This morning I was listening to 580 CFRA as I got ready for work. The Soundoff question was “What should the federal government do to balance the books?”
There’s a stalwart fellow who has called in before–he says defund abortion–because it would save millions of dollars.
We should indeed defund abortion. Why? Because it is a choice, and a social one at that, and I don’t want to pay for it. Furthermore, there’s that tiny issue of killing people in serene, state-sanctioned settings. That makes some of us (sticklers for detail) uncomfortable about how we define compassion in Canada.
But defunding abortion would increase government expenditures. Why? Because child birth is more costly than abortion. Because children, particularly those born to parents who consider abortion (remember, finances are a big reason for abortion) need support.
I hope that support could be a private compassion and generosity. With the system we currently have, it’s more likely going to be government. Ideally, we could have a combination of both.
Just wanted to add that to the discussion, without calling in to the radio show. And on the flip side, let me laud this fellow for never forgetting the unborn. He is nothing if not fastidious.
by 
I’m actually amazed that they let this fellow’s comment get on the air… but good for him. However, if someone had to pay for an abortion, but could get free healthcare to have the baby and then give it up for adoption, would it make them consider that option?
The financial implications of deinsuring abortion are a bit more complex than your post would suggest. If we want to talk about the direct costs of abortion versus childbirth, it is likely more expensive per procedure to fund abortion although no one has ever confirmed what the actual cost of abortion in a hospital is. It has to be more than the $500 to $1000 for a clinic abortion. That includes the physician fee and the clinic fee which increases with the age of the baby. It’s harder and costs more to kill the older babies.
However, the indirect costs are another matter. There are physical and mental health complications that end up costing our health care system a great deal. There have been many studies on these effects although I’ve never seen any which try to do an accounting of what the indirect costs of abortion are. I think that is yet another area of research that should be undertaken. There are so many aspects of abortion that have not been studied and if they were, we could have an informed discussion about the isse. Oh wait, this is Canada where the issue is “settled” and even if it isn’t, we don’t want to make it the “focus of our career.”
On a related note, readers may be interested in an exchange of correspondence hosted by the Witherspoon Institute concerning the impact of measures aimed at reducing the abortion rate in the United States. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/viewarticle.php?selectedarticle=2008.11.11_New_Michael%20J._Reducing%20Abortions:%20Responding%20to%20Faulty%20Methodology%20and%20Presentation_.xml
I am all for withdrawing public funds for abortion services. That human life begins at conception is a firmly established empirical claim (standard embryology textbooks, for example, do not assert otherwise). Whether or not the foetus is a person entitled to a right to life (which I believe to be the case) is another matter. It is plainly obvious that a human entity is killed in an abortion, even if that thing is not agreed to be a person, and I ought not to be compelled into covering the cost of someone else’s decision to terminate that life.
This pre-empts, I think, a broader question about what kinds of procedures are necessary in a public health care system. That system paid for my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) surgery two years ago. I could have gone the rest of my life without a repaired ACL, for my life was not at risk. Yet then I would never have been able to return to sports. As such, the surgery was “necessary” for me insofar as I could not do without it if I wanted to maintain a certain standard of living. It was not a “medically necessary” surgery (if by that we mean my well-being would have been seriously impaired in its absence), though it was necessary at another level.
Abortion proponents likewise claim that the procedure is necessary. An unwanted pregnancy may not threaten a woman’s life (though sometimes they do), but it undoubtedly prevents her from maintaining a certain standard of living. If we pro-lifers argue for the de-funding of abortion on the grounds that the procedure is not medically necessary, as some are wont to do, we will not get anywhere. Many surgeries are not absolutely required to save a patient’s life, and we nonetheless think that its cost ought to be compensated for by the public heatlh care regime.
Instead, the argument for de-funding ought to take as its premise the wrongfulness of being required to pay for the killing of a human life, when such killing is (usually) not an instance of self-defense.
Australia is considering paying mothers TO abort, if their fetus has tested positive for the possibility of a handicap. Finances are part of their argument.(The Dead Zone)
This requires further comment:
“Many surgeries are not absolutely required to save a patient’s life, and we nonetheless think that its cost ought to be compensated for by the public heatlh care regime.”
Joint replacements, vision restoration surgery, and countless other procedures are covered by public healthcare funds, even though they are not in the most absolute sense medically necessary, in the sense that not getting the operation will not directly cause you to die. (Indirectly, as you might have more accidents because of poor eyesight, or immobility might cause you to become obese and have a stroke, yes.) But if this is the criteria that we use – “will the lack of the procedure directly cause death?” – when deciding whether we pay for something, we’ll no longer pay for vaccines, check-ups, or psychiatry for people with only moderate, as compared to severe, depression, among many others.
No, the relevant question is: does state of the art medical care to correct or prevent disease require this procedure? For chronic joint pain, trouble seeing or hearing, unpleasant but not crippling mental health problems, and preventative care, the answer is clearly “yes.” For the termination of a low risk pregnancy in a healthy woman, it is clearly “no.”
See this type of post shows the true colours of pro-life. When an abortion is indicated to save the life of a woman pro-life would rather that both woman and child die than that doctor’s intervene. This makes pro-life a fanatical religious movement more than an ideological and moral movement for compassion and change.
Until pro-life can encompass compassion for the medical situations of life and death where medical intervention is morally difficult but where it is clearly more unethical to let die than to act, pro-life remains an ideological movement that politicizes abortion. Politicization of abortion (by both pro-life and pro-choice) is the dynamic that prevents the abortion issue from being addressed ethically. Politicization harms the best outcome for all and stalls positive progress that could ameliorate the circumstances of so many. Nothing is done, no-one can act, abuses persist. It is a harm to women.