Monday, February 28, 2011

Ending Planned Parenthood Subsidies: This Is Not About Morality

I am pro-life.  By this I mean that I am against abortion in most case, except when a woman’s life is in danger.  Even then, science may be able to develop technology to get around this problem with artificial wombs.

I’m sure this comes as no shock to anyone, seeing as how I am Christian.  However, I do take a different stance on fighting abortion than most prominent pro-life people.  I’d rather address the causes of the supposed need for abortion, rather than abortion itself.  Sexual promiscuity are the primary reasons for abortion and I believe that if women were to not devalue their marriage market value by being promiscuous, then many abortion clinics would go out of business.

Of course, this plan breaks down due to the government subsidizing abortions by funneling money to groups like Planned Parenthood.  The new Republican Congress has finally brought this issue up after decades of silence from the so-called moral majority oligarchs who have run that party.

For years, the Republicans have had the opportunity to take a stand and stop government subsidies that went to a controversial group like Planned Parenthood and they did nothing.  From 2002-2006, they controlled all relevant branches of government and did next to nothing about it.  I confronted a state delegate about it and he said he didn’t want to shut down the government over this issue.  Talk about moral cowardice.

The truth is, politicians are opportunistic slimeballs and will pay as much lip service as they can get away with.  For the Republicans, the past couple of decades has been about social issues like abortion.  The pro-life movement is the Republicans as the black civil rights movements are to the Democrats.  They have a seat at the table of power but they aren’t allowed to speak.

Still, this whole idea of removing subsidies for Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with abortion or morality really.  This has everything to do with fiscal sanity.  From what I understand, they are supposed to be a non-profit organization after all, yet they continue to post profits in the millions.  One-third of their funding is from the Federal government.

To be fair, none of the government subsidies they receive are supposed to be allocated for abortions.  But this line of logic reminds me of the time when we gave Katrina victims a $2000 debit card, which many then spend on booze and strippers.  In other words, you can tell them not to spend that money on abortions, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.

I heard former actor and talk radio show host today Jerry Doyle talk about how the Republicans in Congress were sent there to clean up fiscal matters and not deal with moral ones.  Unfortunately, he is wrong in his assessment on this.  The truth is, this does clean up fiscal issues.  I know it’s probably a small scratch in the fiscal insanity that our overlords in DC have created, but the Federal budget will be fixed by a thousand cuts, not one decisive blow.  That is the unfortunate truth of the matter.

In the end, cutting funding to Planned Parenthood is just one more step in the right direction, regardless of the morality behind it.  Depriving all non-profit organizations of Federal dollars will reduce the deficit, regardless of whether we like or not.  In the end, this is just one more thing that needs to get done.