In a move to show just whose back pocket they reside in, spokespersons for both John Edwards and Barack Obama have indicated that the candidates will support a "health care plan" that includes coverage for abortions.
When the "Hyde Amendment" went into effect, banning federal funding for elective abortions, the heavily abortion-supporting Centers for Disease Control constructed research intended to show that this finding restriction led to increased hospitalizations for self-induced and criminal abortions. In order to be able to clearly blame these hospitalizations on the funding cut, the CDC compared pre- and post-Hyde hospitalization rates for Medicaid-eligible women in states that picked up the tab for elective abortions versus states that left these women to find other money if they wanted abortions.
The results? Hospital admissions for abortion complications among Medicaid-eligible women dropped in those states that did not fund elective abortions, but remained steady in those states that picked up the tab.
In other words, if something's free, more people will avail themselves of it. And, with abortion, that also means that more women will be injured in the process.
There was no offsetting increase in obstetric complications among Medicaid-elegible women, nor an increase in maternal mortality in Medicaid-eligible women, nor any other dire consequence predicted by the CDC and other champions of tax funding for abortions.
Other CDC research noted that public-pay patients have higher complication rates for abortion than private-pay patients, even when other factors are taken into account.
So Edwards and Obama are -- in effect if not in intent -- throwing poor women under the bus in order to gain votes.
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