Contraception facts
Gerald Thibodeau fails to comprehend a simple Guttmacher Institute statistic, leading him to falsely assert that contraception does not reduce abortion (Dec. 23 letter to the editor). In fact, there is a wealth of evidence demonstrating that effective contraceptive use dramatically reduces unplanned pregnancy and — thereby — recourse to abortion.
Guttmacher Institute research shows that the two-thirds of U.S. women at risk of unintended pregnancy who use contraception consistently and correctly throughout the course of any given year account for only 5 percent of all unintended pregnancies. The much smaller group of women at risk who use contraception but do so inconsistently (19 percent) account for 44 percent of all unintended pregnancies. And the even smaller group of women who do not use contraception at all for a month or more during the year (16 percent) account for 52 percent of all unintended pregnancies.
That’s why policies that make contraceptives more affordable and easier to use reflect the needs and desires of the vast majority of U.S. women and their partners — Mr. Thibodeau’s disapproval notwithstanding.
In addition to misusing a Guttmacher statistic, Mr. Thibodeau also mistakenly refers to the Guttmacher Institute as “Planned Parenthood’s hired research firm.” The Guttmacher Institute is a fully independent, nonpartisan research and policy organization.
Cory L. Richards
Senior Vice President and Vice President for Public Policy
Guttmacher Institute
Family Planning’s worth
There’s a joke that asks the question,”Why is divorce so expensive?”
Answer: “Because it’s worth it!”
Gerald Thibodeau’s letter to the editor, “Cut Family Planning,” laments the expense of Family Planning and resents the organization’s high salaries and million dollar annual profit. He concludes, “Welfare should be for the needy — not corporation profits and high salaries.”
Some women avoid or terminate pregnancy because they are too poor to support a dependent. Would it be to anyone’s advantage to demand these pregnancies be carried to term so the welfare system can be the provider of last resort?
Some women avoid or terminate pregnancy because they definitely do not want the child, perhaps because of rape or incest or a hatred of children or the child’s father. I know people who were hated and resented by their mothers, and they are warped.
I believe every child has the right to grow up wanted and loved. The only way to achieve that goal is to provide effective contraceptives, education in their use and abortion if necessary. In other words, Planned Parenthood.
Want to see welfare and court costs soar? Promote the birth of impoverished unwanted babies and see how cheap Family Planning is by comparison.
Gerald A. Metz, M.D.
Addison
Lost my vote
I wish to point out to readers that Sens. Collins and Snowe voted in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Sen. Collins, as a member of the committee, voted to include “detainee matters” under subtitle D. Sen. Lindsey Graham now calls America “a battlefield.”
This bill would allow the feds to arrest anyone they thought to be associated with any kind of terrorist organization (yes, even American citizens) and detain them indefinitely. Without trial.
Of course they can define any terrorist group, be it some environmental activist, some tea partier or your local rod and gun club. Anyone in America can be associated with terror under the term “domestic terror” and you have lost your right to a trial under the Constitution.
Personally I will not vote for Sens. Snowe or Collins because it only validates to them that the Constitution of the United States is meaningless.
Robert Cox
Raymond
Snail mail
After reading the BDN OpEd, “US mail: slow and slower,” I must admit I agree with its author, James Bovard. In just the last month I have had three letters to a relative out of state returned as undeliverable. This relative has been at the same address for over a year now.
My son gets a weekly check mailed from Boston. On a regular week the check comes on Thursday, on a week with a Monday holiday the check arrives on Tuesday. It took 10 days for a first class, presorted piece of mail to go from Ohio to Maine and it took the post office 20 days to return a first class letter to me that I had addressed wrongly to a post office box.
Three or four days for a letter to go from one place to another is one thing, 20 days is something else altogether. The post office needs to find some way to become more efficient or it will become its own worst enemy.
Susan Taylor
Hampden
Conservative on nukes
Former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman says nuclear energy is reliable and a job creator (BDN, Dec. 22).
This same U.S. agency eliminated radiation monitoring in the the midst of the Fukushima disaster. Apparently, they did not want you to know what this “reliable” energy is capable of producing.
As for jobs in the nuclear industry, many are dangerous and could prove deadly. They do not want you to know that either.
The bottom line, as a good Republican like Ms. Whitman should know, is nuclear power is not safe and is no longer cost-effective. Germany has already made the decision to abandon nuclear energy.
EPA should fulfill its mission to protect the public and work to decommission unreliable and outdated nuclear plants, try to mitigate the radioactive waste problem and focus on green energy alternatives and conservation.
Nancy Allen
Brooksville
Drop in the oil tank
I am a senior recipient of LHEAP funds and have been for many years. Each year, I have received less than the year before despite the fact that my income has remained the same ($1,000 per month).
With prices going higher every year the amount has become almost negligible. This year I received $90 toward what will be more than $2,000 just to keep my thermostat at 55 degrees.
If the stipend for each person is going to be so little, the government might just as soon flush it down the toilet. It would be more useful to give fewer people more money so that the limited funds would actually help someone. I, for one, wouldn’t be much worse off.
Cheri Walton
Eastport
Cory L. Richards & Gerald A. Metz, M.D.–I appreciate your trying to use reason in the contraceptive controversy but reason and facts do not matter to Mr. Thibodeau and his kind, they have a preconceived(no pun intended) notion that some mythical pie in the sky ordains them to preach their misconceptions(once again, no pun intended) to the rest of mankind.
I appreciate your efforts to bring facts into the debate anyhow.
Cory Richards, Gerald Metz, Cheri Walton: good letters.
Nancy Allen: the EPA does not oversee nuclear power plants. Stats are available on safety in the US nuclear power industry.
Right the NRC oversees nukes…but:
Let’s talk a little economics here people, since anything to do with safety seems to be so low on our radar…This article states ( http://new.bangordailynews.com/2011/03/16/politics/lepage-administration-still-eyeing-nuclear-despite-japan-crisis/ ):“…ratepayers pick up the estimated $6 million to $8 million annual tab to store and monitor the radioactive fuel…” from the Wiscasset plant. Since 1996, that is an average of $7 million x 15 years = $105 million. And it produced NO electricity for us in those 15 years, just cost us money.Well, since there is no other option for storing this poison, and it needs to be kept secure for the next 25,000 years… let’s do the arithmetic…that is $175,000,000,000, not counting for inflation. $175 Billion just in storage costs.That is just one plant, that produced electricity from 1972 to 1996, a real short 24 years…How many of those plants are there? 104 working ones in the US, a good percentage of which are near earthquake zones, BTW.I would rather see all of a large wind turbine farm blow over in a monster storm. Imagine: some twisted steel to haul out, several dozen trees knocked over, some soil erosion to repair—-versus-—thousands of cancer deaths, for decades and decades, hundreds of square miles as no-go zones, food supplies contaminated, etc. for a nuke plant.
CORY,
How about expecting a little responsibility from these adults, or is that to much to ask.
GERALD,
If we can’t get people to make responsible choices then is it to much to ask these women to wear a ” CLOSED ” sign somewhere were it is visible and leaves no doubt in the mind of these real fine gentlemen who prey on them?
ROBERT,
It’s almost the whole bunch in Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike. Until the system allows for the average Joe to run then we’ll never get it changed.
NANCY,
You and some of the others will never be happy until we’re back to rubbing two sticks together.
Then they will make it illegal to rub those sticks together.
How about willingly spending more in taxes to raise the unwanted children who get born due to lack of contraception and safe abortion? Oh, that is far too much to ask from a conservative living in fantasyland.
How about a mandatory 18-year jail sentence including $1,000/month child support for any male American citizen age 13 or older who fathers an unwanted child, requiring only the word of the mother for conviction. That sounds fair.
Mr. Thibodeau was spot on in his letter. The doctor and the rest who criticized his facts are simply out to protect a woman’s right to choose for herself, not for the unborn child she helped to create.
I might be more understanding of people like MR. Thibodeau if they were willing to help support all teh uinwanted children that would exist if all abortions were stopped but his ilk are also agaianst any type of help for children once they are born.
So called “pro-lifers” should more accurately be called “pro-birthers” because once the baby is born they could care less about it’s life or whether it lives at all once it is born.
Nancy, there is no such thing as green energy. There is no sustainable forms of alternative energy yet. Coal, oil, and nuclear power options are the only means to fill our needs, we must continue to do the best we can(invest and use) with these real options.
We are many decades out on developing alternative sources. When the time comes private industry will do what it always does, they will develop what’s necessary.
Look at the bright side, someday the middle east will run out of oil and nobody will care about that future parking lot again.
3 Cheers for Tar Sands!!!
Private industry will do what makes them more money, side effects be damned.
Just like Al Gore does.
Just a suggestion; Bringing up Al Gore’s name in discussing green energy is a waste of time. He is nothing more than a spokesman, a messenger. If you have an issue with the development of alternative energy sources you should point to the research and money involved. Even many liberals do not pay attention to what Gore says because he is just another millionaire. Note that I am not defending Gore as I am one who really does not care what he says.
We have the technology today to start the change over to green energy but not the political will power to do it.
Using a compbination of solar, wind, geothermal and hydro, depending on the region, we could be free of the need of fossil fuel generated electrical power in 20 years or less.
And the more we used this green energy the less it would cost to convert to it.
It has started, and it has had minimum success. Denmark is a prime example of a country trying to operate off of wind. Two problems, lack of wind and battery storage is not there yet and the equipment is not yet economically viable.
Nuclear power will be the power source of the future, focusing on safe use and waste disposal should be what private industries are doing.
Nuclear power is the choice of corporate America because they get to make tons of money while the taxpayers foot the bill.
The nuclear industry is protected from liability not by them buying their own insurance but the government (ie taxpayars) insuring them because commercial insurance would be too expensive to purchase.
Nuclear power also gets most of their fuel from the Federal Government at less than the cost of procuring it. (ie the taxpayers pay for the mining, transportation and enrichment of the Uranium).
Nuclear power is not a “clean” energy source if you include all of the environmental damage caused by acquiring the fuel or, God forbid, a nuclear accident. Just ask the Japanese how cheap nuclear power is, or the residents near Three Mile Island (do some research on the health problems and environmental damage since the accident at Three Mile Island) or the residents near Chyrnoble.
Cory Richards and Dr. Metz – Properly used, contraception will prevent many unwanted pregnancies. But, that does not negate the fact that abortion is the taking of an innocent life; thus it is murder, legal or not.
Nancy Allen – Christine Todd Whitman—a “good Republican”? Now that’s funny. By the way, on nuclear energy, it has a terrific safety record, and it is one of the highest producers of energy per dollar invested. Abandoning it would be just plain stupid.
Cheri Walton – The state needs to let you tap into one of those ugly, wind turbine monstrosities for your heating needs. At least that way, a Mainer would benefit.
And yet you want to defund groups and programs that promote education and provide easy access to contraceptives. Ironic.
Why would you want to fund a program that murders the unborn. It’s murder and it’s so sick for anyone to think otherwise. Contraceptives are available at the drug store or your local clinic. Why should taxpayers pay for them? I know, I’m asking for to much when I ask for a little bit of personal responsibility.
Schools have already taught kids about sex and reproduction and lets be real nobody ever really gets educated by PP. PP is an abortion clinic as well as a tool for underage kids to bypass parental consent to get abortions.
“lets be real nobody ever really gets educated by PP.”
Yes, let us be real. You clearly have no interest in facts.
What do they teach?
Just because you’re ignorant of the facts doesn’t mean you get to make up your own.
You being ignorant isn’t a free pass for you to go spread misinformation and make up your own facts. I can copy and paste as well.
But what you can’t do is provide facts to back up your claims. That’s because your claims are lies.
Speaking of misinformation … or outright falsehoods.
Less than 3% of Planned Parenthood’s budget is for abortion. The rest of the budget is to help low income men and women to get contraception and pre-natal and post-natal health care and women’s healthcare.
Planned Parenthood clinics reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and therefore reduce the number of abortions. If they were truely in it for the abortions they would not provide any contraception, free or otherwise.
Since they make it simple they don’t decrease the number of abortions. Nobody being truthful would deny that 95% of PP is abortions.
They should not be funded by the govt.
A 10 stitch wound cost me more then what they charge to murder an unborn child.
The only way to decrease the number of abortions is to decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies. Planned Parenthood provides low or no cost contraception to low income women, they do not advocate abortion to anyone. They do, however, provide information on whether to keep the child, put the child up for adoption or abort the child.
Only someone as misinformed as you would state that PP is 95% abortions. Again, only 3% of Planned Parenthoods budget is abortions, the rest is either prevention of unwanted pregancies, provide low cost or no cost pre-natal care (giving the mother the necessary medical attention she needs to give birth to a healthy baby), post-natal care (providing the necessary medical attention a woman needs after giving birth for a healthy mother and child) and provide low income women the necessary healthcare to remain healthy.
Planned Parenthood gives women the control over their own bodies and control over if/when they become pregnant which is the real problem people like you have with Planned Parenthood.
95%? You literally just made that up. Quit lying.
Falsehoods.
Again, fw, you have it wrong. I do not want any of my taxpayer money going for abortions. I have no problem with funding contraception programs, as long as they also provide guidance about the advantages of abstinence.
And before you bring up about the Hyde Amendment blocking PP from using taxpayer funding for abortions, you know that’s just a smoke and mirrors argument. There are several provisions in the HA that allow funding to be shifted from program to program so that it can eventually fund the murder of the innocent.
That is a lie. Please don’t spread your misinformation.
It’s as if they are running a hamster wheel of disinformation.
You persist in calling me a liar, yet you never provide any proof that what I’m saying is a lie. Even when I have provided links and proof, you have called me a liar. It would seem that it is you that is being deceitful.
The Hyde Amendment is just like any other bi-partisan piece of legislation. In order to get the other side to sign on, there are back doors, loopholes, and go-arounds written in. If you deny that, then you don’t know squat about DC politics.
You NEVER provide proof for your claims and that’s what makes you a liar. You make things up and then you find some fringe/biased posting on some blog that similarly has no credible source for its claims either to link to.
Prove that that 3% claim is “bunk.” Prove that there a holes in the Hyde Amendment, show us examples of that from recent and credible sources. Back up what you say for once with some facts and maybe I’ll stop calling you a liar. Until then, I’m going to call your claims for what they are: lies.
Of course, you won’t believe this, but it’s true….
http://www.nrlc.org/AHC/NRLCmemoHydeAmendmentWillNotApply.html
And here’s another….
http://liveaction.org/blog/38-4-of-pp-health-center-income-is-from-abortions/
And from PP itself, this little report….
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/PPFA/PP_Services.pdf
By the way, if you can’t see the deception in the report, then you’re fully entrenched in the left wing gutter.
EJP, I said credible sources.
They are credible sources. Sorry that they’re not funded by Soros or the DNC.
Once again, EJP, I said credible sources. That doesn’t mean fringe right wing blogs or organizations. You screech and cry about bias and “fudged” numbers but then you do the exact same thing yourself. As long as you’re the one being biased and lying, it’s fine. That’s hypocrisy.
I don’t want my taxpayer money going to support the unwanted children that resulted from your taxpayer money not going to safe legal abortions.
Put more simply, I do want my taxpayer money going to help pay for safe legal abortions for unintended pregnancies. It’s the intelligent thing to do.
Robert, I am with you. This one issue alone is the defining issue in the ‘land of the free’ and it horrifies me that so many think this is perfectly legitimate.
Surprise! Surprise! I’m with you. This is really scary stuff.
Unfortunately it does not seem to be making the news. I found out about it on the google reader and have not seen word of it anywhere else. I have forwarded the google article to my conservative and liberal friends. This is one issue we can all agree on. It is scary.
The slope began with the so-called Patriot Act. It was extended last year to include individuals, so-called lone wolves, that don’t even have a connection to terrorists. The government as a result of that can look at your financial records to determine if you “might” be one and they don’t even need to tell you that they did it.
Then there is the assassination of American citizens overseas without due process, now this. You tell me where I live.
The most basic American Freedom, that any soldier has offered his life for, has now gone the way of the hollow caverns in Lindsey Graham’s fascist brain.
Cecil, There is plenty of blame and responsibility to shovel around here.
If you want a time line.
Bush asked for the initial Patriot act and it was put in place by overwhelming support By both Democrats and Republicans. The Senate vote was 98 favor 1 opposed.
This Patriot Act was set to expire at the end of 2010. It was reinvigorated and extended by the Obama Administration who made the changes I mentioned above including the right to investigate your financial records. Senate Vote 72-23. 31 Democrats joined 41 Republicans in supporting Obama’s request and passed the extension and “strengthening” of the original law.
Under Obama we have the first assassination of an American Citizen on foreign soil without due process. Obama will not admit to having given the order… But no one else could have. Besides it was on his watch and ostensibly he is responsible.
This bill:
“While we remain concerned about the uncertainty that this law will
create for our counter-terrorism professionals, the most recent changes
give the President additional discretion in determining how the law
will be implemented, consistent with our values and the rule of law,
which are at the heart of our country’s strength,” said a statement
from White House spokesman Jay Carney.
In other words we are in charge here and will determine who falls under this law and who doesn’t.
What about equal Justice?
The heart of this law was brought by Conservative Republicans but has been embraced by the White House.
As I said before there is plenty of responsibility to go around, both Democrat and Republican.
I remain astounded that more people in America are not outraged by the assassination of an American citizen by the US government. The guy may have been a terrorist scum. But so was Tim McVeigh. In America, folks, even the worst of terrorist scum get a trial. American citizens are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. If Obama can order the assassination of a citizen abroad, and there is no public outrage–it strikes me that this is certainly an impeachable offense for a president to order the killing of a citizen–what is to stop the president from ordering the killing of citizens on US soil? When will Americans wake up?
It’a about gathering as much power for the Executive as possible. And you are absolutely right that both parties are complicit. It’s called Oligarchy and that’s what we are living under now, not democracy. These elections are for show, for 24 cable news entertainment, the two parties have gamed us all for a long time now.
Soviet Union?
Perhaps.
I am 60 and I remember as if it were yesterday being told, quite often, how lucky I was to be born an American and not be a prisoner in the Soviet Union. I read with horror how people were picked up off the streets and shipped off to prison camps or ‘mental’ hospitals in Siberia. Love and appreciation for liberty has been with me since a very young person.
And now America has become the Soviet Union. Why? Is it because there are too many people and not enough resources, not enough jobs (and the old jobs are never coming back)? Civil unrest, protesters, militarization of police, now the military can arrest us (even though they have protested this bill and did not want it) any time we are deemed ‘suspicious’? I don’t know. The Oligarchy certainly feels as if it must control us now in a way that was not evident before the Patriot Act. I think they are afraid and so it is natural to suppress those that are causing them fear.
Americans allowed 9/11 to change our country in a profound way. The Patriot Act was passed by such an unbelievable number so soon after 9/11. Nobody read that bill or wished to debate it. ‘They’ said the people needed to be protected – and the first of our liberties were taken away. Almost no one seemed to care. I went crazy with sadness.
Pres. Obama ordered the assassination of an American citizen by drone in Yemen. I wondered at the time how long it would be before a drone was used domestically. It took only a few short months and one was used
domestically two months ago in Wyoming to arrest a cattle rancher.
How long will it take before very advanced drones (though we seem to be
stupid about them – knowing they can be hacked and not doing anything about
it, not having a ‘destroy yourself’ button; not smart for such an
‘exceptional’ people) will be flying three miles up over NY, Chicago, LA?
It won’t take many, will it? And it won’t take long.
I now have no trust that I am protected by what is fondly known as The
Constitution of We, the People.
Osama won and we are definitely the Soviet Union. Maybe just at the
beginning of it. But there is no argument against that statement. I fear
what the next 20 years will bring to America.
A couple other things to consider. Roving wiretaps among multiple mobile devices. Permanent records of websites visited available to the government at anytime. It does go on.
They will tell you its for your own protection. Why don’t I feel that way?
But, more importantly…..why aren’t we as a people pushing back and saying ‘No’. I was fascinated with the horror of the Germans when I first learned of it in fifth grade (sorry to keep going back in time) and I wrote an essay asking why didn’t the people push back against Hitler and say no? My poor little mind tried to wrap itself around this conundrum. I cannot believe I am sitting here now and trying to answer the same question about my own country. I think about leaving but as my partner says, “This law says they can pick you up anywhere. Nowhere is really any safer”. Which made me doubly depressed. Also, there’s family and community – your whole life! I’m sure my life will end here in Maine. But I’ve suggested to my 25 year old daughter that she might wish to leave before it gets really, really bad.
It makes me so very sad.
There is a community of ex-pats in El Salvador & in Thailand as well as the Philippines.
I understand what you mean. This is not the country we grew up in and people are turning into sheep.
You guys all get thumbs up from me. Agree with your comments. The process to turn us into the former USSR is slow but we sure are getting there. Anyone that says that can’t happen here better open their eyes and take a good look at the history books. ” oh but it can’t happen here this is America. ” . Too late, it has already.
Oh oh, me to.
I’m horrified that so few people have been talking about this. It really makes me want to leave America. Basically, we are not free any more and live in a police state. When a US citizen can be detained indefinitely without trial we are no longer free.
Agree entirely. Considering the number it passed with, there aren’t many incumbents left to vote for!
Metz is right: if you think Planned Parenthood is expensive wait until all those children the parents couldn’t support hit your schools, streets, hospitals and welfare offices.
The factual, realistic sex education, the availability of cheap contraception that women control, the access to emergency contraception and the safe, legal abortions provided to women through reproductive clinics does more than any other program or policy or institution to keep our children in families that want them and out of welfare offices.
People like Mr. Thibodeau are ignorant and shortsighted. Or they have control issues about sex and women.
I believe it is the issues they have with sex and women being equal to men
Dr, Gerald, then perform the abotions for nothing or at your
own expense. If someone doesn’t want to bring a child into this world
that is their choice. Other than incest, rape or a severe health issue
for the mother, people are responsible for their actions. Not anyone
else. That being said, they want an abortion, fine, but let them pay
to have it not the taxpayer.
Mr. Simpson, PP does not use taxpayer funds to fund the small number of abortions they perform. Only 3% of their services are abortion related (I know, a fact you ideologues could care less about or choose to view objectively) and those they do perform are privately funded (another fact you twist into pretzel logic every time you are required to face it).
Facts, schmacks… it’s all the same to you, right? Doh!
People responsible for their actions, indeed. You should talk.
330,000 abortions a year is not a “small number of abortions”. And you know as well as anyone else that the Hyde Amendment was written with loopholes that allow funding to be shifted into abortion programs. All government legislation has loopholes.
And this 3% bunk is nothing more than fudged numbers. They consider giving out birth control pills to be equal with an abortion. Sorry, but the murder of an innocent baby cannot be equated to a birth control pill or a brochure.
What loopholes are those? Please be specific and cite your sources.
There are none, he’s a liar. Just like he’s lying about the 3% statistic being “bunk” and “fudged numbers.”
Public funds may be used for an abortion in the case of incest or rape. People denying this loop hole funding to girls that are pregnant by family members or women that have been raped are are cruel, insensitive, misogynistic, illogical and obsessive. They are not worth listening to ………….. ever
Something you, and people like you, EJ, have never understood or even acknowledged is the cognitive dissonance of you preaching both against abortion and against PP without acknowledging that shutting down PP would INCREASE abortion. You have no answer to that contradiction. You will cut off your nose to spite your face.
It is only a minority that believes a fetus is “an innocent baby.” The vast majority of interested parties knows there is no consensus, no scientific, philosophical, theological criteria available that all parties agree on as to when “life” actually begins. You can preach your narrow, minority view… you can defend it to the death it that pleases you… it is your right… but you can’t force your narrow view on everyone else.
Most of the people against abortions also appear to be against birth control as well.
If you don’t believe me look at the laws that SD and MS tried to pass that would not only ban abortions but the way they were worded would have outlawed contraception as well. Or the fact that in SD contraception is legal only for a married woman with the consent of her husband.
Why do you keep lying on here? It’s really disgusting an immoral. You keep citing this made up loopholes about the Hyde Amendment. It’s just not true. You don’t like a fact so you just ignore it and make up your own. Stop it.
Mr./Ms Sediment, when taxpayer funds are given to PP
for whatever means they receive funds for, doesn’t that
mean it frees funds up for abortions from some other means?
If they didn’t get taxpayer money for their tax funded programs
then they would be have to use private funds for everything.
To make it simple for you, no tax funding, then let’s see them
raise the money to run their program and fund abortions.
Evidently you don’t believe people should be responsible for
their actions. I do believe in that and it is people like yourself who
feel everyone else is responsible for you and your actions and should pay because
you feel it is owed to you not to have to be accountable for anything.
You must be on the dole and love the freebies. As
for being objective, the libber view is the ONLY objective view, as long as
someone else pays for it I suppose.
How you conjure up this view I am supposed to have of personal responsibility is beyond me. It isn’t based on anything I have said in this thread, and is entirely self-serving. It certainly isn’t my view of personal responsibility. As someone with an 18 year old daughter you can bet I have thought a lot about personal responsibility as it relates to sexual activity.
I don’t wish for any woman to be faced with that decision or that outcome. But to not provide for it has consequences even someone like you ought to be able to realize make for worse outcomes for everyone involved. Arguing from a “tax” viewpoint seems insensitive and selfish when the consequences are so dire for those involved. I don’t want my taxes going toward torture or indefinite imprisonment, or illegal wars…
My answer to you is the same as to EJ below. You preach against abortion and against PP. But refuse to acknowledge that shutting down PP would increase abortions. That contradiction, that cognitive dissonance, makes no sense. Your ideology doesn’t allow you to realize that you are shooting off your own foot.
How does the taxpayer pay for other’s abortion? Use of federal money is against the law. I do not know about the various state laws.
“Want to see welfare and court costs soar? Promote the birth of impoverished unwanted babies and see how cheap Family Planning is by comparison.”
This train of thought is used constantly to justify more government spending from education to health care, to housing, to defense spending and beyond. By golly, you’d think with all the spending we’re doing we must be getting the cheapest bargains around!
For once, I would just like to find out how much more expensive it would be to insist that people take care of themselves in matters of personal health and life choices. I’d love to see how much more expensive it would be for other nations to defend their own borders and economic interests. Call it an experiment in government cuts. If it doesn’t work, then we can go back to the spending frenzy.
We will never allow other nations to defend their own borders or their own economic interests as long as multi-national corporations control the US government. Those countries might decide on laws/actions that would be unfavorable to the US (ie multi-national corporations).
“Insist” on people taking care of themselves? Sounds Draconian.
It costs from a low of $80,000 to a high of $150,000 to raise a child to the age of 20. This does not count the cost of higher education. Birth control costs $30 to $40 a month. An abortion costs between $500 to $2000. You can do the math.
Well, if the person allowed to be born dies at age 20, then I guess it would be a financial loss. But if the person lives onward to old age, he or she will earn almost 1 million dollars at a meager job paying $10 an hour. The total costs and benefits the individual will incur or produce for society are not really calculable, but I will stick with encouraging people to be born rather than not.
We were having work done outside our home by the city(state, whichever) and they put in a curb. The week they were working on the curb, it actually put our mailbox about 5 feet out of reach from where it originally sat by the road. After 4 days of no mail, I called the post office. They informed me that the deliverer does not have to step out of his vehicle if he chooses not to. I explained that we were talking simply stepping one foot ouf of the vehicle to reach the mailbox for the 1 week they were doing construction. I see the delivery men/women for the USPS walking the streets of Bangor, and yet this one individual would not put a little customer service ahead of what he can choose not to do. Let’s just say the Christmas bonus is not in the mailbox anymore. For the wages and benefits these workers get, a little customer service would go a long way to people using the USPS. Many here may have similar stories.
The rural mail delivery person we have is not a postal employee but a private carrier who works for the post office. So they don’t get the same wages and benefits. They’ll fit right into the right-to-work state we will become.
Thanks for good letters Richards and Metz. Planned Parenthood has done more to cut welfare spending, prevent abortions and unintended pregnancies, create healthy self respect and families with cherished children than all the religious rights dishonest abstinence only sex education, promise rings, chastity dances and family values ravings. Why any intelligent politician panders to these people is beyond reason.