| Ever since abortion became The Big Thing with respect to the current and recent Supreme Court nominations, I've wanted to yell at each and every person who is anti-choice: Not everyone can afford to have a baby.
From what the Census Bureau tells me, 45.8 MILLION people in this country didn't have health insurance as of 2004. That number is going down, not up. The median household income as of 2004 is $44k. The cost of having a baby in a hospital plus the 2 or 3 day stay, will be about $10,000 if you're very lucky and considerably more if you need the emergency C-section, there are complications, or if the baby requires special care. If you have reasonably decent health insurance, you might be responsible for $1,000-2,000 at most. Plus all the doctor's appointments during the pregnancy will have been covered at say, $20 per appointment. While a couple thousand dollars isn't something to sneeze at, it's probably doable, even if you have to work out payment with the insurance co.
Then think about paying for it yourself. 10 or 12 or 20 thousand to have a baby, that's close to a quarter or half of that median family's income, isn't it? What poor, lower-middle or middle class family can afford that, especially if they already have a kid or two? What if dad or mom just got laid off (and lost the health insurance) right before mom found out she was pregnant? What about the mom who makes $60 a month too much to qualify for Medicaid?
The health care system in this country disgusts me, the haves and have-nots. When we were in England, my mom had a minor stomach bug. She called my grandmother's doctor (who had no prior knowledge of my mom) first thing in the morning, and asked for an appointment. They told her to come in at 10:30, saw her for 20 minutes, prescribed anti-upset stomach pills, and charged her (my mom not being a member in England's national health service) the equivalent of $40. How long would an uninsured person have to wait for an appointment with a doctor who has no prior knowledge of her in this country, and how much would she have to pay?
Conservatives like to speak of pregnancy as if it's entirely the woman's fault for getting pregnant when she can't afford it. I'm sure they really believe that married couples should give up sex for years at a time because they don't have health insurance. Let's think about birth control for a moment. The pill (one of the most effective methods of birth control) will be 99% effective when it's taken correctly. A woman can become pregnant approximately once a month, or 12 times a year. Let's say she starts having sex when she marries at age 24, and can no longer become pregnant when she reaches menopause at age 45. That's 252 separate times she can become pregnant, and with a 1% failure rate, that's 2.5 unintended pregnancies. I don't want to hear any more conservatives saying ANYTHING about abortion until they start advocating for universal health care as fanatically as they advocate against abortion. |
