Retired Army Officer: Obama, Democrats Shouldn’t OK Abortions on Military Bases
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 8, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A retired army lieutenant colonel has penned a new opinion column saying he doesn’t think President Barack Obama and his pro-abortion allies in Congress should move forward with plans to allow abortions at military base hospitals. Robert Maginnis says Obama has promised not to fund abortions and should make good on it.
"The Democratic congressional majority will soon decide whether taxpayers should subsidize abortions at military hospitals. Their decision will test President Obama’s trustworthiness and the voters’ patience," Maginnis says.
The fight concerns the amendment Sen. Roland Burris attached to a defense spending bill to allow abortions at taxpayer-funded military base hospitals. The Senate Armed Services Committee approved the amendment on a 15-12 vote.
All Democrats supported it except for Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who joined all of the committee’s Republicans in opposition.
The Senate is expected to defeat a pro-life effort to remove the Burris pro-abortion language from the measure, and the Senate bill and the House version, which does not allow abortions at the base hospitals, will go to a conference committee. Should the final measure endorse abortion, Maginnis is worried.
"It’s not clear that Obama, the nation’s most pro-abortion president ever, would honor his commitment against funding abortion by vetoing the bill," he said in his opinion column posted at Human Events.
That’s because he says Democrats "are putting up a smokescreen to provide the president plausible deniability."
Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said abortions under the amended provision would be at “no expense to the government.”
"The senator is wrong about the costs because he lacks supporting research. Besides he knows most Americans wouldn’t support the measure if it meant taxpayer money helped fund abortions," Maginnis says.
"Under the proposed amendment, abortion becomes a patient-paid procedure. That’s why young, single military women who don’t make a lot of money but seek most abortions will act like any consumer who pursues the best value for her dollar. She will weigh her options – civilian vs. military clinic – and will likely select the civilian clinic because her military medical coverage doesn’t include abortions and the civilian clinic will likely be cheaper," he explains.
"The abortion industry sets its charges to match costs which are based on volume. The Pentagon doubtfully knows the potential demand for abortion services among its qualified healthcare recipients. That population includes women who are on active duty, mobilized reservists, and female dependents of active and retired service members," Maginnis continues.
With 229,426 women on active military duty, the national security and foreign affairs analyst says his research, employing figures from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, shows between 6,056 and 9,590 of them had abortions last year.
Read the remainder of the opinion column at:
https://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37939
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