Two Birds, One Stone

CDP

There are many contentious issues in American politics, but two stand out above all others in the degree to which they rend asunder national opinion: abortion and immigration, particularly illegal immigration from across our southern border. At first blush, it seems highly unlikely that any sort of accord could be reached on either issue, much less on both at once. But there may yet be a way to please both sides of the aisle, at least broadly speaking, if each side will examine with some modesty what it is they ultimately want, and what they don’t.

Concerning abortion, let us first stipulate that it is legal and will in all likelihood remain so for the foreseeable future. The issue has become largely one of funding: many on the Right demand that no public monies be used to cover a procedure they find morally repugnant, while many on the Left demand that what they view as a Constitutionally protected right be covered like any other medical procedure if not free of charge.The battle lines are drawn quite clearly.

The same is largely true for immigration (again, broadly speaking): the Left is desirous of a more or less open southern border with at most cursory restrictions, while the Right wants, if not The Wall, then at least a much more highly secured border with large scale deportations of illegals already in the country. How might these two issues, illegal immigration and abortion, each solve the problem of the other?

One of the sticking points preventing any consensus on immigration is that of the children born on American soil to those here illegally, colloquially known on the Right as “anchor babies” because, being born here, they are American citizens and serve as an anchor keeping their parents in the country. The numbers vary, but a nice round number since 2000 seems to be 300k per year. The Left views it as cruel to split up families, and since the children can’t be deported the Right views them as a cause of an ever-increasing drain on the country’s resources by their illegal parents. The solution is clear: require all babies of illegal immigrants, i.e. anyone not here on a current visa or otherwise legally in the country, be aborted, and Planned Parenthood be allowed to sell the resulting tissue for profit.

There is great advantage in this scheme. The monies received from three hundred thousand fetuses per year should be sufficient to cover what Planned Parenthood may quite possibly soon lose in federal funding, given that now receiving no public funds they have no reason to revert to the pittance they were paid by middlemen for the fruits of their labors, and the immigrant mothers will no longer be burdened with the inconvenience of a child, which in all likelihood they cannot afford. For the other part, the removal of three hundred thousand still technically illegal souls per year before they are on the citizenship roles seems a small price to pay for the knowledge that hundreds of thousands more won’t be immediately anchored here to drive down wages and drive up emergency room waiting times.

Let no man talk to me of other expedients: of instituting a path to citizenship in conjunction with streamlining the legal immigration process for skilled workers from countries we do not deem a security threat: of the idea that preference should be shown to those immigrants who show the greatest desire to assimilate, who wish to truly become Americans: of the moral obligation we have as a nation to protect the inherent dignity of person of either the unborn or of their illegal mothers: of the federal government removing itself entirely from the abortion question and allowing the states to rightly run their own affairs.

Some wise statesman may yet put forth a compromise which will be found as humane and effectual as the above. Let us hope that it also has the benefit of saving us all money.