…but death and taxes. That’s right, it’s tax time again. It’s possibly my least favorite time of year, as I have to file as an ex-patriot not one but TWO tax returns to various scary acronyms (IRS, CRA). Not to pat my own back, but I’ve become something of a North American tax wizard (no, I am not taking requests to file other people’s taxes). But while I don’t fear my own audit, I do hope the accountants have their red pens primed for looking at the tax payouts on a federal level.
Remember that revolutionary slogan, “No taxation without representation!” Well, for many people, that tyranny is just what happens with each and every paycheque. Organizations, like Planned Parenthood, have received billions of tax payer dollars over the past 20 years.
As my pro-choice friend once told me, “It’s okay if you’re pro-life, so long as you don’t object to anyone else having an abortion.” Even with this flawed logic it’s clear, even to pro-choice individuals, that the large population who object in the US and in Canada shouldn’t be paying for the procedure.
The people of Minnesota have never voted to pay for abortions with state money, and neither has the state Legislature. Taxpayer funding of abortion was imposed upon us by a wrongly decided court case known as Doe vs. Gomez in the mid-1990s.
Now it is time for the Legislature to represent the will of the people by passing a ban on taxpayer-funded abortions, and for Gov. Mark Dayton to allow the ban to become law. We know that Gov. Dayton supports abortion; he always has. But many who consider themselves “pro-choice” acknowledge that using tax dollars to pay for elective abortions goes too far.
Funding abortion seems especially unwise at a time when the state faces a massive $6.5 billion deficit. Paying abortionists to kill unborn Minnesotans is an expense that we simply cannot afford, and that unborn babies can live without.
According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, taxpayers bought 50,869 abortions at a cost of $15.6 million between July of 1994 and December of 2008.
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I know the argument will be made by the other side that poor women ought to have the same access to abortion as rich women. But if we really want what’s best for disadvantaged mothers and their babies, we will help them, not offer them abortions.
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Brigitte wonders: Am I the only one who noticed the slogan buried in this story? “Abortion: An expense unborn babies can live without.”
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If pro-lifers shouldn’t be paying taxes that go in part to organisations that provide abortion, does that mean people who are opposed to the current wars shouldn’t be paying taxes that will go in part to pay for the military? Should people who want cannabis legalised be tax-exempt, as part of their taxes go to pay for the police to enforce drug laws? Maybe Objectivists just shouldn’t pay any taxes at all, as they object to very nearly all government spending. People who support public transport obviously shouldn’t pay taxes that would go to fund highway maintainance, and vegetarians shouldn’t pay taxes that will be used to pay corn subsidies which make the production of very cheap beef possible.
Or, here’s an easier solution: Everyone pays, and if they don’t like where the money goes, they can express their objection come election day.
From what I understand of the US, government money (Or at least federal, I’m not sure about state) cannot be used to pay for any abortion directly. But a lot does go to organisations that provide abortion to cover other services they offer (Planned Parenthood, for example, also runs government-funded STI and cervical/breast cancer screening programs). Money being a perfectly fungible good by definition, that does mean it’s impossible to say some it hasn’t ended up effectively subsidising abortion.
Abortion is a CHOICE Suricou. An INDIVIDUAL choice.
And in CANADA (not the States, and it is not fair to lump us in with them: we are two very different countries), abortion is fully funded by our healthcare system.
Do you support mandatorily paying for other peoples personal choices? Even those choices you most vehemently disagree with? With your tax dollars?
If the legislature has passed the appropriate law, yes. The taxpayers don’t get to decide where the taxes go, that idea is both unworkable and pointless (Money being a perfectly fungible good by definition). If someone doesn’t like where the tax money is going, they can express their objections through the proper political process. If they don’t have the strength of argument or popular support (Or, this being a less than ideal world, the personal connections or lobbying budget) to convince the politicians, then tough. That’s how it works.
I have several objections to giving Planned Parenthood taxpayer money, let alone taxpayers directly funding abortions as in Canada. One is that on many levels it is the privatization of women’s health. Women have very little say as to what Planned Parenthood does and doesn’t do, and yet they are quite literally funding the operation. The outcome of such privatization on clinics, as the gruesome story out of Philadelphia illustrates, is a lack of incentive for the government to ensure such services are properly maintained.
Another reason? Both for the US and Canada, it is an elective process, and just as with any other elective surgery, dental work, unnecessary procedure, tax money shouldn’t pay for it. We’re not talking about the tiny percentage of extreme cases (rape, incest, women’s health at risk), we’re not talking about these exceptions that have defined the rule, we’re talking about the overwhelming majority of elective abortions.
“Data on why women say they had an abortion are scarce, but a 1988 study cited by the Alan Guttmacher Institute found that few were done for health reasons or because the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest. Most women cited financial concerns or problems with their relationships, or said they weren’t ready to have a child.”
(source: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/dailynews/abortion_poll030122.html )
Obviously you are not from Canada, Suricou. The legislature has NOT passed appropriate legislation. There is NO law governing abortion in Canada. No restrictions of any kind. No guidelines regulating it. Abortion is legal, by default, until the child has been delivered and the umbilical cord severed. The folks we have in parliament are to cowardly to approach that legislative deficiency, because a tiny radical feminist minority would howl in derision, and the resulting debate would be unpleasant. So we don’t have the debate at all.
However, we do have a general consensus in canada that individual personal choices should not be paid for with tax money. We have a general consensus in Canada that we are hppy to pay for medical care that is necessary for health reasons, but we don’t pay for people’s social choices. We went down a rather slippery slope with abortion. First we only covered the abortions that a doctor deemed necessary. Then there were a few doctors who were willing to sign that the abortion was necessary when it was really for social reasons. Then, once the law governing abortion was struck down, it became a wide-open target practice on the unborn.
Abortion may be legal in Canada, but we shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s choices.