How pro-life are we? The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, covers people with an income at the federal poverty level and above up a certain income. The act calls for a grant of money to the states so they can expand Medicaid to cover people that are below the poverty line. The always compassionate Republicans insisted on an opt-out clause. Many Republican run states, like the one I am in, opted out. This creates a situation where you can be too poor to qualify for help with your health insurance.
Here is a hypothetical example. A woman is working a minimum wage job. That’s $15,080/year. The minimum income for a single person to qualify for an ACA subsidy is $12,880 this year so she can get an affordable insurance policy. She gets pregnant. When the baby is born, she is now a family of two. The federal poverty level for a family of two is $19,320 so she is no longer eligible for an ACA subsidy. She has another person to clothe and feed and now has to pay full price for an expensive insurance policy or just pay out of pocket for all her health care. No way she can afford this on minimum wage. She has a powerful incentive to end her pregnancy. What about Medicaid? In Alabama Medicaid will cover her child but not her unless she makes less than $3,300 per year. That’s right $3300. The federal government offered to pay for a Medicaid expansion but Republicans said, “no, we would rather see poor people suffer than go along with Democrats.” I suspect the only reason kids are covered is because they can’t opt out of that.
Too many our “pro-life” people and politicians are just anti-abortion. They don’t want to spend a dime to help expectant mothers or children. “Health care isn’t a right, it’s a privilege”, say the privileged. They should stop having kids. They should get a better job. They, they, they. Not, “we are going to help and here is how.”
If you are going to live up to the “pro-life” label, your work has just started. You need to start seriously caring about people outside your families and churches and voting for public officials that do too. If every unborn child matters then they and their moms ought to damn sure matter after they are born. When your teen daughter gets pregnant are you going to scream and yell so her younger sister will never want to tell you if it happens to her. Are you ready to spend time and money to help a drug addicted pregnant prostitute get clean and take care of her child? Are you ready to provide affordable health care for poor moms?
Making abortion illegal isn’t going to make women stop having abortions. It merely gives us another way to increase the prison population. If we really want to eliminate abortions we need to create a culture of love wherein every expectant mother knows that she and her baby will be cherished and cared for. Until we’re ready to do that, this is just posturing. Look how righteous we are. Jesus called us to love. Law is not a substitute for that, and, contrary to what some believe, it isn’t a way to curry favor with God either.
