HuffPo Writer Makes Dumbest Pro-Abortion Argument of All Time

The debate over abortion can be messy and complicated. But sometimes, it’s not — like when bad-faith actors make transparently absurd arguments.

The HuffPost offers us the latest example of shallow, simplistic thinking with its debut of perhaps the dumbest pro-abortion argument I’ve ever seen.

“GOP No Longer Cares About The Deficit If It Means Women Having More Babies,” blares the headline of a July 15 HuffPost article.

“Many Republicans hailed the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision as a victory for one of their highest-profile priorities: ending abortion. But it comes with a string attached — more federal spending, which Republicans usually hate,” politics reporter Jonathan Nicholson writes.

Nicholson goes on to explain that because a taxpayer-funded government healthcare program, Medicaid, covers around 40% of births in the United States, more births will mean more tax dollars spent. He estimates this additional expenditure at around $13 billion over 10 years.

“For a party that has been so quick to raise the alarm on federal spending over programs like expanding the child tax credit, Republicans are noticeably quiet about the financial cost that outlawing abortion will have,” Nicholson concludes.

This entire argument is absurd beyond belief.

For one thing, the very premise is dubious. Yes, more children being born will mean more Medicaid expenditure. But you can’t look at that fact alone and therefore conclude it will increase the national debt on net. You would also have to weigh all the additional taxes the people who get to be born will pay over their lifetime before reaching any such conclusion — so Nicholson’s $13 billion figure is sloppy at best and deeply dishonest at worst.

It’s not actually clear one way or the other whether allowing more births would increase the national debt. But much more importantly, this doesn’t matter!

I’m a big deficit hawk (yes, including when Trump was president) and advocate fiscal responsibility. Yet $13 billion is ultimately a rounding error when it comes to our $30.5 trillion (and counting) national debt. Preventing a $13 billion increase wouldn’t make much difference or do anything meaningful to address the ingrained problems with our welfare state that are driving us off a fiscal cliff.

Most importantly, it has never been the position of fiscal conservatives that 0s and 1s on the federal books are more important than human life. We want to balance the budget by cutting waste, scaling back entitlements, and reining in the federal bureaucracy. (Yes, including the Pentagon’s budget!) But we don’t and have never argued that saving taxpayers a few billion is more important than human life itself or worth killing unborn babies to achieve.

In fact, one of the biggest criticisms levied at pro-lifers is that they’re “only pro-birth, not pro-life” because they don’t support providing government services for babies once they’re born. Now, the HuffPost is blasting pro-lifers as hypocrites for … being OK with providing government services for babies once they’re born.

See the double standard yet?

Liberal journalists might think that this line of argument somehow owns the pro-life movement. But all it really does is expose how out-of-touch the establishment media are with both basic economics and what pro-lifers actually believe.

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a co-founder of Based-Politics.com, a co-host of the BasedPolitics podcast, and a Washington Examiner contributor.