Bush extends aid to unborn
Both sides of the abortion battle regard this move as crucial
From, The Kentucky Citizen Digest, March/April, 2002.

The Bush administration ignited a firestorm with pro-abortion forces recently when it offered to extend Medicaid benefits to “unborn children” as part of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Health and Human Service Secretary Tommy Thompson said the goal was to get more prenatal health care to low-income women and improve the chances of their delivering healthy babies, but groups on both sides of the abortion issue say it represents much more.  “This will strengthen the right-to-life philosophy,” Lou Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition told the Associated Press.

Kim Gandy of the National Organization for Women echoed Sheldon’s point from the opposite side of the debate.  “At the point you establish a fetus as person under the law,” Gandy said in the same article, “then even first trimester abortion becomes murder, and the Bush administration knows that.”

Bush campaigned under a prolife platform and reaffirmed his commitment during a telephoned message delivered at the recent March for Life in Washington, D. C.  “Everybody there believes, as I do, that every life is valuable, that our society has a responsibility to defend the vulnerabilities of the weak, the imperfect and even the unwanted…that unborn children should be welcomed in life and protected in law,” Bush said.

But Thompson says the recent initiative is about women and children’s health-care, not abortion politics.  “How anybody can now turn this into a pro-choice or prolife argument, I can’t understand it,” he said.

Kent Ostrander, executive director of the Family Foundation sees the Bush plan as a “win-win situation for Kentucky families.  This initiative offers some real support for struggling women who want to provide good prenatal care for their unborn babies,” Ostrander said.  “That alone makes it a good initiative for the family.  If there are long-term results that diminish the incidence or legality of abortion, so much the better.”  

Key Family Foundation Contacts: Kent Ostrander , Executive Director Martin Cothran , Senior Associate Policy Analyst