Hey, Anti-Choicers: By Your Own Logic, You're Paying for Abortions in Israel

Hey, Anti-Choicers: By Your Own Logic, You're Paying for Abortions in Israel:
You might have heard over the Christian holiday season that the great and noble and never-wrong-no-matter-what nation of Israel decided to pay for all abortions approved by a government medical council (of two doctors and a social worker, one of which must be a woman) for all women between the ages of 20 and 40. They can get those abortions for any reason: health, financial, inconvenience to a marriage.

Toss that around in your noggin for a moment. One of the things that gets anti-choice and/or evangelical nutbags all frothing at the mouth is the idea that a single penny of government money might, in some minuscule way, be used to make abortion more accessible. Right now, a House committee is considering the stupidly-named "No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act." You may as well name your committee "The He-Man Woman Haters Club," Rep. Trent Franks. The purpose of the bill is to say that Affordable Care Act funds cannot be used on any insurance plan that includes abortion coverage, even if that coverage has to be purchased as a separate rider and no Obamacare subsidies are used on it, because apparently saving money in one place makes buying abortion coverage easier. (While we're focused on just this aspect of it, it's actually a pretty savage piece of legislation.)

This is how the anti-choice right frames part of the abortion debate. It's also used in the backwards "religious liberty" cases where, like, those fuckin' asshole nuns don't want to even sign a paper that excludes them from needing to provide contraception coverage because somehow Satan will burn off their fingers. (Note: as far as the Rude Pundit knows, this is the only way the nuns are fuckin' assholes. They do run a nursing home, so, you know, kudos.) It's what's at stake in the Hobby Lobby case against Obamacare. They have their religion shoved up their asses, so they shouldn't have to spend a single penny making sure their employees don't have babies (which cost a hell of a lot more than a morning after pill). In other words, you should have to insert their Jesus-shaped dildo if you work for them.

Which brings us back to Israel, the land that has to be Jewy and free for the Messiah to come back and rapture the shit out of us, something evangelicals, the vast majority of whom are anti-choice, want to happen because...umm...orgies in Heaven? Dunno. Anyways...

Currently, the United States provides about $3 billion a year to Israel in foreign aid. By anti-choicers' "logic," that aid, which is made up of U.S. tax dollars provided by you and Ted Cruz and the heads of every anti-choice group, frees up Israel to pay for elective abortions. You got it? You are helping pay for abortions for Israel, for a policy supported by Bibi Netanyahu and the Knesset. Sure, there's laws that prevent any money being used for abortions, but that's the rule for Obamacare, too.

Oh, wait. There's this, too, in Israel: "Women also do not need the consent of any male, including the father of the child, nor do minors need the consent of parents or guardians. Israeli medical coverage offers an array of free testing for genetic and congenital birth defects" which can lead to more abortions.

The Rude Pundit is totally cool with that. It's a sane and sound public policy. It treats women as subjects, able to make decisions on their own, and not objects, merely to be acted upon. Is Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council cool with it? Others? Who knows? They've clammed up or made milquetoast statements about working to end abortion in Israel.

But this isn't about Israel's policy. It's about your money, American money, Lindsey Graham and Steve King. It's a good thing that "logic" to conservatives is like a third nipple on a man: totally unnecessary and pretty ugly.