It will stop you from beating the dead horse that is "abortion as a constitutional right." I am actually a moderate on the abortion issue in may ways, however if birth control becomes covered by healthcare, and as healthcare is force on every living being in America (poor people don't want to have to pay for health insurance, which is really what Universal Healthcare will do... Yes I said it the government will not help the right people hasn't done it in 100 years what makes you think it will now?) At any rate, if health insurance covers birth control, abortion becomes obsolete. Abortion is the pratice of removing unwanted pregnancies if health insurance covers birth control there is no excuse for unwanted pregnancies, or abortions, with exception for medical emergency or rape, those cases should always be protected I wont see a woman lose even more control in situations of rape. (I know cases of 'rape' and 'medical emergencies' will sky rocket, hey no system is perfect.) Abortions could even be legalized for children under 18, although I feel birth control should be mandatory for girls and boys from 14 to 18, to avoid those unwanted pregnancies to begin with. I'm for birth control of all kinds even to the point of the day after pill, it helps reduce abortions, which I think democrats and republicans both agree would be a good thing. (im not a fan of the religious right in most aspects, but I am still against abortion in general.)

That would be the common sense approach, wouldn't it?

Too bad, though...the religious ninnys in this country would never go for it. "Every sperm is sacred," "Sex is for procreation, not recreation," so on and so forth. Same people who, a couple hundred years ago, suggested that women marry their rapists to avoid the shame of being "ruined."

There will be parents who insist that their fourteen year olds be exempt from any rules about birth control for religious reasons, fundies who scream about paying taxes that will go toward paying for contraceptives, and young adults too traumatized by a bible-thumping upbringing to take themselves to a doctor to get a prescription for birth control in the first place.

As for "no excuse" for abortions...pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood are incredibly personal things. I don't necessarily think that abortion should be covered by healthcare unless there is a genuine medical emergency and it's part of lifesaving procedures to the woman. However, I don't think we should drag it down to a rape/incest/meducal emergency issue. If a woman comes in for an abortion and says that she's sure about her decision, let it go. It's between her and her conscience.

Out of curiosity, what do you define as a medical necessity? Is it if the mother has a 50% chance of dying, or 70% chance of dying? Does it make a difference if she has other children? If she's married? What if she wouldn't die but the fetus would be still-born and she would end up losing her reproductive organs? Whose to decide? Do you codify that? How many possible scenarios can you codify?

I'm asking b/c I'm genuinely curious what people mean when they say medically necessary. All pregnancies carry some health risk for the mother (and no medical risk for the father, only potentially emotional or financial). Whose to say what's too much risk?

I understand that abortion is morally reprehensible to many people, and I completely respect that point of view. But since I know very few people who would advocate making it absolutely illegal, I'm curious as to how a restrictive law would be implemented. Do you only specify the cases where you absolutely think it's wrong to have an abortion and leave everything else legal to circumvent the problem of perhaps missing one of the medical necessity scenarios in the original law? Do your require a judge to make every decision about the necessity of a procedure? How would judges feel about having to learn the intricacies of reproductive medicine?

I didn't say medical "necessity." I said "emergency." An emergency situation could be, say, I was in a terrible car accident, I need sedatives and surgery, but they'll probably have to lose the baby because of the drugs. Okay. I won't be happy about it, but I'll deal. And obviously, it's up to the woman, so the relevance of her being married or having other children (and facing the possibility of losing the ability to have children in the future) is on her. If I'm facing the possibility of losing first my baby and then my life, and I insist that medical professionals do everything possible to save my child, then they should. If I'm in a position where I'm unable to consent to any procedure, and I don't have a spouse/parent/etc. available, then doctors would probably choose to try to save my life above saving the baby.

Remember as well...one of the leading causes of death for pregnant women is murder, frequently by boyfriends or husbands who either don't believe that they're the father or don't want the responsibilities of parenthood. Obviously, a woman's first impulse should be to LEAVE such a relationship, but many of them don't. This should be construed as an emergency. Your life is in imminent danger. If my choice was between having an abortion and being stabbed to death and dumped in a river, well, I'll call the clinic.

If you see above that I keep saying, "the woman thinks, the woman wants, the woman says," and so on, it's because "the woman" gets pregnant. One, individual woman. Not a married or partnered unit, nor some vast female collective. The real question is whether or not each individual woman should be able to make this incredibly personal decision for herself--a decision that really only affects her physical and mental well-being. Go to postsecret.blogspot.com sometime...almost every week, someone posts a "secret" in the veins of, "I'll never forgive myself for having an abortion." Ususally, the next "secret" is something like, "I should have had an abortion" or "I'm glad I had an abortion." No woman can claim to speak for all women, but I believe here that society really needs to err on the side of allowing this to be an individual, personal decision.

Personally, I leave it to the doctor to decide, they should know if theres a high risk of death, however if your worried about corruption, you could always create a step by step of various situations that increase risk, and make some sort of formula that has to be followed. Of course things are always much more complicated when you get down to it, so of course that would also have to be fought over.