021880 Warren M. Anderson, New York State senate majority leader wants taxpayers to pay for killing children
To the Editor:
Warren M. Anderson, senate majority leader, was one of several high-raking members of the New York State legislature who addressed the members of the Family Planning Advocates of New York State, Inc. held recently in the Empire Plaza
in Albany. Many of the 800 in attendance wore large buttons reminding the speakers, "We are pro-choice--We vote." The time and effort required to analyze Mr. Anderson's comments is time well spent. Let us consider just one point.
After greeting the audience he said, "Obviously the most sensitive issue confronting legislators is the question of whether the State should pick up a portion of the Medicaid funding for abortions which the federal government has declined to support and basically whether any taxpayer money should be used for non-therapeutic abortions."
In its June 1977 decision the Supreme Court ruled that it is not unconstitutional for a state to deny payments for non-therapeutic abortions. New York is one of only a few states that has elected to use state funds for such a purpose. Mr. Anderson would be expressing the basic question more accurately if he phrased it thus: Should the State of New York adopt as governmental policy killing intrauterine children at taxpayer expense for reasons such as embarrassment, un-timeliness, unwantedness?
If a child is not wanted at any time or if his arrival at a particular time is inconvenient or if his arrival will be the cause of embarrassment, the most effective procedure to attain these ends is to refrain from engaging in those acts that bring about the arrival of a child. Couples are impelled but not compelled to indulge in these acts. They have a "real choice" to forego* indulgence.
Indulging does not bring either partner any psychological or physical health benefit.
By funding abortions, New York Sate is promoting the abortion industry at the expense of poor women and their children. Providing life-sustaining and life enhancing programs to enable poor women to have a real choice would be a more human and humane response. With a real choice, many women would choose life.
While financial gain and instant pleasure important immediate motivating forces, the pro-abortionists have in mind a more sinister objective, They intend to scuttle all vestiges of a belief in what the Founding Fathers referred to as a self-evident truth, that a Creator exists Who endows all men with certain "unalienable right" wrong these being life and liberty, With God eliminated, they will have themselves installed as the supreme authority in determining who shall and who shall not live.