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It works! (photo: brains the head/flickr)
While the idea that giving women access to birth control is a great way to reduce abortion rates would seem self-evident, there is now a newly published study proving that to be the case. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, over the course of several years, provided women in the area access to birth control at no cost. The result was a large drop in both abortions and teen pregnancy rates. From the Obstetrics & Gynecology:
RESULTS: We observed a significant reduction in the percentage of abortions that were repeat abortions in the St. Louis region compared with Kansas City and nonmetropolitan Missouri (P<.001). Abortion rates in the CHOICE cohort were less than half the regional and national rates (P<.001). The rate of teenage birth within the CHOICE cohort was 6.3 per 1,000, compared with the U.S. rate of 34.3 per 1,000.
CONCLUSION: We noted a clinically and statistically significant reduction in abortion rates, repeat abortions, and teenage birth rates. Unintended pregnancies may be reduced by providing no-cost contraception and promoting the most effective contraceptive methods.
This is a completely unsurprising finding. A way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and a very successful way to reduce unwanted pregnancies is to help women get birth control.
Despite this fact, many of the “anti-abortion” organizations in the United States have recently put a lot of effort into restricting attempts to expand access to birth control. A move that if successful would almost guarantee an increase in the number of abortions.
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That’s because the real thrust here is not stopping abortions. The actual goal is to keep women subject to men’s control by denying them the ability to prevent or end a pregnancy. Sex is for procreation only–if you don’t want a child, you must remain celibate–and if you want to get really biblical, you shouldn’t marry either, since a woman should not deny her husband his “marital rights”.
If you want to reduce abortion, also, stimulate the economy. There’s a reason why the demand for abortion services went down under Clinton and up under Bush the Lesser.
Women can not control their own careers if they can not control their own fertility. Men control theirs bu abandoning their wive/girlfriends once they are pregnant through just leaving or getting a divorce. If the penalties for child support were harsher and actively enforced, the men would be pushing for contraception as well.
Part of the difficulty is that many of the same people who believe that abortion is wrong also believe that contraception is wrong–and also that artificial insemination and [i]in vitro[/i] fertilization are wrong.
For example, the Catholic Church takes the position that any attempt to interfere with God’s plan for your reproduction (or childlessness) is wrong.
And all the neo theos profess to believe that abortion at any stage of the pregnancy is murdering an innocent human being.
And then, we have those who believe like the Duggars, that God wants them to have as many babies as humanly possible to raise as God-fearing rightists and hopefully to wrest political control of the United States from us pro-choice folks.
For a believer, arguing with what your pastor has told you God really wants of you is very difficult.
The Bible doesn’t state anywhere that we must put aside our common sense. Most women do not have bodies designed to give birth to 19 children like the
Duggars. Even in the 21st century women still die in childbirth and these wacko men seem to feel that it’s very easy – no problem.
It’s never been about Abortion that’s the really disingenuous part of this whole mess. It’s always been about controlling women and limiting their choices. When women don’t have control over their own bodies especially as regards birth control they are then relegated to being second class citizens. If men had babies Abortion would be a sacred right.
Here are reasons such a sensible policy may be resisted:
1. Reducing abortions to any number above zero is unacceptable to militant social conservatives. I suspect they will actually resist reducing abortion rates via access to free contraceptives in order to maintain support for a ban on abortions.
2. Social conservatives are already deeply resentful of any poor person getting anything for free.
3. They also see contraception as an enabler of non-marital sex, and it is their duty to regulate others’ sex lives.
Thus, for those reasons they will strongly resist such a “socialist policy of subsidizing sexual promiscuity.”
Everyone who is against birth control (of all forms)
should be held responsible to pay for ALL child-related expenses
incurred by those they prevent from planning their pregnancies.
Until that happens, they need to mind their own business.