that is issue for me. I do now, and always have, felt that abortion is a moral  issue best left for the woman and the man who impregnated her to decide what to do. After all, they're the ones who will stand before  God and have to defend their choice. What gripes me is the fact that not one single cent of American tax-payer money should go to pay for such a procedure. Anywhere. For any one. I feel the same about birth control. Why do we continue to enable people to make bad choices by handing over billions of our dollars for what boils down to ethical or religious choices? If the issue were money being spent on churches the Dems would be screaming to the rafters about separation of church and state. Why not for this issue too?
I often get into discussions with Agnostics or Atheists about ethics and religion. My questions to them are; which came first, Theology or Philosophy? Ethics or Laws? The chicken or the egg? The point is that whether you believe in God or not, our entire human existence has been centered around the fact we have a need to be at least minimally ethical in order to survive.
Is murder ethical? Why not? One of the commandments is "Thou shall not kill". For me that is a powerful commandment from God that I follow because I love God. But Murder is also against the law. And the definition of "Murder" changes with each culture and with each individual. So if I'm an agnostic or an atheist, why do I support secular laws that say you cannot kill another human being? If you support pre-natal abortions, why not post-natal abortions? After all, the post-natal abortions are when you know a person really is a worthless piece of breathing space, when a pre-natal abortion leaves into question whether or not you are depriving the world of the next Beethoven or Rembrandt. (At least that's the argument.)
But back to the money. The Dems and Republicans both have no business funding anything other than infrastructure for commerce  and the military for national protection from our enemies. Religious topics should not ever enter the financial picture. Personal beliefs on how one should lead a life should never influence the collecting or distribution of our tax dollars. And enabling people to make true, responsible, personal decisions can only come when we stop giving out other people's hard earned dollars to support the ethical (or unethical) actions of the citizens of the greatest country in the world. We are great precisely because our country was founded on the principle that we all have the right to pursue happiness from the same starting line. It doesn't guarantee that we will all prosper, it merely guarantees that we will all have the same chance to prosper. Our country was also founded on the right to deal with the consequences of a person's behavior, whatever that behavior is. We all scream about rights, now let's hear some discussion about responsibility. Using tax money to regulate or reward behavior is not only the antithesis of all our forefathers stood for, it is antithesis to the American spirit of individual liberty.