Free Contraception Reduces Abortions

Because they aren’t really anti-abortion, they’re anti-sex and anti-woman.

This is one of those claims I initially rejected when I was first exposed to it. It reeked too much of an attempt to vilify one’s enemies by attributing to them malicious beliefs that strained credulity.

Since then, almost everything I have read about the antiabortion movement has confirmed it. Worse, as Mr. Brayton* points out, their positions on many subjects are totally incompatible with an honest attempt to reduce unwanted pregnancies.

It’s one of those rare situations where an apparent logical fallacy or emotional bias strongly appears to be totally accurate. It’s also liberating. It’s hard work trying to empathize with people who you are so convinced are so totally wrong.

(Of course there are many honest anti-abortionists whose opinions support a belief that abortion is morally wrong and we should do everything we can to make it as rare as possible. My wife is pro-life, but she also believes that we have a moral responsibility to make birth control as available as possible and to provide elaborate support to women through the first year at least of childcare. I still disagree with her position on abortion but at least when we discuss it, which we do rarely these days as we’re both pretty intractable, I can respect that her goal is actually to save babies and not to punish sexually active women. However, these people are not in control of the most powerful antiabortion organizations, have no control over their messaging, and very little control over the funds that are collectively controlled by the antiabortion movement.)

*As a frequent commenter I often feel entitled to call Ed Brayton “Ed,” as if we are buddies or something. Other times this feels presumptuous. Ed, do you even care? Because Ed is a lot faster to type than Brayton or Mr. Brayton, both of which also make me feel like my writing style should be more formal than I really care to make it when commenting on a blog.

Am I missing something here? This seems almost tautological. I mean, if you provide a large number of young women with long-acting, reversible birth control, how could they possibly not have a reduction in pregnancy rates (and, presumably, abortion rates)? Well, unless they all decided to rip out their IUDs or implanted contraceptives or whatever.

bu..bu..but, Jesus!

I’m in a similar place as lofgren. I knew they were sexist, but it was a while before I made the connection between that sexism and the inconsistency of their stances on abortion and birth control.

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I’m glad I had sex ed in my schools, and thus got to see sex as something with manageable, calculated risks, instead of as something inherently evil and taboo, with a vindictive busybody god who is determined to break every condom and taint every birth control pill to “punish” people for having a little fun with their naughty bits. Said punishment involves forcing the parent to raise a child in a poor environment so that god can use the child like a blunt instrument to inflict suffering on the parent for accepting a small, calculated risk instead of no risk.

Sadly ironic that wingnuts who go on about the personhood of a zygote are perfectly content with the idea of using a much more developed, conscious, emotional child like he or she was an unthinking, unfeeling weapon of divine retribution.

they aren’t really anti-abortion, they’re anti-sex and anti-woman.

Another data point in support: their opposition to HPV vaccine.

When I first heard about that, I couldn’t believe it. You don’t want to give people a vaccine for a cancer-causing virus because it might lead to them having more sex a decade later, when they hit puberty? What the frak sort of monster are you?

Am I missing something here? This seems almost tautological. I mean, if you provide a large number of young women with long-acting, reversible birth control, how could they possibly not have a reduction in pregnancy rates (and, presumably, abortion rates)? Well, unless they all decided to rip out their IUDs or implanted contraceptives or whatever.

It puts the lie to the claims by anti-abortion types that their primary goal is opposing abortion, not taking complete control over women’s bodies and everyone’s sexual lives. Because the majority of anti-abortion activists also oppose easy access to birth control; they’d rather see a higher abortion rate than a lower one, if that lower rate comes about as a result of anything other than religious intimidation and authoritarian control.

I think that the anti abortion/contraception crowd is not merely anti sin but anti equality. If women can’t easily plan their child bearing then the old reasons for not hiring and promoting women have more real world logic behind them. This keeps women in line and dependent.

The birth rate is down. My daughter will not have a second child because between college loans and child care they just can’t afford another. They’d be up a creek without effective contraception. They would be impoverished and desperate.

Although sexism and punishment for fornication are obviously both factors in the anti-abortion-AND-anti-birth-control crowd, I think there is an additional desire on their part to “save babies’ lives” the right way. It comes down to virtue, and being virtuous by not cheating. They seem to be using a strange version of “the ends does not justify the means.”

Sure, promoting what they see as a milder form of vice (contraception) might help lessen a greater form of vice (abortion murder.) BUT — advocating sin is still advocating sin. Birth control encourages fornication because it removes just consequences. Endorsing birth control is wrong, then, no matter what sort of other good consequences come down the road. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Remember, this is a crowd which believes that, in God’s eyes, anything other than Perfection warrants damnation. If you don’t accept the sacrifice of the blemishless Lamb of God, then you WILL be as likely to hang — be damned — for a sheep, as you are for a lamb. It’s all the same when it comes to sin: the real issue is obedience. Can you obey?

They probably see lowering the abortion rate by handing out contraception the same way we might see getting evolution taught in schools by infusing it with magical, spiritual forces. It’s a violation of integrity for something which ought to be straightforward and unified.

Can’t have sex without punishment.

Well, that depends. Do you have a penis?

#*@#%*& (too pissed to form sentence).

It puts the lie to the claims by anti-abortion types that their primary goal is opposing abortion, not taking complete control over women’s bodies and everyone’s sexual lives.

Take it a step farther: the objective is social control. Given how powerful the sex drive is, it’s a really great handle [1] for controlling people.

In large parts of the USA, it’s based on forbidding kids from having sex (and while you’re at it, make sure that they get stressed out over masturbation too.) Then, when they break the Holy Rule, make sure to maximize the probability of them “getting caught” by pregnancy, disease, etc. No easy outs like contraceptives, abortions, or don’t-tell-my-parents treatment for the clap.

Then you shame the slut and force the father to marry her, with the two of them shunned until they are Saved By Accepting Jebus. Which they damn well will do, because they’re starving, unemployed, and have a kid on the way. Before you know it, they’re the most prune-faced prudes in the town — and if they aren’t, there’s always someone to remind them of how horrible they were by whispers in the Ladies’ Quilting Society.

[1] Yeah, I saw y’all wince.

I read #2 as ironic rather than regressive.

Irony here on Dispatches? Say it ain’t so.

*As a frequent commenter I often feel entitled to call Ed Brayton “Ed,” as if we are buddies or something. Other times this feels presumptuous. Ed, do you even care?

You reminded me of the Monty Python clip where John Cleese is interviewing a film director played by Graham Chapman and with each question, Cleese gets more informal with the man’s name:

“Now Edward, is it okay if I call you Edward?”

“May I call you Ed?”

Each time Chapman grudgingly allows it, until Cleese addresses him as “Eddie Baby.”

“No, you may not call me Eddie Baby!”

It’s been a long time and I don’t recall the exact words, but it was something like that.

“May I call you Ed?”

As long as we are playing free association with comedy routines, I frequently find myself recalling a bit from the TV show Arliss (I was never a fan and this bit constitutes almost the entirety of my experience with the show):

Man 1, intervening in a conversation between two visibly angry men: “OK everybody, I’ll handle this. Listen, Dick… can I call you Dick?”

Man 2: “My name is James!”

Man 1: “Dick, if you would just step over here for a minute…”

Of course, if one happened to believe that birth-control was equivalent to abortion…

Maybe use real words to cut down on the confusion?

Claim that forcibly subjecting pregnant women to a significantly higher mortality risk* = “pro-life” is not reality-based.

It’s a bit rich to exhort “real” words and then take the more common word for the same concept and twist its intended meaning in the very same post.

Nobody is pretending that “pro-life” means anything except “anti-abortion” except you. You can’t make a cogent argument by decontextualizing words and then arguing against concepts they might appear to represent rather than the concepts that they actually represent in practice.

At the same time, this argument aptly illustrates why I prefer the term “anti-abortion” to “pro-life.” While it’s true that “anti-abortion” is not as common as “pro-life,” I believe it better resists the kind of dishonest manipulation that you engage in here, by both sides of the argument. People who identify as “pro-life” like to pretend that they believe in a “culture of life” and other such nonsense, when in reality the only thing they care about is preventing abortions.

Likewise, choice advocates are fond of showing off their “cleverness” by making sarcastic statements like, “Oh, you’re pro-life are you? I suppose you’re against the DEATH PENALTY then?!” even though they know full well that “pro-life” describes only their opponents’ position on abortion and nothing more.

Both of these pretenses are stupid and dishonest. The subject of discussion is abortion, specifically abortion-on-demand. Pro-life is a misleading label. Anti-abortion and pro-choice are more literally accurate, at least that’s what I thought until you somehow managed to misconstrue “anti-abortion” as opposition to a specific type of medical doctor that doesn’t actually exist rather than opposition to a medical practice under certain circumstances. However that’s a misunderstanding I have never, ever encountered before in all the years I have been using this label so I still believe this term is less easily manipulated than pro-life and continue to prefer it.

(And really, even if you interpret it as anti-“abortionist,” what could that possibly mean except opposition to the practice that causes a person to carry the title “abortionist?” It leads to the exact same conclusion.)

Not their opinions, their facts.

I haven’t shared a single example of a fact that my wife uses to support her opposition to abortion, so you’re not really in any position to argue that she, or the other “honest” anti-abortionists’ to whom I referred, have their facts wrong. My wife and I are privy to the same facts about abortion and we have come to opposite conclusions. If her facts are detached from reality, then so are mine. So when you argue that her position is not reality-based, you are also arguing that my pro-choice stance is not reality-based.

Anti-abortionists – sorry, pro-lifers – are fully aware that outlawing at-will abortion will increase the risk for some women. However, since abortion represents pretty much maximum risk to the fetus, and the anti-abortionist places a higher value on the fetus and the rights they believe it ought to have, honest anti-abortionists are prepared to live with that increased risk. They view it as the lesser of two evils.

“However, since abortion represents pretty much maximum risk to the fetus, and the anti-abortionist places a higher value on the fetus and the rights they believe it ought to have, honest anti-abortionists are prepared to live with that increased risk. They view it as the lesser of two evils.”

This is the problem I have with “honest” anti-abortion advocates (very few of them will admit this basic fact; that’s why I put honest in quotes. It’s not anything to do with your wife, or with you).

Women simply don’t matter as much as “unborn children”. Women are expendable incubators. And any of those “unborn children” that end up being girls will themselves become expendable incubators.

lofgren, show me one Republican legislature, at the state or national level, who treats the woman as anything but an expendable incubator. I’ll help you out, there were a couple of female Republican state legislatures in, IIRC, Montana, who stood up against their party on one anti-women bill, but they were very much the exception. Have you any idea how many anti-women’s health bills, i.e. anti-contraception, anti-abortion and defunding PP, that have been attempted or passed at state and national level since 2010, it runs to hundreds across the US.

I could, perhaps, if that was the anti-abortion attitude I came across the most. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those who are anti-abortion that I come across, very much regard the woman as little more than an incubator. Which, BTW, was the point behind my previous post in that at the legislative level in the US, the attitude is very much about treating the woman as little more than an incubator. Additionally, on the few occasions I have come across those with the attitude you say your wife has, I have yet to see them prepared to fight for easy access to contraception and good sex education, both of which empirically reduce the need for abortion. And again, those who legislate against abortion in the US are the very same people blocking access to contraception and good sex education.

Lofgren (#40) – from FoAW

“The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the chicks of black swans are light grey in colour, and the South American Black-necked Swan has a black neck”.

What you’re saying (I think) is something like ‘most prisoners are guilty some are not. So let’s ignore the vast majority and focus on the tiny percentage who are not, I can falsify the argument that the majority of prisoners are guilty’.

‘Argumentum ad nigrum cignum?

😉 Dingo

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PS: It’s a shame. I have a rather nice photo of a Black Swan cob and fen with thier cygnets on the pond in Sydney Park.

For the record, I fully support the right of abortion up the age of 18, or they leave the house, whichever comes later. =)

dingojack #41, word.

Lofgren, I take no position on what your wife thinks, i.e. whether I think her ‘evil’ or not as I don’t know her. I am only relating my experience when debating with those who are anti-abortion, which is reflected in the US by the stance many of its legislators, especially republican ones, take.

Lofgren – Let’s be clear here.

I took the argument to be about the general position of the anti-abortion crowd, I did not realise it was all about your wife’s beliefs. I didn’t mean to denigrate one specific person by calling out the position of the majority, would you please apologise to her on my behalf?

John Phillips – actually, several words I think you’ll find.

Dingo

Dingo, lol.