In an interview on American Family Radio today, Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman claimed that low-income women use abortions “like birth control pills” and compared abortions to “Obama phones,” the name given by a racist meme to a decades-old program that provides low-cost or free phone service to some people in poverty so they can access things like emergency services.
When AFR host Ed Vitagliano asked Newman why “abortions are three times more likely to be performed on a woman with Medicaid,” he responded, “It’s free.”
“These $400 abortions, when they’re free through Medicare [sic], women just go and get them and they use them like birth control pills,” he said, adding that if abortions were more expensive, women would go instead to a “Christ-centered pregnancy counseling center” that doesn’t provide abortion as an option.
In fact, the Hyde Amendment currently bars federal funds from being used to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment. Only 17 states use their own tax dollars to fund all or most “medically necessary” abortions for women who are enrolled in Medicaid.
“It’s just like anything else, when you hand out things for free, the system becomes overwhelmed,” he said. “Look at the Obamacare, all the people who are getting it are getting subsidized, the Obama phones, etc. So as soon as you start giving something out you’re going to get more of it.”
