What the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania Got Wrong.

Pennsylvania had a decades old law barring the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions.  The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled yesterday that that law was of questionable validity (unconstitutional), because it discriminated against women.  In fact, the original law did not discriminate against women, because it provided for exceptions in cases of rape, incest, or if the pregnant female's health was in danger.  So, in circumstances where the female was at a disadvantage, and she was pregnant, she could use Medicaid benefits to get an abortion.

Frankly, I would venture to say, this being unknowable, that most abortions occur when the pregnancy did not result from rape or incest, and the female's health was not in danger.  Most abortions occur when the partners in a married couple, or boyfriend and girlfriend, or dating at a lower level, but who want to have sex, experience unwanted pregnancy that they tried to prevent, and they don't want a child.  They didn't from the start of that sexual encounter.  And there is no law that says people must reproduce, or how many times.  This is entirely personal, and no one else's business.

The basis of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's ruling was that a ban on abortion (using Medicaid to pay for it) disadvantages, or discriminates against, women, because it is only women who can become pregnant.  That's true, and anyone who has a problem with that fact can take it up with "god."  But unless the impregnated woman was too promiscuous, or unconscious, to know who fathered the pregnancy, an abortion affects two "people," and is commonly agreed to by both of them.  (The movie "Juno" contains a common example.)  If it's only decided by one (the pregnant woman), and the male never finds out there even was a pregnancy, and possibly would not want "his" fetus aborted, then it is the male who is discriminated against.  The flip side of that coin is a sexual encounter that results in a pregnancy about which the male is never informed (and didn't intend or want), and the male is made to take financial responsibility for a pregnancy about which he didn't know, and he didn't want, and which he had no reason to expect.

Females cannot get pregnant all by themselves (well, one allegedly did, sort of), and the decision to end a pregnancy should not be theirs alone.  We don't have a caste system in this country (not a formal and admitted one), and Medicaid is simply health insurance.  It's just that it's only available to people with little money.  But the fact that Medicaid is used to pay for health care should in no way determine what that health care is.  (If someone objects to using publicly pooled money -- taxes -- to pay for abortion, because that person objects to abortion, does he or she take the same approach to having Aetna pay for abortions, if that person has Aetna, and pays an insurance premium?  And anyway, how did this get to be that person's business?)  We have more than enough problems with American "health care" as it is without adding the further burden of shutting people out of actual required health care simply on the basis of what is their insurance.  And if we allow people to get abortions, and pay with Medicaid, if they got raped, or were victims of incest, or their health is in danger, but we claim they shouldn't be able to use Medicaid for abortions if they just want to have sex (which everyone does) and gets unwantedly pregnant, then we're not even consistent, and we're just making up our theory as we go along.

The exceptions to the proscription against using Medicaid for abortions in Pennsylvania, then, protect females from being discriminated against.  What's left is the potential problem of discrimination against males.  The best answer to this problem is that any abortion, or even any birth, should be approved by both parties.

Of separate note, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision was 3-2.  The former Democratic Chief Justice had died in October, 2022, and a Democrat won election for his seat, on the strength of a pro-choice position, with 53% of the vote, over an anti-abortion Republican.  So, the presumption is that decisions like these are so partisan as to be deflating.  It's not different from the SCOTUS, but it's a shame judges and Justices can't just pay attention to the law.  No one is interested in their personal opinions, especially if those personal opinions spring from their personal religious beliefs.