We are too hung up on abortion to allow for a straight pro-choice policy that transfers from one presidential administration to the next. So, every time the presidency changes hands from one political party to another, the President changes policy on international funding for abortion. It's one of the few direct ways that the President can directly affect abortion policy, and if he can only do so in the international arena, so be it.

As Reuters reported this week,

President Barack Obama on Friday lifted restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, reversing a policy of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush.

The Democratic president's decision was a victory for advocates of abortion rights on an issue that in recent years has become a tit-for-tat policy change each time the White House shifts from one party to the other.

When the ban was in place, no U.S. government funding for family planning services could be given to clinics or groups that offered abortion services or counseling in other countries, even if the funds for those activities came from non-U.S. government sources.

This nonsense began under President Reagan, when he restricted international funding for abortion. It changed when Bill Clinton became President, and it changed over again when George W. Bush wandered into the White House. What makes these policy changes even more significant is that a new President takes the oath of office on January 20, only two days before the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court in 1973 ruled that the Constitution protects the right to abortion.

If you don't like abortion, don't have one. That's what I always say. That's also what the bumper stickers say. But the abortion issue goes beyond mere choice. We can say for sure that the controversial Roe v. Wade decision is safe for the time being. The Supreme Court declined to overrule it in 1992, when Republican justices on the Court got tired of having conservative lawyers and government officials begging the Court every few years to overturn a relatively recent precedent. The more pressing issue, then, is the rights of poor people to have an abortion.

The right to abortion does not mean the government has to pay for one. In the 1970's, after the Supreme Court issued Roe v. Wade, right-wing politicians decided to chip away at abortion rights by retricting government funding for them. As the fault line in American politics separates rich and poor, the policy against government-funded abortions had the effect of overruling Roe v. Wade for indigent people who cannot otherwise afford them.

The Supreme Court upheld the government's right to take abortion away from poor people, in a decision that should be as notorious as Roe v. Wade is famous. The name of that decision is Harris v, McRae. Apart from deciding that this funding restriction was not a true restriction on the right to abortion, the reason the Supreme Court upheld the policy, despite the constitutional right to abortion, is that the Supreme Court has never ruled that it is illegal for the government to discriminate against poor people. Although the Court has been progressive on the issue of equal rights for blacks, women and other minorities, it has never extended that policy to the indigent, who continue to get the crap kicked out of them on a regular basis without any constitutional guarantees in their favor.

Few Supreme Court justices actually represented poor people when they were lawyers. One justice who did was Thurgood Marshall, who write in dissent from the Harris v. McRae decision that "If abortion is medically necessary and a funded abortion is unavailable, [poor citizens] must resort to back-alley butchers, attempt to induce an abortion themselves by crude and dangerous methods, or suffer the serious medical consequences of attempting to carry the fetus to term. Because legal abortion is not a realistic option for such women, the predictable result of the Hyde Amendment will be a significant increase in the number of poor women who will die or suffer significant health damage because of an inability to procure necessary medical services."

In many ways, the fight over abortion rights is a rich man's game. For the poor folk, the right was taken away a long time ago. If President Obama really wants to do something dramatic, he'd tell Congress to fund abortions for anyone who wants one. It's clear that we as a country are moving further and further away from racial discrimination. But discrimination against the poor remains with us to this day.