Abortion is not Health Care

Abortion is still a major item in the news.  The controversy is fueled by Catholic political leaders, particularly President Biden and Speaker Pelosi, who claim to be staunch Catholics but feel it is their right to disagree with Church teachings.  One of the ways politicians have eased their collective conscience is to categorize abortion as “health care”.  This claim has gained a considerable following over the last fifteen years.  However, it is morally and logically flawed.

The UCCB has recently presented a paper that collapses this argument of the pro-abortion advocates.  The Secretariat of Pro-life Activities entitled a document “Abortion is not Healthcare”. In it they write; “In recent years pro-abortion groups have radically altered their messaging strategy, abandoning the slogan of “choice” to claim instead that abortion is simply essential health care for women. References to abortion or abortion “services” have been replaced in pro-abortion literature by the euphemism “abortion care.” By claiming an objective basis in medicine, abortion supporters seek to marginalize health care providers and others who disagree with them, dismissing these Americans as not living up to “the standard of care.” But this claim is contrary to the facts.  Abortion is a marginal practice, neither performed nor accepted by most health care providers; it does not improve (and can even jeopardize) women’s life and health; and American law has recognized for decades that it is not “just another medical procedure.” Far from being integral to our health care system, abortion is something that supporters seek to impose on that system by force of law. . . Abortion is not health care. It is different because it does violence to a very young child, has no clear justification in terms of women’s health, and may attack women’s health and their very lives. Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, legal actions by all three branches of the federal government have repeatedly reflected this fact”.

Human Life International confronts the claim that abortion is a constitutional right.  This position is deeply flawed.  They write; Abortion is not a constitutional right according to a direct reading of the text of the Constitution, but it has been justified as such under the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy. In short, the constitutional right to abortion is found not in the Constitution itself, but in a loose reading of it as a “living document,” as “progressives” like to call it.  This “living constitution” argument is often used by pro-abortionists. As former U.S. President Barack Obama once asserted, “I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose and this fundamental constitutional right.” Obama, formerly a law professor, obviously must know that this “right” does not actually exist ? the Supreme Court literally conjured it out of thin air in its efforts to justify the most illogical, sloppily written opinion that it has ever produced.

In other words, the place for abortion in health care is difficult to place, if it is at all possible.  From a bioethical perspective there are three main areas of health care; preventative, curative, palliative.  With abortion a health care provider is treating a condition; in this context, pregnancy.  Preventative procedures for pregnancy are contraceptives.  So, abortion does not fit in this area.  Curative is presuming there exists a condition that needs to be brought under control or eradicated; a disease or illness.  To call pregnancy a disease or illness would not gain much societal or political traction.  Palliative, meaning comfort care or symptom control, is letting a condition take its course to its end.  To consider pregnancy a symptom would not be favorable and letting it run its course is what abortion is intended to avoid.  Therefore, this conflating of abortion and health care is a rhetorical device meant to persuade some one of a point, not to be considered deeply.

Perhaps, Pope Benedict XVI stated the most succinct comment on the artificially confused issue; “access to health care is a right but not abortion, euthanasia or other practices destroying human life”.  In other words, health care preserves human life, it is a misuse of the resources of health care field to use them to destroy life in any form.