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WaPo’s Klein Insists ObamaCare-Abortion Debate 'About Class and Not About Abortion'

By Jeff Poor | March 21, 2010 | 20:43

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The Washington Post's Ezra Klein has some doubts about those who oppose abortion on moral, religious or ethical grounds. Apparently to him, it's just an anti-class issue in which the poor are locked out of abortion.

Klein appeared on MSNBC's March 21 special coverage of the House's debate about health care reform which was prelude to the body's final vote on the legislation. According to Klein, despite the language in this bill with so-called "family planning" provisions and its questions about a presidential executive order restricting them, abortions will actually go down with ObamaCare.

"I want to make a point they're wrong on two important counts," Klein said. "Number one, often times when you create more insurance coverage you reduce abortion. There is a study in The New England Journal of Medicine this month that after Massachusetts brought in their reforms that look a lot like our reforms abortion dropped 2 percent because people have more access to birth control."

MSNBC host Ed Schultz countered Klein's argument by citing Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who said in a press conference earlier abortions would actually go up 30 percent according to the Guttmacher Institute. And according to Klein, abortions are already federally subsidized. He suggested this was a class issue.

"That was an interesting number there," Klein said. "Number two, we actually do subsidize abortion for richer women in this country all of the time. The massive $250 billion tax break we give to employer-based insurance, 80 percent of that insurance covers abortion but you don't see companies going after that and you don't see it because there is a big part of this conversation that is about class and not about abortion. It's one of the parts that is much more infuriating to me."

Perhaps Klein would best serve his viewers to point out there are those that oppose abortion on principle and not because of an individual's "class," including those Congress like Bachmann.