Month: July 2007

According to the LA Times, Democrats are adopting language and policy goals that reflect “conservative” views of abortion. Which is true, to a point — but more accurately, they’re promoting policies that make it easier for women to make the right choice for themselves. In other words, they’re promoting pro-choice policies:

The Reducing the Need for Abortions Initiative provides millions in new funds to:

• Counsel more young women in crisis to consider adoption, not abortion.

• Launch an ad campaign to inform needy women that they can receive healthcare and other resources if they are “preparing for birth.”

• Expand parenting education and medical services for pregnant women, in some cases by sending nurses to their homes.

• Offer day care at federal job-training centers to help new mothers become self-sufficient.

The initiative, part of a broader appropriations bill, passed the House with solid bipartisan support. A separate measure, still pending, calls for funding maternity and day-care centers on college campuses so pregnant students won’t feel they must have an abortion to stay in school.

Obviously some of these proposals are problematic — most notably the first one. Counselling should help women make the best choice for their lives, not coerce or guilt them into making a choice that some Congresspeople think is best. It also sounds like a sneaky way of saying that they’ll throw more money at so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” religious organizations that claim to help pregnant women but actually just throw Bible verses at them and don’t do much of anything after the baby is born. I also have an issue with the proposal to “Launch an ad campaign to inform needy women that they can receive healthcare and other resources if they are ‘preparing for birth.'” It’s pretty fucked that low-income women are told they can receive health care and other resources only if they’re using their body as an incubator for something that Congress has deemed more important. Everyone in this country should be able to receive health care and other resources simply because we’re human beings and we are valuable in our own right — not because we’re carrying an ever-important fetus. Of course, under the Bush administration, health care for pregnant women isn’t actually given to pregnant women — it’s technically given to the fetus.

But other than those two things, the rest of the bill sounds pretty good. I support anything that gives women more resources and more non-coercive options. I do think it’s interesting that the part of the bill that helps born people — maternity daycare centers on college campuses — is still pending. I wonder whose holding that up?

But conservatives also accuse Democrats of using abortion rhetoric to sell the right on traditional liberal priorities, such as healthcare funding. Democrats have rejected other ideas that conservatives consider highly effective in reducing abortions, such as requiring women to view ultrasound images of the womb.

“In terms of bridging the ideological gulf, you need to ask: Is this a two-way street?” said David K. DeWolf, a law professor at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., who has advised antiabortion groups.

Rep. Mike Pence, a Republican from Indiana, sees hypocrisy in the fact that much of the new family planning funding will go to Planned Parenthood. The money can’t be used to terminate pregnancies — it’s for birth control and gynecology services. But Pence says it’s ludicrous to send tax dollars to the nation’s largest abortion provider in the name of reducing abortions.

“That’s not a common ground I can accept,” Pence said.

Right. Because if you want to prevent abortions, it’s a terrible idea to allow people to access birth control and gynecology services. Better to just tell them not to have sex.

And how offensive that liberals would use talk about abortion in the context of health care, and point out that some women choose abortion because they know they can’t afford the costs of pregnancy, child birth, and child-rearing. That’s just crazy-talk, and clearly a cover for their radical lesbian feminist Communist agenda.

I’m glad Democrats have finally caught on to what pro-choice leaders have been saying for a long, long time: That women need the widest range of choices possible. We need birth control access, health care, well-baby care, pre-natal care, child care, and supportive workplace policies. Now if only “pro-life” Republicans would get on board and take steps to actually decrease the abortion rate without purposely harming women. I won’t hold my breath.