About Abortion

Let's be clear about the Stupak Amendment to the House health care reform bill.  This amendment won't prevent any woman, by itself, from getting an abortion.  It will only prevent poor women from getting abortions; rich women will be able to fund their own.  But any woman poor enough to require federal subsidies to buy insurance (which will be a lot of women, I suspect) would have to pony up her own dollars if she found herself in a pregnancy which she couldn't, for some reason, carry to term.  This could be anything from an inability to feed the children she already has to a life-threatening health condition; the Stupak amendment makes very little distinction.

I thought the problem with our current health system was exactly that the care you get depends on the amount of money that goes into your health insurance.

I'll offer a trade, though - the Stupak Amendment can stand if we also add an amendment to prevent any Federal funding for Viagra and similar drugs.  Ever.  In this case there would be no exceptions, since the inability to get it up is not a life-threatening condition.  We'd have the same condition:  rich men would still be able to get the drug through private insurance, poor men would have to find their own dollars if they want it.

Seems only fair to me.