro
women tack – this was also supposedly the reason for their outrage when cuts
were made to family planning funding in the United States in February of this
year (the House of Representatives voted in February to end all funding for the
Title X program, which provides family planning services, and to eliminate all
federal funding for Planned Parenthood).
Firstly, woman are
generally not ‘stuck in a situation they are no way of getting out of’ before
they have sex. Sex has to be re-associated with family and procreation,
rather than pregnancy being presented like it is something that a woman might
catch like the flu without any decision on their part.
Secondly, I see
nothing pro-woman or liberating about woman having contraception and abortion
thrust upon them all the time. Too often doctors seem to have the
mentality that women, especially those in low socio economic areas, are like
stray dogs on heat that must be controlled by the medical profession – at least
that is the experience of my friends who are doctors and feel uncomfortable
about this attitude and expectation.
Why do women have to
be so strongly encouraged to fill their bodies with artificial hormones for the
first ten years of their fertile lives (despite carefully eating only organic
chicken to avoid added hormones)? Not to mention the fact that the pill
is classified by the World Health Organisation as a Class A carcinogen, and the
various skin pigmentations that some of my friends get, the weight they put on,
and the mood swings they often endure along with a disinterest in sex in some
cases – just to name a few things that men don’t have to put up with. The
connection between sex and love also falls when multiple partners are suddenly
available without consequence – and it’s not too controversial a statement to
say that girls are normally the losers in this equation. And this is Feminism?
Vulnerable young girls
and woman generally have abortion freely available to them without proper
knowledge of the devastating effects that this can have on their mental
health. It is a decision girls live with for the rest of their
lives. I have experienced this personally through a close friend who
suffered an abortion and had clinical depression for a number of years
afterwards.
But the bottom line is,
why should Americans, or the people of any country, have to pay for what they
consider to be the grave breach of a baby’s human rights and an awful thing for
a vulnerable woman or girl to suffer? I hope this bill is supported.
The late Congressman Hyde stated
that:
“…abortion is a
lethal assault against the very idea of human rights and destroys, along with a
defenseless baby, the moral foundation of our democracy. Our moment in history
is marked by a mortal conflict between a culture of death and a culture of
life, and today, here and now, we must choose sides.”
With population
control issues becoming more and more prominent, you may need to know where you
stand on protecting human life sooner than you think. Who says that we
shouldn’t kill some for the good of the many? Why not?

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