To the editor:

A government-run health insurance option is pro-life. Tens of thousands of Americans die each year because they had no health coverage. Children need healthy parents. Parents need jobs. Jobs need healthy workers. An ethical society cares for its sick and injured, the unborn and the born. Eliminating profit-driven costs and administrative overhead of for-profit health insurance would save enough money to cover all Americans and cost less than we are currently spending. The economic and societal costs of unhealthy Americans are already too high. The U.S. is the only industrialized country which does not put people before health insurance company profits.

Anti-abortion advocates and government-run not-for-profit health insurance are both pro-life. These need to work together. Americans need to take personal responsibility and refuse the private health insurance monopoly, which profits from denying our health care. We also need to honor concerns that our taxes not be used for abortion in government-run health insurance. One way would be like the check-off for the presidential election campaign on our federal income tax. On the tax return, the taxpayer could choose — or NOT choose — to donate an amount ($1?) to fund legal abortion in a national/public health insurance option. Money left over from this fund could be moved to adoption services through agencies like Catholic Charities or others.

If an expectant mother knows she lives in a nation which values life above profit, I believe she is less likely to choose abortion.