the Informer

Along with huge strides in health care, President Barack Obama’s plan also had some controversy with its abortion stance.

It’s something so crucial that the section of the reform bill on abortion nearly derailed the passage of the bill in general. According to an article on CNN.com last week, “Political observers note that if it weren’t for anti-abortion Democrats switching their votes to yes — after working with President Obama and House Democrats — the reform bill wouldn’t have passed. It was adopted in a 219-212 vote.”

It’s this one thing that has got the United States caught up, trying to meander their way through the language. The debate arose over figuring out if the bill forced taxpayers to pay for abortions.

In an executive order, Obama put limits on the use of federal funds for abortion to appease many anti-abortion Democrats.

Abortion’s nothing new in American political debate. It’s something that has been on the forefront of the political mindset for years, decades even. And it’s something that probably almost every woman has thought about at some point or another.

Classically in American politics, there are two sides of the debate: pro-life and pro-choice.

In the pro-life stance, politicians and activists believe that abortion is murder. They generally believe that a human fetus or embryo is a person, and therefore has the right to live. Some have stated that they believe abortions should be illegal. Many pro-life groups also have deep ties to Christianity.

The National Right to Life is one of the biggest pro-life groups in the country. Its Web site has a pamphlet to help individuals make an “informed” decision on getting an abortion.

There were far too many intricacies and pretty gruesome details for me to include here. But it seems to me like the group is simply trying to deter women from getting abortions, rather than informing them.

Then there’s pro-choice. Politicians and activists on the pro-choice side believe that a woman should have control over her fertility, and therefore she has the right to decide if she wants to keep or abort her pregnancy. They believe in safe sexual education and providing access to safe, and legal, abortions.

The sides are pretty clear-cut. And I could sit here and tell you what side of the fence I sit on, but it doesn’t really matter at this point. What matters is that Obama was trying to give women the opportunity to gain access to safe and legal abortions through federal funding. But he was forced to change that in order to appease the Senate and get the entirety of the bill passed.

I believe that by providing public funding for abortions, women would be able to create more legitimately informed decisions on their pregnancies. In Massachusetts, a near-universal health coverage bill was passed a few years ago. It provided public and private funding for abortions.

And in the first two years that it was implemented, the number of abortions in the state went down by 1.5 percent. No, it’s not a lot, but it’s certainly a start.
I think that simply by having the opportunity to weigh the facts out and decide for themselves, women are creating more educated decisions for their lives.
It is unfortunate that Obama could not make this happen for the country, but I think it is something that will continually be brought up in the future.