One of the standard tropes of the modern conservative movement is the undesirability of abortion and bemoaning the teen pregnancy rate, it’s right there in their most recent platform.
One would think then Colorado would be a case study cited widely and proudly by conservative activists. In the last six years it has decreased teen pregnancy by 42%, decreased teen abortion by 35%, and decreased the abortion rate for the general population by a staggering 48%. Additionally, the state’s health department estimated that for every dollar spent on this new program it saved over 5 and a half dollars in future Medicaid spending. A program that reduces abortions nearly in half, cuts the teen pregnancy rate nearly in half, and reduces medicaid spending should get significant support from social and fiscal conservatives alike? Did I mention it was entirely funded by a wealthy donor and not the government? Why aren’t they shouting this program from the rooftops?
Because the program provided free contraception, including long term contraception like IUDs. While the folks running the program made statements like these:
The changes were particularly pronounced in the poorest areas of the state, places like Walsenburg, a small city in Southern Colorado where jobs are scarce and unplanned births come often to the young.
“If we want to reduce poverty, one of the simplest, fastest and cheapest things we could do would be to make sure that as few people as possible become parents before they actually want to,” said Isabel Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. She argues in her 2014 book, “Generation Unbound: Drifting Into Sex and Parenthood Without Marriage,” that single parenthood is a principal driver of inequality and long-acting birth control a powerful tool to prevent it.
Yet, according to the Washington Post, the leading pro-life and pro-family values activists are having none of it.
arrie Gordon Earll, senior director of public policy for the conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family, told the Denver Post she was skeptical of the state’s claim that increased access to contraception caused the decline in birthrates. “What we have seen over many years is that access to contraception does not equal fewer unintended pregnancies and fewer abortions,” Earll said. “Availability of contraception leads to increased sexual activity, which leads to unintended pregnancies and abortions.”
Bob Enyart, a spokesman for Colorado Right to Life, told the BBC offering contraception to teens sends the message that you can “have all the sex you want.”
“When you teach children that they’re animals — that they have evolved from pigs and dogs and apes — then they act like animals,” Enyart said.
Both use anecdotes and assumptions and simply deny that the data is real when they are confronted with it. Neither of them even bothers to produce counter factual data that demonstrates their facts are correct. It is policy driven by blind faith and ideology, rather than policy driven by the data. This is the major reason why, though I strongly personally oppose abortion, I could never ally with folks like this.
Expanding contraception is quite simply the easiest, safest,and most cost effective way to reduce abortion. Outside of the Roman Catholic church, whose faithful have simply rejected the teaching, no other major organized religion including most evangelical denominations oppose expanding access to contraception. If you truly wanted to make abortion a part of history or a choice utilized by the fewest women possible, you would back universal contraception and reproductive healthcare fully funded by taxpayer dollars. As this study decisively shows, this actually saves the state five dollars on the dollar in future projected healthcare spending. It not only defies the data, it defies common sense. When mama grizzly can’t stop her baby from making babies, it’s high time to close the door on abstinence only and embrace common sense.
Christopher says
They believe that sex is only for married adults and for procreation, and to be honest my idealistic side at least fully agrees with the first part.
jconway says
I am sure Bristol Palin sincerely believed she would only have kids in a marriage. As have too many young women without her means and personal safety net. Apparently most millennials polled paradoxically hold very liberal and tolerant attitudes about the sexual activity of others while holding themselves to a somewhat more traditional standard of fewer partners and reserving intimacy for relationships.
Supposedly liberals are supposed to be the wide eyed idealists while conservatives are the cold hearted realists, but here it seems reversed. Liberals know sexuality is impossible to regulate, but sincerely want to reduce abortions and teen pregnancy rates and know contraception is the only way that happens. What should be viewed as a pro-life victory from the standpoint of preventing abortion and as a fiscally conservative policy from the standpoint of public expenditure is instead viewed as creeping hostility to Christian mores. And I find that disconnect troubling and bizarre.
Christopher says
Some of us actually managed:)
fenway49 says
it’s about abortions when it’s about them wanting to enshrine their stilted, unrealistic view of sexuality into public policy.
Christopher says
…but I’ve never thought they were pretending.
jconway says
The American Prospect had an article detailing how many evangelicals have started to embrace Humane Vitae over the past few decades thanks to their close collaboration with conservative Catholic against abortion and gay rights. What was once a catholic position across the Protestant spectrum has now become a Catholic position for some Protestant denominations.
fenway49 says
whenever they attempt to obscure their true goal – regulation of sexuality – by pretending they care a lot about other things, when in fact they’re not happy to see the ostensible goal met unless the REAL goal also is met.
Abortion restrictions have always been a means to another end, and the pathetic quotes from the Colorado Right to Life guy make that clear.
jconway says
The animal quote was quite bizarre, after all, he would rather we breed like rabbits in nature than people with access to modern medicine. It shows how far removed many of them are from an empirically sound solution to the ethical problem of abortion. It would seem to me preventing the unwanted pregnancy in the first place should be at the top of that list, but what do I know?
Christopher says
…that there is another alternative to breeding like rabbits that would also prevent unwanted pregnancy – abstinence. In fact I’m pretty sure they DO make that argument.
jconway says
Not saying you are arguing it does, but what galled me was the casual way in which both advocates simply said contraception increases unhealthy sexual activity. That is akin to climate denial and vaccine denial. There should at least be a baseline where we can agree. Contraception once was such a baseline. It was when George HW Bush endorsed it on the floor of the House, or Reagan signed laws funding it in California. Now it is not. And when their poster child got pregnant for a second time, it’s time they start rethinking their ideology and embrace some common sense.
Peter Porcupine says
…to allow contraception to be covered as other medications rather than making it full cost for women who want it. Never mind that it was banned by the Democrats for unmarried women until 1972.
SomervilleTom says
I invite you to show evidence that “the Republicans” were any more supportive of access to contraception than “the Democrats”. BOTH Republican AND Democratic MEN were opposed to contraception for unmarried women until 1972. Sexism and sexist laws was very bipartisan until relatively recently. I grant you that the GOP has had an iron grip on sexism for the last few decades.
It is certainly true that Democrats have dominated the legislature for most of the post-WWII era. The last time the GOP held the House (in MA) was in the 1953-1954 session. The last time the GOP held the Senate was in 1957-1958. The Pill didn’t exist until 1960 — the GOP didn’t have the opportunity to ban it, because it hasn’t had any political muscle during the 55 years of the Pill’s existence.
So I agree with you that the GOP has a long and venerable tradition of losing elections in MA. I’m not sure I see how that helps advance any argument besides the assertion that the GOP is long-dead.
There were, of course, other methods of artificial contraception available before The Pill. Shamefully, all were illegal. The GOP held both the Massachusetts House and Senate from 1925 until 1948. The GOP held the corner office for 18 of those 23 years.
Why was contraception banned by the Republicans for all those years?
jconway says
Tip wrote in his memoir that he regretted backing a ballot question as Mass House Speaker that expressed disapproval of contraception to nail Lodge and drum up the Catholic vote for Kennedy. But he cheekily said he didn’t regret the results, lotta folks split their tickets between Ike and Jack precisely over that question.
Tip won the special election to Congress to replace Jack and became US Speaker 25 years later, where he was a strong champion for women’s rights against a President Reagan who sang quite a different tune from his tenure as California Governor on reproductive questions. Such is politics, who would’ve thought the party of Lincoln would be opposing the voting rights act and voting to keep the Confederate flag?
SomervilleTom says
Like I said, “BOTH Republican AND Democratic MEN were opposed to contraception for unmarried women until 1972. Sexism and sexist laws was very bipartisan until relatively recently.”
I note that the 1972 change was driven by a Supreme Court decision (Eisenstadt v. Baird) that outlawed them. I further note that the dispute took place in Boston and that MA government argued AGAINST that decision. Massachusetts had already been blocked (by Griswald v. Connecticut) from enforcing its sexist laws against married couples.
I note, further, that Massachusetts had a Republican governor (Francis Sargent) at the time. The AG was a Democrat (Robert Quinn), and the legislature was Democratic (as it had been for more than a decade). I invite evidence that Republican Governor Francis Sargent took ANY steps to repeal the sexist and unconstitutional Massachusetts law that was invalidated by Griswald v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird.
On this issue, Massachusetts is sadly near the BACK of the progressive pack — both Democrats and Republicans are equally culpable.
jconway says
I respect Porcupine for her consistent advocacy for women’s rights within her party, I strongly believe we will not see substantial progress on those issues until both parties come around. The retrograde and evidence free assertions of those advocates in my original post, whom I suspect are largely Republican players, gives me great pause we will see these changes in her party anytime soon. But, Porcupine could say the same about me as a pro-contraception and pro-choice Catholic. Change happens from inside and without, and I am glad on this issue she is fighting the uphill fight within her party as I am within my church and as you are as an agnostic (Episcopalian?) lefty.
SomervilleTom says
That pretty much nails it. 🙂