Taxes and Abortion Part II

Abortion had to become an issue in the U.S. healthcare debate, and so it has. Under the current proposed reforms, all Americans would be mandated to buy health-care coverage, with those on lower incomes getting federal help to do so. Anti-abortion advocates have spied an opportunity here and are running with it:

Given that the U.S. is already committed to no federal money being spent on abortion, anti-choicers want all insurance plans that might be bought with federal money to exclude abortion care coverage. As a New York Times  story today makes clear, that’s likely to mean insurance companies drop abortion coverage from all their plans. And the move seems to be gaining ground among so-called “moderate” Democrats. NARAL Pro-Choice America has an alert on the issue on its Web site. 

Bans on federal funding for abortion go back to the years just after Roe v. Wade decriminalized abortion in the U.S. when Rep. Henry Hyde sponsored the Hyde Amendment banning the use of federal funds to pay for abortion. Rep. Hyde visited New Zealand in 1978 courtesy of the Spuc, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (instead of Spuc, we now have Voice for Life and Right to Life). As discussed in an earlier posting on this blog, during his visit Hyde made the extraordinary argument that his amendment protected the “unborn children” of the poor – since those on welfare could no longer get abortions unless they paid out of pocket – leaving the children of the rich with “no defense”. “If we can save the child of a ghetto mother,” he said, “then we have achieved something.”

Interestingly, in the 1970s, Spuc used the argument that all abortions SHOULD be state funded in an effort to shut down the newly opened private non-profit AMAT abortion clinic in Remuera. The Labour MP Gerry Wall introduced a bill to mandate that all abortions must be performed in public hospitals, and though he argued it was to protect women, ensure standards were adequate etc. etc. everyone knew it was aimed at closing the clinic.

Given that our own anti-abortion advocates tend to follow the U.S. playbook, is such a “stop your taxes paying for abortions” effort likely here?

There are signs that Right to Life is testing the waters on the issue. Its leader, Ken Orr, stated in a letter to The Nelson Evening Mail in July that “abortions should not be a core health service paid for by the taxpayer” and that the money spent on this “culture of death” could pay for 653 hip operations. (One anti-tax correspondent replied that he agreed with Ken about abortions, but that this should also extend to defunding the hip replacements, and by implication pretty much everything else.)

Spuc of the 1970s preferred state funded abortions for two main reasons. The first was that at that time, they had a strong base inside Parliament so felt relatively confident that if the state controlled abortion, they could have some control by influencing the state. The other reason (but it’s not clear how genuine this was given the apparent flip on this issue) was the horror of private clinics making profits from abortions. Neither of those concerns really seem to apply now, so there’s nothing stopping an assault on tax-payer funded abortions. And it’s an argument with obvious broad appeal – everyone resents taxes (OK, not everyone, but you know what I mean) and most people seem to be pretty squeamish about abortion.

So far, pro-choice advocates have argued we, too, want to see less taxpayer money spent on abortions – by getting rid of the certifying consultant system, which costs more than $5 million a year, and instead giving women the right to choose. (Clearly, though, we believe firmly that abortion as part of the full spectrum of reproductive health care for women, must be part of public health services.) So every time the tax bogey is raised, we can raise the need for repeal of the abortion laws.

Pro-choice campaigners in the U.S. have faced an uphill battle overcoming the anti-tax approach to being anti-abortion; pro-choice campaigners in New Zealand need to keep an eye out for any moves in that direction here. We’d welcome your thoughts. You can post them here (this site is moderated, so comments may take a little while to appear) or email us at safeandlegal(at)gmail(dot)com.