More Contraception, Fewer Abortions

by Carol Towarnicky

From the Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2007 issue of the Philadelphia Daily News. Click here to see the original article.

PLANNING parenthood is the right thing, the moral thing to do. Most Americans, whatever their faith or lack of it, believe this. Eighty-nine percent of women of childbearing age use some form of contraception.

It is such a given that some of our fellow citizens are quick to judge those they assume have had children they didn't plan for.

Writing sympathetically of mothers who struggle to feed or house their children is sure to prompt letters or e-mails calling them irresponsible for having kids in the first place.

At the same time, a Harris poll last spring found that support for Roe v. Wade, which decriminalized abortion, is at its lowest point ever - 49 percent in favor, 47 percent against. They are ambivalent about abortion in part because of a brilliant framing of the issue by anti-choice forces. Perhaps they are troubled by the fact that there are 1.3 million abortions in the United States each year, the highest rate in the developed world.

(Note to those who shy away from calling abortion "sad" or "tragic" for fear of adding to the ambivalence: Can't we agree it's better not to have an unintended pregnancy in the first place?)

Thousands of people took part in the March for Life marking the 34th anniversary of Roe on Monday. What I want to know is why they weren't examining their collective conscience to acknowledge their own contribution to the number of abortions?

No pro-life organization I know of actually supports increased access to contraception. The farthest they go is neutrality on the subject. In fact, many anti-abortion activists do their best to make birth control harder to get.

Few people outside these movements realize this. Anti-birth-control people don't dare come out and say that contraception is a sin - that would be a surefire way to turn off the overwhelming majority of Americans who use it. Instead, they bear false witness about the safety and effectiveness of birth control.

They claim that government funding for contraception for poor women is used to provide abortions, which simply isn't true. In fact, family planning funding is subject to strict regulation and auditing - oversight missing on government-funded abstinence-only and "alternatives to abortion" programs.

Pressure from religious-right investment funds have scared away pharmaceutical companies from doing research on better and more convenient contraceptive methods. Under the Bush administration, government-funded abstinence-only programs withhold the truth about contraception and even pass on false claims of health dangers.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has included false information on its Web site suggesting that condoms are not effective in preventing the spread of the HIV virus that causes AIDS.

The FDA was also complicit in a transparent attempt to delay making emergency contraception available over the counter for more than two years, even though it met all the requirements.

The campaign against planned parenthood culminated a few days after November's election when President Bush appointed Dr. Eric Keroack as director of the program that oversees 4,600 clinics providing family-planning services to low income women.

Keroack turns out to be a crackpot who maintains that people who engage in premarital sex use up a hormone, oxytocin, that prevents them from forging strong marriages. On top of that, Keroack headed a group that refused to provide contraception even to married couples.

AFTER SIX years of this insanity, finally there's a smart response: Legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate this month would increase family-planning funding to the level it would be if it had kept up with inflation. And - get this - the "Prevention First" legislation would ensure that the information given out by our own government about birth control is medically accurate.

Truth and responsibility is the right thing, the moral thing.




Praying With the News: On C-Span last week, Wisconsin Rep. Tammy Baldwin was filling in at the speaker's chair, occasionally pounding the gavel for order. An out lesbian presiding over the House. Thank you, God, for allowing us to reach this moment. Amen.