SMRs and AMRs

Friday, December 28, 2012

Limiting pregnancy = fewer abortions ... Get it, GOP?

Republicans Must Support Public Financing for Contraception

By JULEANNA GLOVER, NYT

Washington

TWO weeks ago, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2016, proposed making oral contraceptives available “over the counter.” This was a remarkable — and wholly positive — postelection development. It is just the sort of bold thinking the Republican Party needs to overcome its reputation for being unsympathetic to women’s concerns. (Last month, President Obama won the women’s vote by a margin of 10 percentage points.)

Making the party more appealing to women, however, should not — and need not — involve undermining the most basic Republican values. In the case of childbirth, the Republicans’ primary commitment is to the pro-life cause — and hence to reducing the number of abortions in the country. But abortion opponents should be pro-contraception, since making contraception as affordable and available as possible reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies and thus abortions.

In fact, historically, Republican lawmakers have voted to maintain or increase financing for the Title X Family Planning Program, which was enacted in 1970 under President Richard M. Nixon and currently provides about $300 million a year to state and local organizations for contraceptive care for low-income women. According to a 2009 Congressional Research Service report, Title X prevents almost a million unwanted pregnancies each year.

(More here.)

1 Comments:

Blogger Tom Koch said...

Why are those on the left side of the aisle concerned with the number of abortions? It is just a blob of cells after all, right?

4:18 PM  

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