Steve Waldman: January 2009 Archives

If you dropped in to America from another planet and were told there was a group of people dedicated to reducing the number of abortions, and then were asked, "would that group be for or against family planning and contraception?" you might reasonably assume these anti-abortion folks would be ferocious advocates for such efforts. After all, a surefire way to have no abortions would be to have no unintended pregnancies.

Instead, anti-abortion groups are generally the biggest opponents of government-financed family planning, the most recent example being their vocal, and effective, attack on family planning funds in the economic recovery bill. There are a few reasons for this, and each comes with its own moral dilemma.

Reason #1 - The anti-abortion movement was initially driven by the Catholic Church, which also opposes contraception as a sin. The Church believes sex not aimed at procreation is immoral and condoms kidnap the potential lives represented by the sperm.

The moral problem: there's evidence that birth control reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Out of adherence to an abstract theological principle, the church condones a policy that probably leads to more abortion.

Reason #2 - In more recent years, the anti-abortion movement has been fueled by evangelical Christians who oppose birth control and sex education largely for different reasons. They believe it encourages earlier and more premarital sex. They prefer family planning efforts that emphasize abstinence instead.

The moral problem: even if one accepts the idea that prevalence of contraception leads to more premarital sex -- and I do -- one is faced with the question: what if contraception leads to more sex but fewer abortions? Evangelicals have avoided confronting this tradeoff by rejecting the premise but there is evidence that government financed family planning does reduce abortions.

Reason #3 - Promoting government-financed family planning helps the organizations that perform abortions. Specifically, the largest recipient of family planning money is Planned Parenthood which also performs hundreds of thousands of abortions. Hence, even though federal family planning money doesn't directly fund abortions -- that's already illegal -- it does help "the abortion industry." Tom McLuskey of Family Research Council estimates that Planned Parenthood did 180 abortions for each adoption referral.

The moral problem: Planned Parenthood also provides prenatal care that prevents infant death and birth control that stops unintended pregnancies. Pro-lifers have declared that one cannot aid evil, even if it doing so has positive byproducts. Yet most evangelicals advocate such moral cost-benefit analysis in other contexts -- arguing, for instance, that the evil of torture was counterbalanced by the benefit of stopping mass murder.

I can't help but wonder...if conservatives didn't oppose government-funded sex education and contraception, would they be able to create a large parallel-universe family planning industry that promotes the full range of family planning services, other than abortion.

Instead, they find themselves in a difficult and paradoxical position: in order to stop abortions, they block policies that could reduce the number of abortions.

My father-in-law, Austin Cunningham, passed away this week. He was 94 and an extroardinary man -- named "senior citizen of the year" in South Carolina for his unceasing work on behalf various community groups (youth jobs, anti-drugs, minority education).

In pulling together some of his writings for Friday's funeral, my wife Amy found these words:

"We should, as we get closer to our Maker, learn the joy in the rising and setting sun, the magic of moonlight, the unfathomable mysteries of our lives and our universe. Everyday-ness can be vibrant and permeated with glory.

What we're searching for is inspired aging, becoming more creative as we stride down that runway of ours, acquiring the abillity to be surprised, curious, probing, and above all enthusiastic. Let's spread our wings! We want awareness and vitality right up to the last few hours."

I love the idea of acquiring the ability to be curious -- and the glory of everyday-ness. We'll miss your wisdom, Austin.

I'm depressed about this whole flap over contraceptives being in the stimulus package. It reflects much about what's wrong with politics and policymaking in Washington. Here are my top three reasons to be depressed:

1) Democrats are still not committed to the new abortion politics. Democrats have to make a decision between which approach they're going to take to abortion. Approach #1 is "we won; get used to it." In that approach, they push forward with pro-choice policies that they've always wanted.

Approach #2 is to take seriously Obama's rhetoric during the campaign about seeking common ground. Under this scenario, one does not insert into the stimulus bill money that goes to Planned Parenthood until after you've come up with a bigger "deal" promoting abortion reduction. The Democrats' move comes on the heels of Obama repealing the Mexico City "gag rule" and -- just as important -- issuing a Presidential statement that had abandoned a key part of the abortion "compromise" they'd proudly touted during the campaign.

The one bit of good news: Obama apparently has thrown this provision overboard.

2) The Republicans first impulse was to massively exaggerate. They had a good issue: stimulus money should be reserved primarily for job creation. And if you're going to do some non-job-creating moves, they should be non-controversial (i.e. education spending). But, as usual, Republicans got carried away. When Pelosi defended the practice because it reduced costs -- which it probably does -- Republicans made it sound like Pelosi was arguing that contraceptions stimulate the economy. "PELOSI SAYS BIRTH CONTROL WILL HELP ECONOMY , declared Drudge Report in a typical headline.

She never suggested contraceptives -- or Barry White music or oysters, for that matter -- would stimulate the economy. She said, it would "reduce costs."

Then, conservatives turned this into proof that Pelosi was anti-baby. Since Pelosi never explained how it would reduce costs, conservatives filled in the blanks, saying that saving would come from people having fewer babies.

Jim Pethokoukis at US News writes:

"This is wrong on so many levels, one of which is looking at children born to the "wrong people" as economic burdens rather gifts, the music makers, the dreamers of dreams. She sees them as a cost instead of blessed benefits. Wow."

Some of the cost savings does come from reducing the number of unintended pregnancies. (And is the conservative position that that's bad?) But some of it comes from improving the health of new babies. If you intervene earlier with low income pregnant women, clinics can improve the maternal nutrition and thereby create more healthy babies who need less emergency health care. Are conservatives really against that?

Then, conservatives exaggerated the exaggeration. The Family Research Council declared yesterday that the measure would cost not $200 million but rather $87 billion.

That is in exaggeration on such a massive scale that my calculater kept giving me an error message when I was figuring it out. The Family Research Council calculations were off by a mere 43,500% Does that break some sort of exaggeration record?*

3) The abortion-family-planning conflation continues, harming millions of babies in the process. Conservatives now refer to any money that goes to family planning as subsidies for the "abortion industry" because some of the money will invariably go to places like Planned Parenthood, which also provides abortion services. Any type of family planning becomes thereby demonized.

Yet none of the family planning money goes to directly fund abortions and much goes to services to improve the health of mothers who are having babies, and reduce the number of babies who die in their first year. In arguing to the Obama transition team in favor of the family planning measure that made it into the stimulus, that well know Left Wing Socialist Organization called The March of Dimes wrote:

"By allowing Medicaid programs to cover primary care and family planning services without having to obtain a federal waiver, low income women will be under the care of a health professional before pregnancy, increasing the likelihood that when they do become pregnant, they will obtain timely prenatal care as recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

• Numerous studies have shown that pregnancies spaced too closely together present a
medical risk factor for preterm birth. Appropriately spacing pregnancies -- for which
counseling by a healthcare provider is recommended -- has been shown to reduce the
risk of preterm birth.

• Approximately 1 in 5 infants born preterm have ongoing health problems, including
cerebral palsy, mental retardation, chronic lung disease, and vision and hearing loss. A
recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report estimates that the societal economic cost of
preterm birth (medical, educational, lost productivity) totaled at least $26.2 billion in
2005.5

(Full memo below the fold)

In addition, there's a reasonable argument that spending more on family planning actually reduces more abortion than it causes. Yes, some people go to family planning clinics to get abortions but some go to get contraception, reducing the number of unintended pregnancies. It's not an impartial source, of course, by the Gutthmacher Institute estimates that "Each year, the contraceptive services provided just at publicly funded clinics help women avoid 1.4 million unintended pregnancies, which would result in 640,000 unintended births and 600,000 abortions."

Conservatives willfully refuse to grapple with the possibility that better family planning reduces the number of abortions -- and pro-choice people seldom make the argument because they don't want to concede the idea that reducing the number of abortions is a goal worth discussing.

On the other hand, the pro-family-planning folks have never, as far as I know, come up with a way of promoting family planning services that wouldn't also lead to indirectly subsidizing abortion. And since they support direct federal funding for abortions, the pro-life forces are not wrong to fear some of this money will end up promoting abortion.

If pro-family-planning forces were willing to de-couple abortion from family planning, they could improve maternal health care and reduce infant mortality -- but that would mean retreating a bit on abortion services.

So, pro-life forces end up supporting policies that lead to more abortions and liberal pro-choice forces end up fueling a political dynamic that leads to greater infant mortality.

Kudos all around.

* UPDATE: The Family Research Council explained the $87 billion figure by saying that's how much the feds might pour out to help states with Medicaid. "We are saying it COULD be used for family planning - there isn't much direction and throughout the bill it seems the Democrats are saying 'trust us' on where the money will go. Considering during President G.W. Bush years spending on this program grew from $252 million to $759 million just in the 14 states that were granted waivers (this on a program started under President Clinton that was supposed to SAVE money.) The Democrats' bill removes the waiver necessity so all 50 states plus territories will be able to expand their family planning programs to people who aren't normally considered poor (likely including more teenagers - with no parental consent protections). All the states need do is come up with a $1 to get $9 more in family planning/contraception funds. Current spending on family planning/contraception in Medicare is 1.3 billion - so $200 million increase actually sounds low - relatively. "

Rush Limbaugh hopes Obama fails. Joseph Farah at WND.com isn't going to rely just on hope. He's calling on people to pray to God that Obama fails: "I want Obama to fail because his agenda is 100 percent at odds with God's."

He further explains, "Nowhere in the Bible does it teach us to obey evil rulers. Nowhere. This is a time for principled biblical resistance, not phony Christian appeasement."

AP is reporting:

President Barack Obama has told congressional Democrats to drop a proposal to spend money on family planning from the proposed $825 billion plan to stimulate the economy, a White House aide told McClatchy.

Obama is likely to offer that concession when he meets Tuesday with congressional Republicans, who've complained bitterly that the proposal is liberal pork that has nothing to do with stimulating the economy or creating jobs.