Richard Phelan is wrong, wrong, wrong. The lawsuit concerning his executive order to reinstate abortions at Cook County Hospital is about power. If he had had the votes of the board, he could have kept his campaign promise legally. He didn`t have the votes, so he resorted to an executive order which will now be disputed in the courts at great expense to the taxpayers on both sides of the issue. Is this acting in the public interest?
Further, the underlying issue is not about whether poor women shall have access to abortions. It is about who shall pay for them. There are private foundations to which abortion advocates can contribute to help with the costs of abortions to the poor, but they are chronically underfunded. That`s evidence that there isn`t as much support for abortion as their spokespersons claim.
If abortion is supposed to be a private choice, then it should not be paid for with public money. Once a government gets involved as an abortion provider, it`s just a small step from making abortions available to the poor, to covertly encouraging abortions for the poor, and from there to openly forcing abortions on the poor. The persuasive power of government sponsorship can be just as interfering with choice as government prohibition. Anyone who is in favor of choice should want to keep the government and our tax money out of it.
