Finding agreement on abortion politics
Making abortions difficult to obtain won’t stop them. Preventing pregnancies will. Virginia lawmakers have the means to make abortions rare.
The most strident anti-abortionists never fail to twist a tragedy into a triumph for their cause. Last month, they marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade by saying the massacre of 5- and 6-year-old schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School was nothing compared with the daily destruction of embryos at abortion clinics. A callous statement that would have been shocking if it weren’t so numbingly ubiquitous.
It would have been refreshing to hear instead that anti-abortionists were embracing the best chance yet to make abortion rare by supporting the expansion of Medicaid in Virginia to cover low-income working adults. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Virginia could receive $23 billion in federal aid to cover health care for the working poor. Women who cannot now afford birth control would receive reliable and effective contraception.
February 3, 2013 - 7:40 AM
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