What Is Fungibility?

The issue of fungibility came up during tonight’s CNN debate between Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich. Fungibility, which is not among the standard dictionary included on the Firefox browser, is the property of some items to be exchanged with other of the same type through substitution. The issue of abortion funding by governments was presented as one of the problems introduced by the frangibility of money – money funded to hospitals by governments be them state or federal that specifically forbids use for abortion purposes can still be used for that purpose. Simply replace other money originally intended for some other purpose with the government money and then use the non-government money to pay for abortion services.