When you thought they couldn’t get worse…

The DTH Gender Issues columnist Jessica Fuller decided to attempt a defense at public funding for abortions. This came after the recently passed House Health Care bill included an amendment preventing the public option from funding abortions, which passed with substantial Democratic support.

Her argument establishes a new low for utter stupidity, arrogance, and selfish special-interest politics. She logically equates choice with forcing others to pay for an action of which society has yet to determine its morality. Stupid. She essentially accuses her opponents of distrusting those of different races and sexualities. Arrogant. And she claims that women she be allowed the freedom to be sexual at the expense of others. Selfish.

There is no better way to proceed than to list the most ridiculous of her reasons and address them.

“Because I support a woman’s right to choose.”

Then choose. But choosing involves initiating the action yourself; you are abdicating your choice in asking other’s to pay for it.

“Because a woman shouldn’t be denied a legal health procedure because she can’t pay for it.”

I’m going to assume you don’t actually believe this. Are we to pay for any and all legal health procedures? This sort of positive rights invention is objectively untenable; society cannot possibly pay for all legal health procedures (plastic surgery?). There is inevitable picking and choosing (rationing), the sort of moral decisions which you claim ought to remain to the private individual.

“Because pregnancy should not be a threat or a punishment for being sexual.”

Blame that one on the heartless conservatives if you wish, but that’s just biology. Humans bear the consequences of their actions. It’s part of choice.

“Because the seriousness of choosing to have a child or not cannot be decided by splitting hairs on the floor of Congress.”

Splitting hairs?!? Really?? It irks me that social liberals so often assume that their moral beliefs are self evident and thus can be imposed on everyone. You are asking others to pay for your questionable behavior. Congress has a right to “split hairs.”

“Because I want a doctor who can concentrate on my needs, rather than regulations or a pay plan.”

Wow. At least my fellow Review writers will appreciate the laughable irony.

“Because I value women’s potential and their futures — in careers, in families — and want them to have every opportunity to reach them in their own way, on their own time, and on their own terms.”

To conclude we return to this theme of choice.

The manner in which Jessica describes this freedom invokes the sacred notion that humans possess a natural right to exercise their own rationality to make their own decisions, and decisions of such serious import should be left to the private individual.

She contradicts herself blatantly in demanding that this decision necessarily involve others through public funding. An abortion is most certainly not “in her own way” and “on her own terms” if a woman coerces others into paying for it. To suggest that women deserve by right to have others fund their abortion contradicts the inherent nature of the freedom you describe. A woman who has an abortion on her own terms should not forcibly involve others.

A pro-choice advocate on these grounds should recognize the point that follows logically from her argument: that individuals must of their own accord decide whether to support such a complicated moral decision.