Check out this excellent interview with Meg Whitman, one of three Republicans vying to run for Governor in 2010. All three GOP candidates are pro-choice but Whitman has distinguished herself by supporting the public funding of abortion.

Whitman, who supported Mitt Romney during the last Presidential primary, assures Jon Fleishman, writing for FlashReport, that she respects people with pro-life views. She respects the pro-life position, but then takes the idea that "reasonable, smart people can agree to disagree" to an incoherent level by requiring that they fund abortions, since, as she sees it, many women choose that option for themselves. That sounds like a one way direction of respect, if you ask me.

Whitman justifies this by saying that since abortion is a legal right guaranteed to women, then every woman must be provided access as well as funding. In fact, I think she equates funding with access.

I missed the announcement, but it seems like at some point as a nation we started assuming that every right available to us must also be funded. Does the government fund our churches to ensure that everybody finds a religion suitable to them? Freedom to worship is a guaranteed right after all. What if I can't drive myself to church? I wonder if the the feds would fund my tithing? Some churches require tithing for membership and it's only fair to ensure my access to that particular choice.

There is a difference between having the right to procure something and having that "something" funded. Just because I am guaranteed the right to my free speech, to worship freely, to assemble or associate with whom I wish, does not mean that such things must be provided and financed for me by my neighbors.

How did we get to this point where we confused a right with mandating the public funding of rights? It's kind of interesting to me that in the situation of an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy, the government will fund what are arguably the two worst options for the child: abortion and welfare for a single mother. Government agencies are the last place anybody wants to experience the adoption process. Another example of one-way respect, if you ask me. The woman gets the choice, but the child and all of society are forced to accept it, and now Meg Whitman thinks we should pay for her choice as well.

Whitman does make it clear that she does not support late term abortions, though she confesses that she is not clear on what defines "late-term." I am curious how pro-choice people are able to make such fine distinctions. What happens between week 23 and 24 that suddenly makes the unborn child a "valid" life worth protecting? The very concept of "trimester" was never used in our language until Roe vs. Wade...until we started trying to justify to ourselves at what point an unborn child is less than human (answer: never. It is always human).

Perhaps most disheartening to me is that someone with Whitman's impressive profile as the former CEO of Ebay, and an Ivy League business education, can display such an incoherent philosophy of the very fundamentals of life and liberty. Speaking of choice: the field for Governor doesn't offer much of one.