Taxpayers and Abortion

[talon]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/04/us-texas-abortion-idUSTRE7230VK20110304

As long as Texas taxpayers are willing to pay for these ultrasounds, and they know that they are paying for it, it's their money. Texas women who need an abortion aren't going to be swayed by yet another patriarchal assault on them. "Seeing" the fetus isn't going to change the circumstances leading to the need for the abortion. All that will do is make the woman feel even worse about the choice she feels she must make.

I do kind of like the counter-proposals that the Texas taxpayers would be responsible for the college education of children not aborted, and of requiring the father to get a vasectomy. I'd rather see proposals that the child be guaranteed all the necessities of living and growing up, but then we'd have even more people whining about women birthing babies they can't afford.

I guess they need to pick a stance and stay with it: either women are allowed to determine for themselves if they can afford/care for this pre-born fetus once it's born and then get to choose the perfectly legal option of abortion if they determine they can't afford to raise the post-born child OR people shut up about women popping out babies they can't afford to raise and suck it up and support all those babies that get born as a result of denying women a choice.

From a taxpayer stance, I am all for contraception, sterilization, and abortion. I can't afford to support uninhibited baby birthing and raising unwanted children and dealing with the increased crime caused by unwanted babies who grew up to be unsupervised, poorly socialized and educated adults. I take the long view, and my pocket book would appreciate it if all those anti-lifer anti-abortionists would, too.

Abortion is much cheaper than raising a child responsibly. I'm all for a woman choosing to have a baby and all about making it possible for her to raise that baby into a capable, responsible adult and will support her desire to birth a healthy baby - and because it is an anticipated, wanted baby, am willing to prosecute anyone who deprives her of it. If a woman feels she must abort, then I'm all for that, too, because while the choice is never easy, it's cheaper and more responsible to choose abortion than a life of abuse, horror, deprivation, addiction, and/or crime for an unwanted baby. I do not see the stances as hypocritical, perhaps because I know that souls are not wasted. An aborted baby's soul will manifest elsewhere, perhaps later to the same woman when she's ready to support a baby properly, or to another family who desperately wants a baby.

Cosmic, divine time is not the same as human time, and sometimes, the timing just sucks rotten eggs. Since we have the knowledge and the tools to refine things, I see no reason why we shouldn't use them to make sure each and every child born is a wanted and loved child who will be raised with all the care and support they need to become responsible, loving, caring adults themselves, instead of forced prematurely into a world that doesn't want them, abuses them, subjects them to dreadful horrors, starves them, denies them a proper education, leaves them in the care of addicts and allows them to become addicted, that drives them to lives of desperation and crime, that leaves them lonely and aching and angry. We are not a spiritual or humane society when we force unwanted children to be born and then abandon them.

I am adamantly against forcing a woman to have a child she doesn't want and can't afford (or that might kill or cripple her for life in the process of birthing it) and then abandoning her and the child. The long term price we pay for that kind of short-sightedness is dreadful in terms of spiritual, mental, physical, financial, and societal harm.

I hope the Texans look long and hard at the consequences of their actions before they actually pass laws they then regret or will have to repeal or alter down the way.