Now, after a few days, here’s my contribution to the ongoing Komen-foundation-shooting-themselves-in-both-feet-after-putting-both-feet-in-their-mouths-gate.
I’d like to take a moment to discuss the abortion mill that conservatives love with all their heart. That organization that they want to force every American to support that kills tens of thousands of the pre-born every year. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…the state of Israel.
The US government gives approximately $3 billion a year to the state of Israel in military aid. Money, being a fungible thing (H/T to McSuderman) that means that the $3 billion they get from us is 3 billion of their own money that they aren’t spending on military hardware. Some of that 3 billion dollars allows the Israelis to build, support, and protect illegal settlements in the West Bank. Some of it goes to support other Israeli activities that are diametrically opposed to American national security goals in the region and the world. Some of that money makes room in the Israeli economy for spending on Israel’s socialized medical system. Conservatives just loves them some socialized medicine in other countries, don’t you know.
But the big issue here is the fact that in Israel, abortions are legal, and paid for under that same socialized medical system. Conservatives just love aborting Jew babies, it seems. That has to be it, because they claim to hate abortions and to hate socialized medicine, but they love giving American taxpayers’ money to Israel to free up Israeli money to abort Israeli Jews. In 2003, the latest year for which Wikipedia has Israeli abortion statistics:
Clauses 312-321 of the 1977 penal code limit the circumstances when an abortion is legal in Israel. Abortions can only be performed in Israel by licensed gynecologists in recognized medical facilities that are specifically and publicly recognized as a provider of abortions. Abortions must be approved by the termination committee.
In practice, most requests for abortion are granted, and leniency is shown especially under the clause for emotional or psychological damage to the pregnant woman. According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics report from 2004, 19,500 legal abortions were performed in Israel in 2003, while 200 requests for abortion were denied. Most abortions were authorized because the woman was unmarried (42%), because of illegal circumstances, such as rape, incest, etc. (11%), health risks to the woman (about 20%), age of the woman (11%) and fetal birth defects (about 17%).
Also, too, consider this an open thread.
EDIT–Clarification–Abortion is not strictly legal, but is subject to approval by a 3 person committee. It is not correct to say that “abortion is legal in Isreael”, per se. That committee however, approves almost all of the abortions that are requested, which are then paid for by the healthcare system. There is a proposed law in the Knesset right now that would make abortion completely legal in Israel because women who can afford to go to private clinics do so and avoid the committee altogether, according to the same Wiki article. The intent of the proposed law is to make abortion rights functionally equal for all Israeli women.