With abortion surging into the spotlite, almost everybody has “yes” or “no” answers to the following standard questions:
— Does a Woman have a Human Right to an abortion?
— Does a Fetus have a Human Right to be born?
But there are several arguably much more important questions that nobody is even asking, let alone answering:
1. Does the “right” to an abortion include the “right” to make somebody else pay for it? On what basis is somebody who is totally against abortion — for whatever reason, secular or sectarian — forced to pay taxes that fund the provision of abortion services? Has that question ever been asked by either pro- or anti-abortion advocates, activists and actionists? Or any politician, pundit, propagandist, or anybody else?
2. Does anybody believe that outlawing abortion will actually end it? Abortion clinics all over the nation report surges in patient-clients from out-of-state. And for those who can’t afford a trip out-of-state, there are always folks ready, willing, able and available to bring back the good ole days of the back alley “clinics.”
3. How many homes For unwanted children and adoption services have the anti-abortion folks set up as real world alternatives to what they like to call a “holocaust?” At this point, they obviously care more about the fetus before it is born, than they do about what happens to the unwanted child after it is.
4. How is forcing a woman to carry to full-term a fetus that she does not want any different than involuntary servitude, aka slavery? Wasn’t there a Civil War and a constitutional amendment that supposedly eliminated that? At least when it came to former slaves? But apparently not for women when it concerns their own bodies.
Questions 1 and 4 are the by-far more significant; 2 and 3 merely call attention to anti-abortion ignorance of history — ie, Prohibition, our “War On Drugs,” and abortion before Roe v Wade — and their indifference to and hypocrisy about unwanted Children.
Question 4 lays it right on the line for all those folks who like to wrap themselves in the flag while carrying a Bible, and claim that abortion is “Anti-American”; and is a significant player in what is destroying this nation and preventing it from being “Great Again.” Or, we are now told, from becoming “Great Again, Again.”
And Question 1 challenges pro-choice folks to answer the bottom-line question: Should government funds at any level raised by taxes and/or debt be used to provide abortion services? And it challenges pro-life folks to even ask it.
Particularly if the same argumen — that someone who is against abortion should not have to pay for other peoples’ abortions with their present and future tax dollars — is applied to other government spending. Such as having to pay taxes to pay for an undeclared, unconstitutional, illegal and immoral 20-year “forever war.” Or the U.S.-Russia war in Ukraine.
And one last unasked question: If a government has the authority and power to prohibit abortions, what will prevent that government from mandating abortions when it serves the purposes of the owners and operators of that government?
• Jeffrey G. Moebus is a retired U.S. Army master sergeant. He resides in Sitka. Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? Here’s how to submit a My Turn or letter.
