Overrulling Roe

[JMHACLJ at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/17/2005 12:07:04 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
SLevinson at law.utexas.edu writes:

Does anyone  know on this list how much public funds are in fact allocated at 
present to  support abortion clinics and how likely it is that they would be 
eliminated if  Roe were overruled?  


I was rooting around on some North Carolina websites, I cut my teeth in  
anti-abortion activism on the street in front of an abortion business that had  
contracts with all of North Carolina's 100 counties to provide abortion services 
 to the poor under that State's program of state funding for elective, 
medically  unnecessary abortions.  At the time of my activities in North Carolina, 
the  State was allocating something in the neighborhood of a million dollars a 
year  for these medically unnecessary abortions.  I have found sites that  
indicate a continuation of that funding program up to the near present at  least. 
 In addition, I have found a news release from a state legislator  indicating 
that in one period of three years, the State's public employee health  care 
plan had funded something in the neighborhood of  three million  dollars worth 
of abortion and abortion related services (the number may be  deceiving since 
the auditing category may also include miscarriages, and D &  C procedures 
done for non-abortive purposes (menstrual regulation).
 
All that by way of saying I don't have my hands on a specific number but  
unless the total include these kinds of funding programs, in which money  follows 
a client into a clinic in the form of a voucher from the State, it  won't be 
an accurate or complete accounting.
 
Also found the following excerpt from a North Carolina State Supreme Court  
decision describing abortion in fairly interesting terms:
 
"We therefore conclude that the authority conferred upon counties to  provide 
social services pursuant to G.S. 153A-255 is limited to providing the  poor 
with the basic necessities of life. We find it inconceivable that the  
legislature would have intended medically unnecessary abortions to be basic  
necessities of life."  The case is Stam vs. State of North Carolina, and  concluded 
that counties in NC could not separately assume the power to provide  abortion 
services to the poor in their county-owned medical facilities.
 
Jim Henderson
Senior Counsel
ACLJ
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