6 August—One of the relatively few issues the inflexibly but delightfully conservative Republican-American and I don’t find common ground on is abortion. The Pape family, who own the newspaper, and presumably a majority of the dutiful editorial board are opposed to abortion for just about any reasons. No problem there. But I can’t take the RA’s predictably doctrinal anti-abortion rantings seriously. No problem there, either. That’s what editorials, op-eds, and editorial cartoons are about, after all.

The editorial in yesterday’s Republican-American offers some common ground. Mirabile dictu? Absolutely! It’s enticingly titled “Will Democrats support pregnant women?” The editorial is only tangentially about abortion, but its premise is sound, even though the disquisition is in the circumstance unnecessarily—and unfairly—partisan, i.e., anti-Democrat. But where is it written that editorials must be balanced or fair?

The essay is about a novel Republican-sponsored “Unborn Child Support Act” (UCSA) in Congress that would allow “a court, in consultation with the mother, to award child support payments while the child [which is actually a fetus at that stage] is still in the womb and retroactively up to the point of conception as determined by a physician.”

No problem with that, actually, once paternity has been established beyond any doubt. In fact, it’s a damn good idea that should have been enacted long ago. Certainly too many procreational athletes deposit their cum and go, as the editorial suggests (rather less elegantly than I, of course). On the other hand, the mothers usually aren’t totally innocent either.

The editorial notes that all 14 sponsors of UCSA are Republicans. Not a single Democrat. And, with some justification, it takes the Democrats to task for their unfair, strictly partisan failure (refusal?) to join the GOP for UCSA. So what else is new? Especially in the virulently divided U.S. Congress these days and the Republican-American most of the time.

On the other hand, why should Democrats sponsor legislation that would pretty well be rendered superfluous by abortion, which most of them support just because it’s their party line? Well, they should join the Republicans because even with constitutionally enumerated over-the-counter abortion (should it ever come to pass), not all mothers or fathers would opt to terminate pregnancies. And, by the same token, the Republicans shouldn’t be so dogmatically against abortion simply because it’s their party line.

Nowhere does the 5 August editorial acknowledge that one real-world purpose of abortion is to preclude the need for parental support of prenatal fetuses or postnatal children. That’s just the way it is. Abortion should always be an option. It’s fine to fight for the right to privacy and a woman’s right to determine what’s done with her body—of which a fetus is a part as long as it’s inside her and connected by an umbilicus. Even if it’s viable. But if abortion is not chosen, the principles and practicalities also support the need for an Unborn Child Support Act . . .