How Attacks on Reproductive Health Care Force Poor Women Into More Unwanted Pregnancies

[G_j]

http://www.alternet.org/news/152178/how_right-wing_attacks_on_reproductive_health_care_force_poor_women_into_more_unwanted_pregnancies?page=entire

AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

How Right-Wing Attacks on Reproductive Health Care Force Poor Women Into More Unwanted Pregnancies

A new study finds that right-wing attacks on family planning services are landing squarely on poor women and their families.

August 25, 2011


In denying undeniable human nature – that people will have sex, regardless of how much moralizing they're exposed to or whether or not they receive abstinence-only education or wear “chastity rings” – the Christian right, which claims that abortion is “murder,” is doing its part to bring the long decline in the number of abortions in this country to a halt. In fact, they've succeeded. After a quarter-century-long decline in abortions -- from 29.3 per 1,000 women in 1981 to under 20 per 1,000 in 2005 -- the rate began to tick up again in the latter years of the Bush administration.

A number of factors impact those numbers. One of them is the belief that by limiting women's access to contraceptives, they'll be less likely to have sex outside of marriage. Give a high-school girl access to a condom, and get a reckless slut; deny her that access and she'll be as chaste as Doris Day until her wedding night. It's self-evident nonsense that only leads to more unintended pregnancies.

A new study (PDF) by Lawrence Finer and Mia Zolna of the Guttmacher Institute tells the tale. It found that the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States has remained relatively stable over the years – about 5 percent of women will have one each year. But those overall numbers obscure a dramatic story of racial and class division; while unintended pregnancies among women aged 15-44 whose incomes were at least double the poverty line declined by 29 percent between 1994 and 2006, among women struggling to get by beneath the poverty line they rose by 50 percent.

The sharp rise in unplanned pregnancies among low-income women – disproportionately women of color – leads to a higher rate of abortions; according to Guttmacher, 43 percent of unintended pregnancies are terminated. And with a threadbare social safety net providing scant support and the least-flexible workplaces on the planet, those who choose to bring a pregnancy to term often end up trapped in a grueling cycle of poverty. That's because of a sad truth in this country: women are punished economically for giving birth. And significantly so -- Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University found that a first child lowers a woman's earnings by 7.5 percent and a second child lowers her income by another 8 percent.

..more..

[texshelters]

1. This is important to address before

ban all reproductive choice and family planning.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[uppityperson]

2. k&r, of course having less legal and accessible access to contraception hits

poor women more. Thanks for the post, k&r.

[Stargazer99]

3. Where else you going to get cannon fodder?

those with money make sure their kids do not face the front line, but if you are poor and have no decent job prospects the services are the only decent choice.

[ljm2002]

4. Totally predictable...

...and in fact it was predicted: the burden will fall on poor women, and the anti-birth-control policies will result in more unwanted pregnancies and therefore more abortions. The next thing that will happen is more self-induced and back-alley abortions, leading to sterility and deaths of women as a result. Then we will have come full circle, back to the time when people finally became horrified at what was happening, when it was no longer swept under the rug, and the laws were changed to allow SAFE and LEGAL abortion.

Only nowadays, with so many more mean-spirited, uneducated, faux-Christians around, I fear that the response will not be empathy and instead it will be to tighten the screws.

Young women, you really need to understand this is a war against your reproductive rights and therefore your freedom. It is your fight and you are fools if you don't take it on. You will have only yourselves to blame when your reproductive rights are once again taken away -- in fact it is happening in many parts of the country right now.

[saras]

5. Unwanted by whom? To them, the host's feelings are irrelevant.

Rapists want them to have their babies. Incestuous fathers want them to have their babies. The right-wingers want white people to have more babies - LOTS more babies, and it's already obvious how they intend to care for them. They also want girls to marry young, which eliminating financial support or legal rights for pregnant women and women with children both support.

Let's not kid ourselves that they don't know what they're doing and why they're doing it.

[kestrel91316]

6. The Repig's war machine MUST have cannon fodder. You don't seriously

expect them to send white upper class people to fight wars of foreign aggression, do you?