Before I get to the meat of my post, I want to review a couple key terms.

• Fact- A statement expresses only what actually happened, or what could be proven by objective and unbiased data. Example: “Christmas is on December 25.”

• Opinion- A statement that expresses a personal or societal view towards something, it makes a judgement or conclusion that cannot be proven true or false. Example: “Macaroni and cheese is the best food ever.”

For months now, President Obama, congress, the senate, and every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Mary have been putting their two cents in on how to best change, or not change depending on how you ask, our current health care system.  One of the key issues, aside from cost, is coverage. This is going to get complicated, but I’ll do my best to keep it simple.

The consensus is that every legal citizen of the United States should have access to quality and affordable health care. This is an excellent idea. Affordable health care for everyone should, in theory, make society healthier. If everyone can get affordable health care, then it stands to reason medical-related bankruptcies will go down.  With me so far? Okay. Now, to say every legal citizen should have access to health care EXCEPT when seeking abortion-related medical care, because you’re of the opinion that abortion is wrong, and therefore feel it’s appropriate to deny coverage to those without insurance, makes you a selfish hypocrite, and a person who should not have a job working in the public interest.

Did I just lose you? Health care insurance for everyone means having health care options to everyone. It’s a fact that abortion is a legal health care option. Granted, some people are of the opinion that it’s not a good or viable option, but that does not change the fact that is it an option.

One of the reasons given to restrict abortion coverage is the slippery slope argument, which states that a relatively small first step inevitably leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant impact, or in relevant terms, allowing coverage of abortion will lead to more unprotected sex and women lined up at clinics, waiting to terminate. After all, why take a pill or put on a condom when you can just go to a cheap doctor? As anyone who has ever worked or been a patient of an abortion clinic would say, this is utterly far-fetched and ridiculous. Even if a clinic say, gave away a big screen TV with every procedure, you would never see the situation. But, as this has never been done and proven or dis-proven, it’s just an opinion. How about some cold hard fact? From the Washington Post:

There’s a direct connection between greater health coverage and lower abortion rates.

The latest United Nations comparative statistics, available at http://data.un.org, demonstrate the point clearly. The U.N. data measure the number of abortions for women ages 15 to 44. They show that Canada, for example, has 15.2 abortions per 1,000 women; Denmark, 14.3; Germany, 7.8; Japan, 12.3; Britain, 17.0; and the United States, 20.8. When it comes to abortion rates in the developed world, we’re No. 1.

No one could argue that Germans, Japanese, Brits or Canadians have more respect for life or deeper religious convictions than Americans do. So why do they have fewer abortions?

One key reason seems to be that all those countries provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost. That has a profound effect on women contemplating what to do about an unwanted pregnancy.

There were several reasons but that one important explanation was Britain’s universal health-care system. “If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it’s needed,” Hume explained, “she’s more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn’t it obvious?”

A young woman I knew in Britain added another explanation. “If you’re [sexually] active,” she said, “the way to avoid abortion is to avoid pregnancy. Most of us do that with an IUD or a diaphragm. It means going to the doctor. But that’s easy here, because anybody can go to the doctor free.”

Did you know the United States has one of the worst infant mortality rates among modernized countries? Seriously, the only county that has a worse record is Slovakia.  Why is this? Well, per the CDC’s study, the main cause of the United States’ high infant mortality rate when compared with Europe is the very high percentage of preterm births in the United States. Alright, why do we have to many preterm births?

Preterm births are more likely in women with other health issues, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

Older mothers and young teen mothers also face higher risks.The U.S. has higher rates of women in these groups getting pregnant, co-author of the report, Marian MacDorman from the National Center for Health Statistics, tells NPR’s Brenda Wilson. And in the U.S., minority women also face much higher rates of preterm births than white women.

And this is the other problem. The same people that want to prevent women from having abortions, also are of the opinion that people should not have sex before marriage, so why bother spending money on safe-sex education or free birth control? That opinion is fine, but as the facts demonstrate above, the reality is the opposite. Lots of people, of all ages and status, do have sex and do need access to the health care options available to them and their personal choice, not yours or what you think is best for them.  We’ve found ourselves in a backwards mindset and it’s clear these people in the position to make policy are doing much more harm than good by stubbornly sticking their head in the sand.