Am I accountable for the abortions I fund?

by Dan Lucas

In the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion. Since that ruling, there have been more than 53 million abortions in the U.S. That’s more lives stopped than the entire population of the United States in 1880.

Abortion has been in the news lately because a pro-life group is releasing a series of video exposés of Planned Parenthood that reveal aborted fetuses being “sold for parts.” They are uncomfortable videos to watch. The first video shows a Planned Parenthood senior director of medical research discussing “crushing” fetuses in just the right place to avoid damaging the parts they want to sell, as she casually eats her salad and sips wine at a nice restaurant.

John Kass, writing in the Chicago Tribune, says the pro-life group “alleges the videos are evidence that Planned Parenthood — which receives more than $500 million each year in federal tax money — is illegally selling body parts for profit.” Kass goes on to comment “You can say that it’s not human life. And many do. But in this case, using euphemisms is a shield. I suppose we can convince ourselves that the research ‘materiel’ is not human, until of course, you see a lab tech with tweezers pick up a tiny limb. What’s going on at Planned Parenthood is barbaric. And, since Americans fund Planned Parenthood with our tax dollars, avoiding the issue doesn’t really work. Because the use of our money makes us complicit.”

That really strikes home for me, “the use of our money makes us complicit.” The problem for me is that I believe¹ an unborn child is a human life and yet through my federal and state tax dollars, I am required by my government to pay for abortions that deliberately end those innocent lives.

My tax dollars go to pay for the half a billion dollars given to Planned Parenthood each year, and almost half of all abortions in Oregon are paid for by the State of Oregon’s Oregon Health Plan, also using my tax dollars.

So I am complicit – through my tax dollars. I have genuinely wondered if I will be held accountable for those abortions. I understand they are legal by law, but our government laws are a pale shadow, a flawed and imperfect attempt to reflect greater laws, greater truths. I am concerned about accountability under those greater laws.

I wish the laws of my country and the laws of my state didn’t put me in this position.

¹I use the word “believe” as a concession to the current state of the public discourse. More accurately, I agree with columnist George Will, “When life begins is a scientific, not a philosophic or theological, question.”

To read more from Dan, visit www.dan-lucas.com