You didn't misread the title of this thread. Obamacare represents - in disguise to be sure - a very real opportunity for pro-lifers to put a stop to some the consequences of liberals' radical disregard for human life. In particular, Obamacare would largely relegate
Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history by offering a perfectly Constitutional way to accomplish most of those ends
Roe v. Wade prohibits.
One of the basic principles liberals claim justifies Obamacare - personal responsibility for your own actions - is not, in fact, a liberal principle, it is a conservative principle. The corollary to that principle: that individuals should not impose the costs of their own (unjustified) behavior on society is also a conservative principle, not a liberal principle. These principles can be seen most clearly in the provisions of Obamacare that permit (perhaps require) insurance companies to charge higher premiums to people who are smokers or are obese. Both conditions impose higher costs on the rest of society and, certainly in the case of smoking, cannot be justified by any sort of necessity or inherent human behavior (n.b., I do not agree with liberals that obesity is on a par with smoking - being an ex-smoker myself - but since they do, I have to start with what they've wrought).
Applying the conservative principles I've identified above leads to the following conclusions: society is fully justified in making smokers and the obese bear the consequences of their own actions, and in creating incentives to reduce the number of people who might otherwise take up smoking or let their waistbands get too big. Obamacare's provisions regarding higher premiums on the insurance everyone is now required to purchase accomplish both ends: they impose the economic costs of smoking and obesity on smokers and the obese, and they create an incentive to not start smoking or getting obese with the prospect of being forced to pay vastly higher premiums for that required insurance. Obamacare accomplishes these ends because it is one of the fundamental laws of economics that increasing the cost of some good or service reduces the demand for that good or service, and for goods or services that are a matter of individual preference and not necessity - e.g., buying or not buying the National Inquirer while standing in line at the grocery store - the rate of that change is quite high (i.e., the demand for the National Inquirer is very elastic).
In short, Obamacare stands for the proposition that people who engage in unjustified conduct that raises the costs of their own health care should be forced to either bear those higher costs or else stop engaging in that conduct.
However, smoking and getting fat are not the only types of conduct that increase the cost of an individual's health care. In particular, the types of such conduct relevant to the subject of this essay include so-called "elective" abortions; that is, abortions that cannot be justified because of the grave risk to the mother's own health or because of something the mother had no control over, such as rape. Abortion increases the costs of health care. Studies that reach the opposite conclusion do so on the basis of partial evidence that was specifically chosen for ulterior political motives. Those studies focus only on the mortality rates due to identified abortions and to childbirth and intentionally ignore the full range of the effects of having an abortion; mortality data alone necessarily fails to properly compare the health costs of abortion versus childbirth because (a) the data on mortality due to abortion are highly suspect due to the fact that (i) not all deaths from the operation itself are reported, and (ii) many deaths due to complications arising from an abortion procedure are mistakenly attributed to some cause other than the abortion that in fact caused the death.
In fact, not only are such studies compromised by political motives, they are also irrelevant to whether abortion should, or should not, be covered under Obamacare. This is so because what matters under Obamacare is not the risk that abortion - or childbirth - will result in death, but the risk that it will increase the costs of whatever health care must be provided to the mother who undergoes an abortion. The mortality rates due to smoking illustrate why the mortality rate of abortion alone is irrelevant: smokers who die from smoking generally impose lower health care costs on society than do smokers who do not die; smoking doesn't impose higher health care costs on society because smokers are more likely to die than non-smokers, rather, it imposes higher health care costs on society because not enough smokers die early enough from smoking. In other words, increasing the odds that a smoker will die from smoking would decrease, not increase, the total health care costs smoking imposes on society.
A similar conclusion holds for abortion: when the full costs of abortion are taken into account, including the costs of treating the higher rates of long-term depression, abortion increases the costs of health care more than does childbirth (a study done in 2003 - before it became politically necessary to find a "scientific" reason to require Obamacare to cover abortion - found that abortion is, in fact, a risk factor for subsequent depression long after the abortion itself:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12709667).
The ultimate conclusion therefore becomes inescapable: so-called "elective" abortions should not be covered by Obamacare because those abortions increase the unjustified health care costs society must otherwise bear - "elective" abortions are unjustified because there is no medical necessity for the procedure - and covering "elective" abortions would absolve those who have them - and those who perform them - from the consequences of their own voluntary actions. As a result, Obamacare mandates that insurance companies be permitted - or required - to charge significantly higher premiums to those individuals who are materially more likely to have elective abortions - or those whose conduct is likely to materially increase the risks that someone else will have an "elective" abortion - and, in fact, qualified insurance policies under Obamacare should exclude "elective" abortions from coverage.
And this doesn't just apply to the mother. The rational application of Obamacare mandates that everyone whose voluntary actions are materially more likely to increase health care costs should be forced to bear those additional costs and that incentives should be created to reduce the number of people who engage in such actions. Pregnancy - the sole reason anyone would ever have an abortion, or increase the health care costs society must bear - is not the result solely of the mother's actions; in other words, it takes two to tango. Obamacare therefore mandates that men whose conduct is materially more likely to result in an unwanted pregnancy also bear their "fair share" - to use another favorite liberal code phrase - of the higher health care costs due to abortion. In other words, not only should single women - those most likely to choose an "elective" abortion - have to pay higher health insurance premiums under Obamacare, so too should single men; further, those premiums should be even higher on 20-somethings, who are much more likely than, say, 50 year old dowagers, to choose, or cause, an elective abortion. Additionally, because it's not possible to adequately identify everyone who will at some point in time choose an "elective" abortion, no qualified Obamacare-insurance should provide any coverage for an "elective" abortion, whether or not the person choosing to have that abortion has been paying higher premiums because of the risks that he or she would have, or cause, an "elective" abortion. Of course, to make matters fair, a woman who chooses an "elective" abortion - and the person who performs it - should be required, under the threat of criminal penalties for committing insurance fraud, to identify the man who impregnated that woman so that his health insurance premiums can be increased to adjust for the fact that he has now been identified as someone whose conduct is materially more likely to result in an "elective" abortion than that of men in general. I would point out that making the man bear his "fair share" is also consistent with conservative principles just as conservative principles dictate that a man who gets a woman pregnant should "do the right thing" by her and voluntarily support the mother and his child, even if she doesn't want to marry him (he should have no choice in the matter - shotgun weddings are a very good idea, if a bit crude in practice).
And now to the bottom line, or why this matters to pro-lifers: because Obamacare provides the means to significantly increase the costs of an abortion to everyone involved - including by reducing the remuneration available to the doctors (and others) who perform abortions - it provides the perfect vehicle to substantially reduce the number of abortions. In other words, by adopting Obamacare - as suitably modified to remove the unnecessary distortions to the economy - pro-lifers could achieve one of the goals that has been denied them ever since the Supreme Court decided
Roe v. Wade: reducing the number of abortions to the bare minimum and punishing those who nonetheless go ahead and choose to have an "elective" abortion. That seems to me, a good reason for pro-lifers to love Obamacare.
Finally, this line of reasoning should demonstrate why social conservatives in general might learn to love Obamacare: there is a whole class of risky conduct that can be legally - and Constitutionally - prohibited (in practical effect) under Obamacare, such as out-of-wedlock sex, homosexual sex, illegal immigration (those who harbor illegal immigrants are necessarily increasing the health care costs society must bear and should therefore be reqiured to bear the costs of those higher costs, such as requiring individuals who are likely to be involved in harboring illegals to pay for health insurance sufficient to cover the number of illegals that person is statistically likely to be harboring, or to harbor in the future), and the like.
In fact, the primary problem with Obamacare, from this perspective, has to do with how it puts those principles into practice, particularly the unnecessary, and harmful, government intervention into the economy. Comprehensive regulation of 1/6th of the economy is not only unjustified on any rational basis, it not only harms those whom liberals (falsely) claim to care the most about - the poor and the disadvantaged, especially certain minorities - it is also thoroughly unnecessary to implementing Obamacare in a way that is consistent with social conservatives' principles. Remove those unnecessary stupidities, and social conservatives would have the perfect instrument - courtesy of the fascist liberals - to advance most of the social goals that have heretofore been frustrated.
