Dear Senator Righter,
As you know, I am a constituent in your district from Teutopolis. We have talked before – you helped in my past internship at Illinois Policy, and I’m sure your previous aide, Judy, has told you about my recent internship in Washington D.C. I am a Social Work major at the University of Illinois Springfield, and I wanted to bring your attention to a bill that I believe you should vote no to.
HB 40, Access to Abortion, is a bill that provides taxpayer funded abortions to all women in Illinois, including those on Medicare and state employee’s insurance plans. Currently, the state only provides funding for abortions in cases such as rape, incest, and to protect the mother’s life. The bill also ensures that abortion will be legal in Illinois even if the federal government repeals Roe v. Wade.
I believe that this bill should not be passed for multiple reasons. Though I am conservative, I am pro-choice. I believe that women should be able to choose what is best for their lives and their bodies. However, I disagree with this bill. First, this bill would cost Illinoisians millions of dollars, millions of dollars we do not have and cannot afford. In 2015, there were nearly 40,000 abortions in Illinois, and if abortions were free, it is proven that even more women would get them. Currently, abortions cost about $1,650. That would amount to millions of dollars of further debt that the state cannot afford.
I agree that in rape, incest, and mother safety cases, abortion can be payed for by state tax dollars because that was not the woman’s decision, but in other situations, that should not be the case. It is not hard to not get pregnant. Plan B is around $30-$40, male and female condoms are a few dollars. Abstinence is free. Because of the Affordable Care Act, many women’s birth control is free or inexpensive. We should not provide free abortions to everyone because they find it too difficult to buy protection, “condoms don’t feel good”, are careless with their birth control, or do not have the education to understand how to not become pregnant.
When a woman chooses to have sex and not protect herself from pregnancy, the only person at fault is her and the man. It should not be the job of her fellow citizens to bail her out of the problem she put herself in. Senator Righter, please vote NO to HB 40.
My comment on this excellent example of a policy advocacy letter is that it is refreshing to read an opinion on this issue that is nuanced and takes a stand based on ideals of fiscal responsibility and personal responsibility. So often any policy advocacy related to abortion is entirely one-sided with an extreme stand totally against nearly all abortions and state funding for abortions or else totally in favor of policies to make abortion accessible to all, including those who can’t afford it. Another thing that I find interesting is that you hardly even touch the moral issues related to “rights of unborn children” or “rights of the mothers to control their bodies.” You dispose of that right at the start with a statement about your general opinion that abortions ought to be a women’s matter of choice, but when it comes to the public funding them, the public purse ought to facilitate abortions only in the three rare extremes (life of the mother, rape, and incest). The letter is also a good example because of its elegance and directness.
A few points just for us to think about, that are really not about the letter itself:
1) If someone wants to make abortions free for all those who want them, they can create a charity and fund abortions for poor women. Let the advocates for accessible abortion provide them through private means.
2) What about the case of unborn children who are severely malformed or unhealthy, so that a doctor predicts they may perish within hours of birth; could that situation be added to the standard categories of rape, incest, and health-of-the-mother?
3) What about cases where the unborn children have a reasonably good chance of survival, at least for a matter of years rather than hours, but are likely to be in need of intensive medical intervention throughout their lives, and are also likely to be so profoundly disabled that they present a tremendous potential burden on the society and the family? In those cases, can financial considerations be taken into consideration, and should the state fund abortions to save money in the long run?
4) And, what about the moral issues? If the state is going to fund some abortions in special cases, can anything be done to address the objections of those who feel so strongly that abortion is akin to murder? It is normally accepted in a democracy that when you fulfill your duties as a citizen and pay your taxes, you understand that some of that money you’ve contributed will go to fund things you strongly object to (I object to a wide range of things done in my name by my government with my tax dollars, especially the killing of many innocent people with our careless, callous, and cruel arial bombardments from drones and so forth). But, is abortion a special case, where the opponents are so deeply morally offended by the act that the government should fund those special case abortions only with a special source of funding that some persons could refuse to pay? Perhaps it could be handled in a way similar to federal funding for elections, where taxpayers check a box to agree to contribute some of their tax contribution to support public funding of elections.
The four points I raise were correctly ignored in the letter; I just offer them to provoke some thought and debate.
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