A Deal on Abortion?

For the third straight Congress, Democratic Reps. Tim Ryan and Rosa DeLauro introduced new legislation that would seek to decrease the number of abortions.

Overwhelmed by healthcare and the Gates fiasco, breaking news in the abortion debate went largely unnoticed by the mainstream media last week.  For the third straight Congress, though, Democratic Reps. Tim Ryan and Rosa DeLauro introduced new abortion legislation that would, among other proposals, improve access to contraceptives and finance comprehensive sex-ed programs. The bill’s first component, sloppily categorized as “prevention,” would increase funding for Title X of the Public Health Service Act, a government program that provides contraceptives and other reproductive health services (excluding abortion) to low-income women.  Another proposal would establish a grant competition for “high-achieving” states whose performance in decreasing unintended pregnancy exceeds a national benchmark to be set by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.  As a whole, this portion of the bill targets the systemic factors often leading to abortion—factors like ignorance and irresponsibility regarding sexual activity and parenthood, the absence of involved parents, and the inaccessibility of contraceptives. Part two of the bill—the “support” section—would provide financial, medical and other support for new mothers and women who, without such resources, would be more likely to receive an abortion.  It would drastically expand access to food stamps and would allow states to expand Medicaid’s coverage for low-income mothers and their children.  It would increase the adoption tax credit by $5,000, improve access to ultrasounds, and subsidize educational institutions that financially support pregnant students.  As opposed to the bill’s first half, which adopts a structural, preventive approach, part two employs a more last-ditch effort to dissuade a woman from receiving an abortion. In designing the legislation, DeLauro said the intention was to “broker a détente” and “turn down the volume on the culture war.” Such comments illuminate the critical political context underpinning the Ryan-DeLauro legislation.  For one thing, a similar bill has died in committee without a single Republican co-sponsor for the past two Congressional sessions.  If the bill is to have any chance of survival, it needs support from conservative moderates who have rejected similar Democratic overtures in the past.  Secondly, Congress is working with a President who sees the abortion debate in less absolutist, zero-sum terms than his predecessor, pushing instead for a more conciliatory legislative agenda on the issue.  Republicans who oppose the bill will therefore run the risk of being labeled ideologues and obstructionists, despite the historically partisan nature of the bill. Not surprisingly, this hasn’t kept fundamentalist Christian organizations from slamming the bill’s support of Planned Parenthood and its promotion of comprehensive sex-ed programs and contraceptives. At the same time, however, the bill has already earned the support of some moderate conservatives like pro-life evangelical Rev. Joel Hunter, who serves on the White House Faith Based Advisory Council and hailed the legislation as a “landmark bill for the culture wars.” The legislation’s growing bloc of moderate support would indicate that by targeting unintended pregnancies, the bill’s authors have largely bypassed the moral complexities of the abortion procedure itself. The bill’s logic is not above reproof, however.  There is an important distinction, after all, between actually eliminating the underlying cause of abortion in the long-run and merely reducing the number of abortions in the short-run.  Measures that target promiscuity, irresponsibility, ignorance, and the inaccessibility of contraceptives will achieve the former aim; spending money to prevent abortion after a woman is pregnant, however, will only achieve the latter.  If legislators rely too heavily on this last approach, they neglect the underlying conditions that lead to unintended pregnancy and abortion.  Perhaps it is even the case that by mitigating the burden of irresponsible decisions with the hope of reducing abortion—as the bill’s “support” component does—the government unintentionally subsidizes the culture that fosters unintended pregnancies in the first place. Of course, a bill that uses federal dollars exclusively to fight unintended pregnancy at the expense of those already hurt by poor decisions and an oversexed culture would never get passed.  And neither should it, for the culture that has spawned rampant promiscuity and irresponsibility must be dealt with patiently and incrementally.  But as the government’s labors to prevent unintended pregnancy begin to bear fruit, legislators must begin replacing short-term solutions that cultivate dependence on government with more long-term programs attacking the cultural structure at the root of the problem.