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DJD · March 24, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Texas has a similar bill that requires women to get a sonogram before having an abortion, but I don’t think it has been passed yet: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/7456246.html
More about it: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/7461341.html
Mark in Spokane · March 24, 2011 at 4:16 pm
If Big Brother is paying for abortions, why wouldn’t Big Brother want to determine which abortions he would pay for? Iowa isn’t banning abortions in these circumstances, just banning state government funds being used for those abortions. It is inevitable that when government decides to start doling out money, it pays for some things and not for others. I can understand disagreeing with the decision that the Iowa legislature is making here, but I don’t understand the hysteria about what they are doing. Again, they aren’t prohibiting anything, they are just declining to pay for it. I don’t see hints of “1984″ in that kind of situation…
Jim · March 24, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Mark in Spokane, you took the words right out of my mind. I agree 100%. Big deal.
Andrew Stuttaford · March 24, 2011 at 6:32 pm
Incest and rape are serious crimes. Women who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest are victims of serious crime. I like to think that good governments try to give crime victims a helping hand. In Iowa, it seems that some legislators would sometimes prefer to give them an extra kick instead.
Polichinello · March 24, 2011 at 7:42 pm
The headline is a bit deceptive, in that the amendment was written to block all Medicaid-funded abortion save medical emergencies. I’m not sure Medicaid is the agency to determine what makes for a rape or incest case. Perhaps the legislators should have made some exception, but this hardly justifies Stuttaford’s hysterical drama about BB’s imminent arrival.
Andrew Stuttaford · March 24, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Polchinello, I always enjoy reading your comments (even when I don’t agree with them!), but I do think you set a somewhat low bar for “hysterical drama”. There was only the one picture, and Big Brother is quite often used as a quick metaphor for governmental overreach….Interestingly, and ironically in the context of the illustration I chose, there’s quite good evidence to suggest that George Orwell was very troubled by the idea of ‘easy’ abortion, although we can only guess at what he would have thought about legislative measures such as the one we are discussing here.
Mike H · March 24, 2011 at 8:30 pm
They can do what they want but it’s really stupid public policy. If there’s one thing a welfare state needs more it’s unwanted babies born to poor people, most of them on a sure path to criminality and/or requiring public assistance.
swampleg · March 25, 2011 at 2:41 am
Are we even sure that this is the correct characterization of this law? This is from the Des Moines Register after all. A newspaper not known for its objective reporting on matters related to abortion.
CONSVLTVS · March 25, 2011 at 2:45 am
Hmmm…the unspoken assumption of the original post is that a fetus does not have a claim of right to exist. That is a hotly debated moral question. But even if we assume for the sake of discussion that a fetus does not have such a claim of right, the point about government having a legitimate interest in how state benefits are extended is fair.
Andrew Stuttaford · March 25, 2011 at 3:46 am
Consultus, I think that the issue here is not so much government’s interest in the fate of the fetus as the specific message that some Iowa legislators are trying to deliver. If these Solons have to choose between the rights of the fetus and the rights of the woman who has been raped (or is the victim of incest), they clearly are picking those of the fetus. The penalty for being raped (in addition to the horror of the original assault) is thus nine months in which your body is not your own. I assume that this is the platform on which these politicians will be happy to run, snd they should do so, specifically and without any ambiguity.
Mark in Spokane · March 26, 2011 at 6:44 am
The Iowa legislators are not making a policy in favor of a fetus or a woman who has been brutalized by rape or incest. The Iowa legislators are getting the government out of the abortion-funding business — making the government neutral between the fetus and the woman carrying the fetus. I just don’t see this as “Big Brother” — in fact, quite the contrary, it is an example of the government leaving a field of human activity alone, rather than intervening to favor one side or the other.
I think, Mr. Stuttaford, that you would have a far stronger argument if the Iowa legislators were attempting to ban abortion in cases of rape or incest. But they are not. They simply are seeking to have the government refrain from funding such a procedure. Again, they may be wrong — that policy may be a mistake. But it isn’t “Big Brother,” and it isn’t the government favoring one side or the other.