Submission: UC should emphasize child care coverage as alternative to abortion

On April 12, an informative article appeared in the Daily Bruin about a new legislative proposal known as Senate Bill 320. The bill would require the University of California to cover abortifacient, or abortion-causing, medication in order to continue to receive state funding for student health insurance coverage.

State Senator Connie Leyva proposed the bill, arguing that covering abortifacient medication in university student health care plans “will improve the academic success of students,” by making the option of an abortion more conveniently accessible to UC students – despite the many available contraceptive and abortifacient services already covered in the health care plans.

This is wrong, and the state legislature should not pass this bill. Instead, the UC should emphasize child care coverage as an alternative to abortions.

As an analogy, one of my philosophy professors once gave our class a thought experiment involving a lifeguard in a jeep, a person drowning in the ocean and a person lying in the sand between the two. The objective of the experiment was to justify the lifeguard running over and killing the person in the sand to rescue the drowning victim.

Abortion is the prime example of how our nation approaches the scenario in this thought experiment. We live in a state that justifies the lifeguard running over the person in the sand to save the drowning victim, even if “saving” might only mean providing a higher quality of life.

In fact, it’s disturbing that the bill’s financial terms and conditions are manipulatively pro-abortion.

The Daily Bruin article suggests that support for Senate Bill 320 is based on the needs of a pregnant student to have more convenient access to an abortion so that they can focus on their education.

While unintentional pregnancies do occur, we as young men and women need to be more considerate of the consequences of our actions prior to an undesirable outcome.

Instead of just being more informed on how to procure an abortion more conveniently, students also need to be more informed on what other options are available. The UC must equally represent and provide child care options and reproductive care options.

Raising awareness of other services would help counteract the ideology behind abortion services, which is that we can sacrifice a developing life in order to attain a higher quality of life. One life is improved at the involuntary expense of another.

While abortifacient medication may seem like a more humane method for procuring an abortion because it facilitates an early-term abortion, it is an unsatisfactory measure because an abortion is still the final result. The lifeguard still runs over the person in the sand for the convenience of the person in the water.

The moral concerns regarding abortion surpass religious ideologies. The unborn have been persecuted by abortion-minded ideologies for decades, making the anti-abortion view a social justice concern. Anti-abortion ideology considers human beings to be living in all stages of life from conception to death. This includes an unborn child. Human beings are not protected under the law until they are born, which is why we must be the voice that speaks on their behalf.

The anti-abortion argument only fights for the unborn, a group which does not have a voice of its own. It fights for a group that has been denied the basic right to life for decades so men and women can have sexual intercourse and avoid the consequences of their actions.

The right to a certain quality of life stops when it comes at the expense of another life. The unborn are as alive as another human, despite their developmental immaturity. Since they have no voice of their own, it is up to us to advocate on their behalf. It is up to us to stop the lifeguard from running over the person in the sand – especially if the person in the water isn’t even drowning.

Colombo is a third-year English student.