One way to make abortion the more attractive choice
Slash funds providing resources for teenage mothers:
ST. PAUL — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.
After the legislature passed a spending bill in April, Palin went through the measure reducing and eliminating funds for programs she opposed. Inking her initials on the legislation — “SP” — Palin reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent, cutting funds from $5 million to $3.9 million. Covenant House is a mix of programs and shelters for troubled youths, including Passage House, which is a transitional home for teenage mothers. [ Washington Post ]
Look, it’s simple. When you cut programs for teenage and single mothers, when you eliminate or drastically reduce the resources available to them, and when you force them out of school and into the workplace, you make abortion a more attractive option. Whether or not it is legal, you make abortion a more attractive option. For the women who choose to carry the child to term, you make their lives much more difficult, which then makes the lives of their children much more difficult, narrows their opportunities in life, and increases the chance that the child will not have what he or she needs to grow up smart, strong, and sane.
The only argument for withholding services from teenage and unwed mothers is that providing those services somehow encourages more risky behavior. But if you make that argument, what you are saying is that the child is appropriate economic punishment for the mother. You have stopped caring about the child. You have sacrificed the child’s future to make a moral point to other not-pregnant girls.
That is not “family values.” That is despicable.
