Against Abortion Coverage

THE UNIVERSITY'S RECENT DECISION to cover non-therapeutic abortions under the student health care plan unwisely ignores the feelings of those who find abortion morally reprehensible or who still have doubts about the issue. Harvard's decision is especially disturbing, for it places the University in the position of condoning, and at least implicitly, encouraging abortion.

Some may say that abortion is like any other operation and therefore should be included in the University insurance program. This is a fallacious argument, for abortion clearly is not just another routine operation. Abortion involves human life--many believe it entails the denial of that life--and to group it with minor surgery obscures the serious nature of the operation. Profound and disturbing questions remain about abortion, and for that reason alone the University should have refrained from institutionalizing abortion coverage.

Abortion is presently legal in the United States, runs another argument, and because of that status, cannot legitimately be excluded from the insurance program. But to base decisions on narrow legality is a dangerous course. Chemical warfare research is also legal, but there are moral implications involved which would, hopefully, lead the University to resist participation in such projects. Harvard has a responsibility to confront the moral issues.

Those supporting the insurance program point to the inclusion of maternity benefits and to the refund for students objecting to abortion as provisions that accomodate opposition. First, for many, there can be no equation between the premature destruction of human life and the arrival of a new person into the world. Secondly, while the refund option does in a sense exempt a student from actively supporting abortion, it does not change the fact the the University's support of abortion coverage creates the problem in the first place.

To state, as the majority opinion does, that those opposed to blanket abortion coverage should rethink their position and support the program is to ask those people, with a fair amount of insensitivity, to abdicate what they perceive as their moral responsibility and to bow to the wishes of the majority. The right of the minority to withhold both financial and moral support of abortion coverage should be respected, and safeguarded.