If the U.S. Nationalizes Healthcare, Who Pays for Abortions?

Abortions should be covered under a person's regular health care, which for some is a government program. Abortion is a medical procedure and should be covered as such.

Welfare already pays for treatment of gunshot wounds, car accidents, and many diseases brought on by smoking, drug use, alcoholism and poor eating habits. It could be argued that a large percentage of these injuries and conditions would not arise if people made better lifestyle choices. Likewise, abortion would never be an issue if all unwanted pregnancies were prevented.

I fully appreciate that some taxpayers DO have a serious problem with funding what amounts to them as murder. I do think embryos are living beings, and that deciding to have an abortion SHOULD be a difficult, painful process and a last-resort option. This does not mean we should exclude abortion from govt health plans.

If we're going to deny abortions to those who cannot afford them, then we need to be willing to pay the costs -- ALL of them -- for these children to be born. At the very least, if we aren't going to fund these abortions, we should put more money into sex ed and contraception. And we should recognize we already cover the costs of delivering and raising welfare babies; indeed our welfare system seems to provide incentive to have MORE babies. Curiously you don't see many taxpayers lobbying to better fund welfare or the foster care system.

Laura Levine of IL 7:12PM July 24, 2009