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The Spectacle Blog
France’s épreuve socialiste continues under Paul Krugman Fan Club charter member François Hollande:
France on Monday unveiled a package of reforms designed to increase access to abortion, including 100 percent reimbursement of medical costs by the state social security system.
At present French women are only able to claim back between 70 and 80 percent of the costs, which average between 200 and 450 euros depending on whether the abortion is induced by medication taken at home or carried out by surgical procedure in a clinic.
Imagine the indignity of having to pay a full 20% for your abortion. Let the tortured wails about male patriarchy rise up through the rafters.
So if you want to make a lot of money in France, you get slapped with a 75% tax rate, but if you want to end your pregnancy, you get a full subsidy. Given all the trusty laws about taxes, subsidies, supply, demand, etc., Hollande’s official economic policy is now: more abortion, less wealth. Priorities, people. Somewhere Kathleen Sebelius is fizzing with envy.
We should propose a bargain: they can have Sandra Fluke if we can have their millionaires. Actually, with Governor Haley Barbour openly beckoning French magnates across the Atlantic, the second half of that trade may happen anyways. I have no idea how many French want to settle in Mississippi, but it’s certainly looking better than Paris right now.
Hollande campaigned on subsidized abortions. All the observers who claimed he wouldn’t implement his promises and couldn’t squeeze his agenda through France’s economically paralyzed status quo are biting their tongues right now. Instead, it’s headlong into the future. It’s a whole new world in France. Or rather, a brave new world.
View all comments (18) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Matt Purple
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/10/02/france-to-fully-subsidize-abor
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Pelleas| 10.2.12 @ 1:20PM
AND..THIS affects ANYONE HERE..( in The United States) exactly in what way...?
Other then just pandering to the scorn and hatreds by the usual suspects towards France and the French; and to Women's rights to control their own bodies, French domestic policies should remain just that.. the concerns of the French citizens-and no one else. (BTW, the French electorate actually voted for a change of government, in the first place)
JD| 10.2.12 @ 3:19PM
You know full well that the American Left always tells us that we need to "be more like Europe" (selectively). Your language suggests that you're already starting it.
What incredible audacity, to suggest that full taxpayer subsidy is a right. You're insane.
Trinacria| 10.2.12 @ 1:54PM
"AND..THIS affects ANYONE HERE..( in The United States) exactly in what way...?"
Well, sport, for one thing - it's instructive, as it provides clear and unambiguous evidence of the consequences of voting for a candidate who promises to increase taxes on the wealthy and expand government subsidies for women's "health" benefits like contraception and abortion (can't imagine how that might possibly be relevant in the US).
With respect to women's "righs to control their own body", I should like to think one might be able to distinguish between a right and a benefit (the former becomes the latter when someone else pays for it). I have a right to the pursuit of happiness. Flying airplanes make me happy. Does the US taxpayer therefore have an obligation to pay for my aircraft rental?
Finally, returning to the point of women's "right to control their own bodies". Does this extend to women who have the unfortunate circumstance of being infants? Surely you don't mean to imply that women should not be afforded the right to control their own body (namely, to ensure that it continues to convert oxyen to carbon dioxide) simply because they have not yet acquired the ability to articulate their wishes. Do you?
JD| 10.2.12 @ 3:21PM
Many of the Liar-in-Chiefs ads suggest the same thing here in America - that to oppose full taxpayer subsidization of something is to ban doing it at all.
rightasrain| 10.2.12 @ 2:22PM
The French really are on the fast track to cultural suicide. There aren't enough French babies now to support their social welfare system and soon there will be even fewer. The only people in France having children are the Muslims. And France is well on its way to Islamization but still the French stupidly persist in contributing to their own demise. Au revoir champagne, nouvelle cuisine, French cinema. We'll miss you.
Trinacria| 10.2.12 @ 4:02PM
Agree entirely. On the other hand, under the "glass half full" category, the prospect of fewer French is some consolation...
JP| 10.2.12 @ 2:32PM
This makes no sense. France already has falling birthrates; in a few decades its population will begin to decline. The only demographic that shows any signs of life is France's Islamic minority, which makes up about 15% of the population.
France is already in a recession, and it cannot no longer afford its generous cradle to grave entitlements. It's good to see its leaders finally jump into the abyss. "Damn the Torpedoes!".
The Muslims used to chant a number "2035". That is the year, French Muslim imans believe that Sharia Law will take hold in Charlemagne's old kingdom. That is the year they predict that the native French will be so old and so few that Muslims will be the reigning demographic.
And Islam forbids abortion.
JD| 10.2.12 @ 3:26PM
I saw a disgusting Obama ad last night. Maybe it's been on for a while, I don't know - I try to avoid them.
It featured a man (he looked Mexican, which was undoubtedly deliberate) complaining that he worked for a wind power company, and that Romney voted to end subsidies for that company, which would kill his job. He said Romney's out of touch with the little guy, and loves Big Oil instead.
Where do we even begin? This man feel entitled to a paycheck comprises solely of other people's tax dollars, given in exchange for producing no value (else he wouldn't need subsidy). He feels so strongly entitled that he feels that opposition to the subsidy is a despicable attack on him. That it's some sort of crime for us to NOT hand him money for nothing.
More than that, he thinks he's the only "little guy" in America. What about the little guys paying for his subsidy? What about all the little guys who work for the oil companies he condemns? Far more little guys are hurt by his subsidy than helped by it.
Trinacria| 10.2.12 @ 4:06PM
Funny how the thought never occurred to him that perhaps he might profitably consider the merits of submitting an application to work for a "Big Oil Company". Personally, I rather prefer the long term security of companies that actually earn their profits by producing products that people want or need. But that's just me...
JD| 10.2.12 @ 6:30PM
We're fast approaching the point where the subsidized job is more secure than the unsubsidized job, regardless of the merits of the work.
Trinacria| 10.2.12 @ 7:55PM
Agreed; in fact, I suspect we're already there. If you combine subsidized jobs with subsidized unemployment, we're certainly at a point were the number of people who benefit from either is sufficient to ensure that their sugar daddies remain in office. And that, my friend, is the beginning of the end (Fourth Century Rome: The Sequel).
C. Vernon Crisler | 10.2.12 @ 3:36PM
So France had now become offically Nazi.
Pelleas| 10.3.12 @ 12:48AM
"So France had now become offically Nazi."
ACTUALLY--IN FACT- Abortion was highly ILLEGAL in Germany, during The Third Reich--( among members of the so-called" Master Race")and it became a Capital Offense for a Woman,or her Doctor if shown that they were involved in the procedure
Abortion ( of personal choice) is not the same as the forced sterilizations and mass murders of Women that the Nazis considered "inferior"
Your cavalier slinging of the word "Nazi" is disgraceful--and an affront to the millions of people who suffered at the hands of the REAL Nazis
JP| 10.3.12 @ 8:13AM
Actually, the Nazis practiced euthanasia. Enlightened us, please show what the difference between the 2 are. And your cavalier disregard to the unimaginable pain babies suffer (tens of millions since 1972) is an affron to morality.
Pelleas| 10.3.12 @ 8:56AM
Euthanasia--as practiced in The Third Reich- was the murder of Adults and (ALL REAFY BORN AND FUNCTIONING) Children (NOT FETUSES) who were "deemed" "Not Worthy of Life", as the were "racially or mentally" inferior to the "Master Race"
It was used-SPECIFICALLY- against the mentally handicapped, in the Mental Institutions in Germany, up until 1940-41...and then used ij the lands the Nazis occupied--and its "lessons" formed the beginings of the methodology used in
The Final Solution of all of those people the Germans sort to murder in the Death Camps
Euthanasia, in its more "dictionary"-based meaning refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering.
In its more objective usage, it is generally used to refer to either doctor-assisted, or other means of suicide when life has reached an unbearable level due to illness and pain
There is also "involuntary" euthanasia--but again, the term is generally used to refer to putting to death an individual(s) who are functioning entities--not , as in the case of abortion- fetuses still in the womb
Again, your assumptions and your skewing of history to serve your own repressive viewpoints is far worse and despicable , then amy "affront" to your (lack thereof) of so-called"morality"
JP| 10.3.12 @ 11:19AM
The unborn are still living creatures. One of the features of the Third Reich is that animals had more rights than the living. The Third Reich also practiced Eugenics (a practice it imported from the US). And in the US, eugenics was practiced to limit the growth of the "negro" race. Abortion.
And you are under some illusion that abortion was illegal in Nazis Germany. That is patently false. Abortions in limited form were allowed in Wiemar Germany in 1926. German birthrates were falling in those years. So of course, official policy discouraged abortions. And Nazis encouraged Aryan Germans to produce many children. But, the Nazis had no problem with lower class, non-aryan (esp urban Jews) getting abortions. Couple this with its eugenics and euthanasia programs, and you can see creepy similarities between our liberals today and Nazis.
Pelleas| 10.3.12 @ 1:00PM
FOR YOU INFORMATION-- JEW were STRIPPED of their German citizenship , by 1935...so the powers that were in The Third Reich din't much care, what they did to lower their birthrate--BUT , the actual ability of Jewish Women to obtain wanted/needed abortions became slenderer and lessor, as the Germans clamped down on Medical care for them.
. During the Weimar Republic, there was a reduction in the maximum penalty for abortion, and in 1927 it led to the legalization - by court decision - of abortion in cases of grave danger to the life of the mother.
In Nazi Germany, the penalties for abortion were increased again. From 1943, the provision of abortion to "Aryan" women was threatened with the death penalty.
Pelleas| 10.3.12 @ 3:40PM
The issue of eugenics is just a red herring in the matter of Abortion by choice. In the western democracies, the dubious "science" of eugenics implementation is , for the over-riding most part, limited to issues of forced sterilizations, NOT involuntary abortions.
The same held true in the pre-war years of The Third Reich. Th eliterature and first -hand accounts of those times does not report accounts of STATE -forced abortions-- while involuntary sterilizations were in play from 1934, onwards AMONG GERMAN("aryan" ) citizens of the Reich-mainly against the Roma people, and those the German authorities deemed "feeble-minded"
After the deportations to the Concentration Camps and Extermination Centers, in 1941/42 onwards-- mass sterilizations of Jews/Russians/Poles/ and especially the Roma people was occurring on a huge scale-BUT, (in general) the literature of the period does NOT mention wide-scale, or even any official program of enforced abortions--as for the most part, pregnant women rounded up for transport to the camps were murdered as soon as their pregnancies were discovered, If you want to refer to that as an "abortion", that is a travesty of the definition of that term.
THEREFORE--The issue of France subsidizing abortions of CHOICE has ABSOLUTLEY NO CONNECTION with the Nazis--and the claim that it does is revolting