VA may eliminate abortion funding for poor women ...

By Hannah Hess | Virginia Statehouse News

RICHMOND ? Tara Schleifer said she thinks women have the right to choose, and she worries that Virginia is taking that right away.

?I will never have an abortion,? she told a House committee this month as her 3-year-old son, Isaac, crawled across the floor. ?I don?t need to. I love my husband. We?ve been together for 12 years. After three dates, I told him I wanted to have his children. Someday. He agreed.?

That?s what Schleifer believed. But things change. Sometimes decisions, no matter how heart-rending and heart-breaking, have to be made.?Schleifer knows this, because she has made such a choice.

Schleifer had an abortion after a doctor certified the fetus would be born with a gross and incapacitating physical deformity or mental deficiency. Fetal ultrasounds, lab testing of amniotic fluid and placenta, urine, and blood tests are among the ways a doctor can determine the health of the fetus.

Virginia lawmakers are snared in a contentious debate about the funding for abortions in special cases such as Schleifer?s. Strollers and babies have clogged the aisles of General Assembly Building committee rooms this session, as reproductive rights advocates and anti-abortion activists debate whether the state should pay for abortions. One family says adoption is the answer for low-income women.

Schleifer grew up the only child of a handicapped mother, whom she cared for until she died. She did not want the same future for her son, who could have been left to care for a physically and mentally deformed child.

Schleifer, 42, is still rocked by the decision. She provided gripping testimony to the House Health Welfare and Institutions Committee last month about the decision to end her pregnancy as she voiced her opposition to a bill that would end state funding of abortions for low-income women.

By repealing funding, the bill would ensure that women who cannot afford an abortion will not be able to have the operation, even in cases in which the fetus is severely physically and mentally deformed or is not expected to live longer than a few days.

Virginia?s Board of Health funds abortions for women who meet the financial eligibility criteria of the State Plan for Medical Assistance.

A minimal number of abortions are funded by the state each year. In fiscal 2010, 23 abortions were approved for a total cost of $14,681; in fiscal 2011, 10 abortions were approved for a total cost of $2,784.

The average cost per abortion is $529.

Virginia pays for abortions with available cash balances from special funds in the state Office of Family and Health Services.Joe Bartling, 54, of Oakton, and his wife, Karen, said they do not believe the state should finance abortions.

The couple has adopted six children of women from South Korea, China, Thailand, Ghana and India who gave birth to children with physical deformity or mental deficiency and chose not to care for them.All six special needs children, whose ages range from 6 to 17, have been blind since birth and have cognitive deficiencies. They accompanied Joe Bartling to a Senate Education and Health Committee hearing on Thursday, where he testified in support of the bill that would cut off state abortion funding.

?Seventeen years ago, after years of unexplained infertility, Karen and I set out on a course of adoption,? Bartling said. ?Being in our mid-30s, and not really knowing what we were getting into, we thought we could offer a home and family to a child with special needs.?

They adopted their first daughter, Hannah, 17, when she was 9 months old. She was born with no eyes and abandoned by her mother at a nursing home.

Another daughter, Abi, 11, was left in a garbage can in a park in Calcutta, India, ?screaming her little heart out,? Bartling told the committee. Abi was rescued by a police officer who heard her screaming and took her to an orphanage, he said.

Bartling said that sometimes when Abi screams now, they just let her scream.

?If she didn?t know how to scream, she wouldn?t have survived a single night in the garbage can,? he said.

Karen and Joe Bartling send their children to public schools in the area, where trained professionals have helped them learn and develop.

Karen Bartling, 54, said it is a coincidence that all the children they have adopted are blind, and she considers the six children the family she never knew she wanted.

?Today we?re here to testify not for the mom who is going through the unwanted pregnancy, not for the doctor, or the physician, who may be looking out for the wife and the mother, not for the social worker who is determining the eligibility criteria ? and not for the state agency who is administering these funds,? Bartling said.

?Today we are here to testify on behalf of that little unborn child who, unbeknown to him or her, may just so happen to have a gross or totally incapacitating physical deformity or mental deficiency? who one day might be somebody?s proud son or daughter,? she said.House Bill 62, offered by, Delegate?Mark Cole, R-Spotsylvania, would end the aid for poor women.

Source: http://statehousenewsonline.com/2012/02/17/va-may-eliminate-abortion-funding-for-poor-women/

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