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Abortions Up in Tough Times?
Apparently that's the case, that people are finding kids too spendy right now. The National Network for Abortion Funds, which helps women in need pay for abortions, says that calls to their helpline have quadrupled in recent months. The AP/Google.com puts it this way:
For many Americans, the recession is affecting their most intimate
decisions about sex and family planning. Doctors and clinics are
reporting that many women are choosing abortions and men are having
vasectomies because they cannot afford a child.
First, this is a siren call for prevention, which legislators, and the courts, are hearing. That you have to resort to an abortion when you could be given access to available, affordable, birth control, is a lousy choice to have to make.
Second, how much do abortions cost anyway? Since many states restrict coverage [pdf] of the procedure by insurers, and since the Hyde amendment still prohibits federal funds (such as Medicaid) from covering most abortions, women often have to pay out-of-pocket. First trimester abortions cost in the neighborhood of $300-$500, second trimester ones can run upwards of $5000. And since the price for an abortion goes up pretty much each week once you get into the second trimester the issue of access takes on renewed significance. Waiting periods, parental notification, restrictions that send women across borders, these all take an emotional toll, and a financial one. I wonder if the recession could also be having an opposite effect, women wanting to have the procedure but not doing so because money is tight.
And finally, women and men absolutely need to think about what it will mean financially to have a kid, and the bottom line is that everyone should be free to make the choice that's best for them, but the conclusion that you should only have kids if you can afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars it's gonna cost to send them to good schools and buy them them their Wiis, is sorta crazytown. Kids are really expensive, (not to mention gigantic wastes of carbon); if people without flush means were to break down every cost they'd likely never have babies. Which would leave us with a lot of spoiled rich kids (and then entitled adults). People without a lot of cash have babies all the time, babies that grow into productive members of society. So we'll let them decide. If their decision is to have a little monster, then, yes, they get to toss the diaphragm we've decided to stick in with their unemployment check, no questions asked.
It's very sad
that this crisis is pushing people towards decisions that can have such a profound effect on the rest of their lives.
Given the trend for couples to leave having children later on in life, the decision to delay that for a few years 'whilst the economy gets better' might put couples beyond the age when they can.
Tough times - my heart goes out to people facing these tough decisions.
pro-life liberals advocate real social support
In a September 15, 1992 article appearing in the Village Voice entitled, "The Excommunication of Robert Casey," Nat Hentoff observed that the Democratic Party had abandoned free speech by not allowing Casey to speak at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. According to Casey, "The Democratic National Committee has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Abortion Rights Action League."
Casey said he would strongly support Lynn Yeakel who was then running against Republican Senator Arlen Specter. Yeakel favors abortion but, Casey said, "we agree on all the other issues." Despite being humiliated by members of his own party, Casey said he would not leave the Democratic Party. The anti-abortion Republicans, he insisted, "drop the children at birth and do nothing for them after that."
Unlike Republicans, pro-life liberals advocate real social support for pregnant women and mothers. In Pro-Life Feminism: Different Voices, editor Gail Grenier Sweet calls for:
Easy access to contraception, sufficient maternity and paternity leaves, job protection, job-sharing and flex-time, aid to women who wish to stay home to raise young children, tax breaks and subsidies for women caring for elderly relatives at home, community based shelters for pregnant single women to learn parenting skills and finish their education, upgraded pension plans to alleviate the poverty faced by many elderly women, humane care of the handicapped and elderly in nursing homes, hospices for the terminally ill, medical care for infants born with handicaps, shelters for battered women, childcare programs, etc.
Similarly, in the December 1993 issue of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a "consistent-ethic" periodical on the religious left, in an article entitled "How Will we Revere Life?", editor Rose Evans writes:
"This editor has long been aware of the relative success of the Dutch support system for pregnant women, compared to that of the U.S. The Dutch abortion rate is a minute fraction of the American. I believe the rate for young women in their teens is about one-twentieth of the U.S. rate. And this is done not so much by restrictive laws (although there are some restrictions) as by real social support for pregnant women and mothers.
"The situation for pregnant women in the U.S. who don't have assured income, family support and medical insurance is abysmal and getting worse. Choice is a joke. Women don't have money for decent food, decent housing, or decent medical care, nor adequate support after the child is born."
"Want to Stop Abortions?" asks the June 1995 newsletter for the Colorado Peace Mission in Boulder, CO. "Make them unnecessary. Provide everyone with: A choice of whether to have sex...and with whom; Comprehensive sex education; Non-coercive family planning; Safe, affordable birth control; Open, honest talk about sex; Loving parents..."
Until we pro-life Democrats have enough numbers within our party to change the Democratic Party platform to one advocating a Constitutional Amendment extending human rights to the unborn (as is the case with the Republican Party), I think we should be advocating the following: real social support for pregnant women and mothers, along with reasonable restrictions, such as a 24 hour waiting period, parental consent/notification, informed consent laws, a ban on partial-birth abortions, etc.
Doing this would dramatically bring down the abortion rate, which would please pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike within our Party, and it would be consistent with Bill Clinton's "safe, legal and rare" position. If "safe, legal and rare" becomes the new mantra of the Democratic Party with regards to abortion, I would consider it real progress from the '70s, when pro-choice bumper stickers read: "Abortion is every woman's choice."
pro-life liberals advocate real social support
In a September 15, 1992 article appearing in the Village Voice entitled, "The Excommunication of Robert Casey," Nat Hentoff observed that the Democratic Party had abandoned free speech by not allowing Casey to speak at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. According to Casey, "The Democratic National Committee has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Abortion Rights Action League."
Casey said he would strongly support Lynn Yeakel who was then running against Republican Senator Arlen Specter. Yeakel favors abortion but, Casey said, "we agree on all the other issues." Despite being humiliated by members of his own party, Casey said he would not leave the Democratic Party. The anti-abortion Republicans, he insisted, "drop the children at birth and do nothing for them after that."
Unlike Republicans, pro-life liberals advocate real social support for pregnant women and mothers. In Pro-Life Feminism: Different Voices, editor Gail Grenier Sweet calls for:
Easy access to contraception, sufficient maternity and paternity leaves, job protection, job-sharing and flex-time, aid to women who wish to stay home to raise young children, tax breaks and subsidies for women caring for elderly relatives at home, community based shelters for pregnant single women to learn parenting skills and finish their education, upgraded pension plans to alleviate the poverty faced by many elderly women, humane care of the handicapped and elderly in nursing homes, hospices for the terminally ill, medical care for infants born with handicaps, shelters for battered women, childcare programs, etc.
Similarly, in the December 1993 issue of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a "consistent-ethic" periodical on the religious left, in an article entitled "How Will we Revere Life?", editor Rose Evans writes:
"This editor has long been aware of the relative success of the Dutch support system for pregnant women, compared to that of the U.S. The Dutch abortion rate is a minute fraction of the American. I believe the rate for young women in their teens is about one-twentieth of the U.S. rate. And this is done not so much by restrictive laws (although there are some restrictions) as by real social support for pregnant women and mothers.
"The situation for pregnant women in the U.S. who don't have assured income, family support and medical insurance is abysmal and getting worse. Choice is a joke. Women don't have money for decent food, decent housing, or decent medical care, nor adequate support after the child is born."
"Want to Stop Abortions?" asks the June 1995 newsletter for the Colorado Peace Mission in Boulder, CO. "Make them unnecessary. Provide everyone with: A choice of whether to have sex...and with whom; Comprehensive sex education; Non-coercive family planning; Safe, affordable birth control; Open, honest talk about sex; Loving parents..."
Until we pro-life Democrats have enough numbers within our party to change the Democratic Party platform to one advocating a Constitutional Amendment extending human rights to the unborn (as is the case with the Republican Party), I think we should be advocating the following: real social support for pregnant women and mothers, along with reasonable restrictions, such as a 24 hour waiting period, parental consent/notification, informed consent laws, a ban on partial-birth abortions, etc.
Doing this would dramatically bring down the abortion rate, which would please pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike within our Party, and it would be consistent with Bill Clinton's "safe, legal and rare" position. If "safe, legal and rare" becomes the new mantra of the Democratic Party with regards to abortion, I would consider it real progress from the '70s, when pro-choice bumper stickers read: "Abortion is every woman's choice."
More abortions during tough times
vasumurti, the idea of "rights for the unborn" is absolutely ludicrous. Women should always have a choice, and it should not be any business of people like you. Keep Abortion Safe and LEGAL!
Pro-life is pro-stupid
tagged as:- solution
How anyone but a religious zealot can think a collection of cells is equivalent to a human being is beyond reasoning. Certainly in the first trimester, there should be no question, and the morning after pill should be available over the counter to all females over 16 (below that and I really do worry about medical complications, though of course, these are less than being pregnant - perhaps a clinic supervised solution?). You really need a functioning nervous system to be a human and that starts somewhere around the beginning of the third trimester - conveniently just about the earliest point of viability for prematurely born babies. So, to save the life of the mother, deliver babies in the third trimester, but allow abortions in the first two only. Only a pathetic soul-searcher would argue against the science here.
Keep Abortion Safe and
Keep Abortion Safe and LEGAL!
thanks. you are the most intelligent person i ever met...