What is the state’s role in regard to abortion?

The issue of abortion has blown up in recent elections and passionately divided the electorate between the two different “pros”—pro-life and pro-choice. The main conflict on the abortion issue is that few people fall in the middle and thus fewer are willing to compromise. Given the divisiveness of this issue, policy makers have almost always addressed the sanctity of two groups of rights: women’s rights, and human rights (supposing fetuses to be right-bearing humans). The classical liberal case for individual liberty mandates that individuals be free from the coercion of the state to pursue their own aims, insofar as these aims do not infringe upon the rights of others. Clearly, the issue of abortion comes down to whether fetuses ought to be considered to be right-bearing humans. If so, the state should prevent any person who tries to take the right to life away from an unborn child; if not, the state should allow a woman to do as she sees fit—since she is not hampering the rights of anyone protected under the Constitution. Unfortunately, the point at which an embryo becomes a human is a matter of much speculation, and depends largely on the religious faith of those making the decision. Accordingly, we are unlikely to convince people of our time about whether abortion is right or wrong. Similarly, at the time the Constitution was written, there was not a clear consensus on whether slaves should be part of the group of men that were “created equal,” and should therefore be treated equally under the law. That issue was decided years after the ratification of the constitution, when the moral framework of society had evolved sufficiently to recognize the transgression of enslaving human beings. In the case of abortion, until a similar moral consensus can be formed, we must confine ourselves to determining the interim role of the state concerning this difficult issue.

I would argue, that people who abhor abortion as murder should not be required, through taxation, to pay for someone else’s daughter to have an abortion. Those that do maintain the belief that it is a woman’s right to control the occurrences within her body through abortion must also recognize the rights of others to not have their resources allocated to what they view to be a morally reprehensible act. Therefore, even though the morality of abortion is a question not soon likely to be decided by a commonly held system of values, the state’s role of funding abortions ought to be more easily decided.

Lets get to the facts and you can decide for yourself. In 2003, women chose to have 1.29 million abortions, totaling 43 million legal abortions since 1973.1 In perspective, the abortion ratio (the proportion of abortions of total pregnancies) was 24%–yes indeed, this means that one-fourth of all pregnancies were terminated by women’s choice.2

Now that we understand the extent of abortions, we must look at their unit cost. On average, abortions cost $350-$500 dollars in early pregnancy and $650-$700 in later pregnancy.3 Others have reported $487 for a surgical abortion at 10 weeks gestation.4

To calculate that (1.3 million x $487), $621 million dollars is a lot of money.
Clearly the subject of who pays for abortion is not one of insignificant consequence. Today, more than one-third of US women are eligible for publicly funded abortions. This public funding has resulted in 630,000 abortions each year 5, which totals $307 million dollars each year. When we say “publicly funded,” this means that you paid for a fraction of this abortion through taxes. If you wonder about your daughter at home, 4.9 million sexually active teenagers also get publicly funded supported services (abortion is included in these services). 6

So alas, abortion is an expensive choice we are providing for many women and especially young women, at the expense of many who believe it is akin to murder. Governor Mitt Romney also agrees that this is too high a cost to American taxpayers and American liberty. Since we can’t agree on the ethics of abortion, we ought to at least be able reach a consensus that it is wrong for the state to force more than half of our nation’s tax payers to fund something they strongly oppose.

Another reason to agree with Romney’s opposition to public funding of abortion is that the Guttmacher Institute found that 20-35% of eligible women chose not to have an abortion when the funding was not available to them to have an abortion.7 Thus, the occurrence of abortion, which many believe to be an immoral act, can be significantly reduced without infringing upon the liberty of the women who make that choice. In fact, eliminating public funding of abortion would not only preserve the choice of women facing the decision of whether to abort, but also preserve the liberty of taxpayers to use their resources for endeavors that are not against their moral beliefs. Regardless of one’s perception of the morality of abortion, I agree with Mitt Romney that “we the people” should not be forced to pay for what many believe to be immoral.

Abortion

1, Finer LB and Henshaw SK, Estimates of U.S. Abortion Incidence in 2001–2003, 2006, , accessed Nov. 29, 2006.
2, Finer LB and Henshaw SK, Estimates of U.S. Abortion Incidence in 2001–2003, 2006, , accessed Nov. 29, 2006.; http://www.guttmacher.org/in-the-know/incidence.html.
3. ProChoice.org, http://www.prochoice.org/about_ab

ortion/facts/economics.htm, accessed 15 May 2007.
4. Henshaw SK and Finer LB, The accessibility of abortion services in the United States, 2001, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2003, 35(1):16–24.
5. AGI, Fulfilling the Promise: Public Policy and U.S. Family Planning Clinics, New York: AGI, 2000.
6. AGI, Contraceptive needs and services, 2001–2002, , accessed Dec. 21, 2006.
7. Heather Boonstra and Adam Sonfield, “Rights Without Access: Revisiting Public Funding of Abortion for Poor Women,” The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy vol.3(2) (April 2000).