Denying women access to basic, affordable reproductive services is a blight on the conscience of this nation.
We should be doing anything and everything to mitigate such extreme proliferation of our species, and to encourage women to have children only when they are ready for them and want them. Unwanted pregnancy is painful not just for the mother, but the children. The repercussions are far beyond a simple question of economics. The emotional toll garnered by being an unwanted child is a horrible fate.
I know first hand. My mother, 19, involved with a "very Catholic" man, became pregnant. She wanted an abortion. He was "religiously" opposed despite the fact I never once saw him enter the church of his family. He insisted on marriage and birth. Enter a short-lived marriage made in hell and years of toil, turmoil and therapy. Fortunately for me, we were relatively affluent and my grandparents on both sides were wonderful emotional and financial contributors. Add poverty to this molotov mix, and you can only imagine what my fate might have been.
Personal issues aside, offering easy access to affordable family planning is part of being a responsible regime, no matter which way you stack it. Check out the figures from the Guttmacher Institute for 2008. These numbers are for our nation alone.
The savings a government incurs with family planning versus expenditure just for the birth alone are astounding. Add to that, the lifelong care issue with impoverished women needing federal and state support to scrape by in the circumstances created by unwanted and unplanned pregnancies, and you have a very substantial savings over the long term.
In her article House Family Planning Cuts: Bad Medicine And Bad Economics, Emily Stewart cites the very important fact that Planned Parenthood, by offering so many women contraceptive and family planning resources, they actually prevent 406,000 or more pregnancies that would have wound up in abortion from even occurring in the first place.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that rallying against the right to family planning resources is not simply a moral issue, but an economic one. We need to take responsibility for allowing women access to the care, the tools and the education they need to decide for themselves what would serve them and their families the best in terms of timing children.
Yet another reason to support Planned Parenthood and all organizations invested in providing family planning resources to the world at large: We need to stop having so many babies. We need to give poor women the education and access to allow them to make the choice to have fewer children in the interest of sustaining the planet and those precious lives that do come along. If you cannot feed yourself, how on earth can you feed a new child?
No woman on earth wants to watch her child or children suffer. Why subject women in many nations to this fate by denying them the rights and education to avoid such trauma? But let's focus on our nation and what we can do here. Let's fund Planned Parenthood and help prevent abortion by installing a system of family planning and contraception that work!
Follow Danielle Cavallucci on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cavallucci
Sarah Buttenwieser: Choices: 2011 and Beyond
Bullshit. There is a world of difference between not providing public support to something and 'denying' it.
A 50 caliber semiautomatic sniper gun like the Special Forces use is every NRA members wet dream but - fortunately - they aren't common. The reason is that the weapon and it's scope are just shy of $10,000 fully tricked out.
http://www.snipercountrypx.com/showproduct.aspx?productid=1138
Were an advocacy group for the 2nd amendment - like the NRA - say that denying males access to an affordable Model 82 was a 'blight on the conscience of the nation and we needed to federally subsidize their purchase of this item so they could fully exercise their Second Amendment Rights, would we actually take THEM seriously?
Planned parenthood can do anything they want with money they collect for that purpose, but they ought not to get federal funds....
We don't HAVE to pay for any of that, anymore than we need to pay for some terminal gun-nut's fifty caliber rifle.
We have a $1.65 Trillion deficit this year and have a national debt that equals the gross domestic product.
People need to buy their own planned parenthood services.
And their own housing.
And their own food.
And yes, their own Barrett model 82.
Besides, genius, abortion does not receive any government funding.
They are so very holy on the one hand and a mean as hell on the other.
Since mother and child are likely to go on Govt. support somewhere along the line - it would be smart for the Govt. assist in planning so that this expense doesn't get off the ground.
I know that's a lot for the Republicans to comprehend but it's a fact !
Birth control should be free and readily available to anyone who is having sex.....age aside. If you are 13 and bonking, you need birth control even more desperately than a woman in her 30's. Lets be real here. Saying you can't have access to birth control will not stop MEN and women from having sex, it just means they'll produce unwanted and unaffordable children which society ends up paying for in a variety of different ways.
Folks need to remember, it takes two to tango and reproduce.
Considering 30% of all women have an abortion at some point in their lives, you have to assume that atleast that same amount have an unwanted pregnancy they carry to term. If they don't want to be pregnant, then their men partners most likely didn't want to be pregnant either.
Doesn't make any sense to me. I'd much rather buy a pkg of condoms for my neighbors sexually active teenager, than pay more in taxes to give that same kid prenatal care, the birth, the ongoing care as the child grows up, it's public education, and any other social programs it may need to partake of! Besides that, I've been a teenage girl who didn't want to be pregnant, it's horrible. So many women I've known over the years have been in that same position. In fact, I'd venture that many of us in our 40's, 50's....are a result of an unwanted teenage pregnancy carried to term!!
Ugghhhh....... Sex is such a weird subject. People are perverse, obsessed, vengeful, angry, embarrassed by the topic. For such an "open" society, we are incredibly repressed.
Well then donate to Planned Parenthood. Its not the Government's place to be subsidizing birth control.
To tell a poor person, or a young person that they shouldn't do it, just doesn't work all that well far too often. Then we have unwanted pregnancies and LOTS more abortions. If the Govt funds women care, and helps lower the cost of protection, which is quite pricey for alot of young people (even those in their 20's), there will be alot less accidents. That saves all of society money.
I guess we could tell all men to just start doing themselves and steer clear of women until they are married and making atelast 40 grand/yr.....but don't count on them abiding by it. Sometimes you have to face reality and do what is necessary.