Gail Collins, "The Attack of the Killer Surplus": Can Someone (Me) Be Pro-Choice and Pro-Democracy?

Don't get me wrong: I am pro-choice. Abortion? Read chapter 4, "Where Have All the Criminals Gone," of Levitt and Dubner's 2005 book "Freakonomics," which explains how legalized abortion throughout the US, resulting from the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, led to a dramatic drop in crime in the 1990s. As noted at the end of chapter 4:

"What the link between abortion and crime does say is this: when the government gives a woman the opportunity to make her own decisions about abortion, she generally does a good job of figuring out if she is in a position to raise the baby well. If she can't, she often chooses the abortion."

I believe that children brought into this world are entitled to be wanted and loved.

But whereas I am pro-choice, I am the first to acknowledge my fallibility, and I am also pro-democracy.

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Attack of the Killer Surplus" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/opinion/collins-the-attack-of-the-killer-surplus.html?_r=0), Gail Collins laments North Dakota's budget surplus from an oil boom, which has facilitated a focus on proposed legislation that would severely limit abortions. Collins concludes:

"A shortage of money tends to keep things focused. When a legislature starts going off the rails, cool heads can pull the conversation back into line by reminding everybody that they’re supposed to be focusing on 'jobs, jobs, jobs.' It gets a little tiresome after a while, but it does provide a much-needed sense of direction. While our Congress is certainly unsatisfactory in many ways, it’s shown a lack of enthusiasm for having major fights over social issues in recent years, possibly because everybody wants to look jobs-jobs-jobs obsessive.

North Dakota led astray by lucre? Finally, we may have found a good side to recessions."

Okay, when unemployment and grinding budget deficits are not the first orders of business of a state legislature, local lawmakers have more time to consider abortion. Sure, I am pro-choice, but who am I to lecture my friends from Fargo on reproductive rights?

Moreover, if a woman from North Dakota decides that she doesn't want to give birth to a child, she can probably obtain bus fare to Illinois, one of the states with the highest per-capita deficits, to have an abortion.

Rue North Dakota's budget surplus at a time when US debt is approaching $16.8 trillion, which will never be returned, and allow the federal government to make all choices for residents of North Dakota, moral and fiscal? No way, Jose.