[TruthTalk] Kerry and Abortion

[Jonathan Hughes]

I made some posts a number of weeks back on Kerry, Bush and abortion.  The following article explains what I was attempting to say quite well.   Pro-Life...Pro-Kerry? Why anti-abortion voters might want to take another look by Joshua Holland, Contributor 10.29.04 Sometimes in an election year if you peel the rhetoric away from the candidates' real-life policies, you can get some surprising results. Such is the case with abortion: if you are truly "pro-life," you should vote for Senator Kerry. Because the fact is that regardless of what's said in stump speeches, abortions in this country have skyrocketed under the Bush administration after a steep and steady decline during the Clinton years. That insight comes from Dr. Glen Harold Stassen, a Christian ethicist and statistician at the Fuller Theological Seminary who calls himself "consistently pro-life." He studied data from the 1990s and from the first three years of the Bush administration. During the 1990s, abortions in the United States — under a pro-choice president who said abortion should be safe, legal and rare — decreased by 17.4 percent. At the end of Clinton's second term, abortions stood at a 24-year low. The four states that had abortion data for all three years under Mr. Bush posted increases of 1.9, 3.2, 11.3 and 111 percent respectively (that whopping 111 percent rise was in Colorado). Data for only two years were available for another 12 states. Eight of them saw abortions increase by an average of 14.6 percent and four saw declines averaging just 4.3 percent. All told, if the trend of the 1990s had continued at the same rate under the Bush administration, Dr. Stassen estimates that 52,000 fewer abortions would have been performed in 2002. His analysis included the impact of the so-called 'partial birth' abortion ban which, despite its value as rhetorical red meat for certain constituents, restricted only a very small number of abortions. You may believe what you wish about the controversial method itself, but nobody denies that it was performed in less than one percent of all procedures. Dr. Stassen suggests that the rise in abortion is a result of economic pressures under President Bush: Two-thirds of women who have abortions cite "inability to afford a child" as their primary reason. In the Bush presidency…average real incomes decreased, and for seven years the minimum wage has not been raised to match inflation. With less income, many prospective mothers fear another mouth to feed… In the 16 states [analyzed], there were 16,392 fewer marriages than the year before, and 7,869 more abortions. As male unemployment increases, marriages fall and abortion rises. Women worry about health care for themselves and their children. Since 5.2 million more people have no health insurance now than before this presidency, abortion increases. Supply and demand So if you're pro-life, you might re-think that 'single-issue' vote. And while I don't disagree with Dr. Stassen, there is another, more direct causal relationship here: the Bush administration has extended its supply-side economic theories to reproductive health. They believe that constraining the ability of providers to supply abortion will somehow cause demand to drop. At the same time, their policies have attacked family planning, sex education and condom distribution programs. These efforts — based entirely on faith and not on sound public policy data – have caused the demand for abortion services to increase. According to a detailed report by Planned Parenthood, the administration has tried to strip contraceptive coverage from the Federal Employee Benefit Plan and limited family planning programs under Medicaid. President Bush blocked legislation that required insurance companies to cover contraceptives if they covered other prescription drugs; he's frozen funding for reproductive health programs and tried to shift federal programs from comprehensive family planning to promoting abstinence for unmarried adults of any age. The administration and its allies have attacked condom use, removed information about condoms from government Web sites, and attacked the birth control pill, IUDs and other forms of contraception as being equivalent to abortion. Now, you may believe as a matter of faith that limiting access to birth control and advocating abstinence will make people stop having sex. But an enormous amount of public policy research shows that comprehensive family planning is far more effective in decreasing unwanted pregnancies than abstinence-only programs. Decreasing unwanted pregnancies leads to fewer abortions – it's that simple. And if you think that voting for Mr. Bush will lead to the re-criminalization of abortion altogether — rendering that point moot – think again. Banning the procedure outright would lead to electoral disaster for the Republican Party. That may be why Ted Olsen, who as the administration's Solicitor General argues its positions before the Supreme Court, recently told C-Span that regardless of whether Roe v. Wade was "good law," the principles that support it have been upheld in dozens of subsequent cases before the court. He didn't see criminalization as being possible. One final point: as a Senator, Mr. Kerry has never been in a position to stop a single abortion from taking place. Not one. As Governor of Texas, however, George W. Bush signed 152 death warrants with his own hand. That's more than any other governor in the history of the United States of America. So ask yourself what these issues mean to you. If you enjoy talking about them – and getting angry – then Mr. Bush is your man. He will certainly speak of a 'culture of life' in a way that you'll embrace. But if you are genuinely concerned about abortion, you might want to consider voting for a candidate that will make them safe and rare.   --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.786 / Virus Database: 532 - Release Date: 10/29/2004 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.786 / Virus Database: 532 - Release Date: 10/29/2004 --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.786 / Virus Database: 532 - Release Date: 10/29/2004 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.786 / Virus Database: 532 - Release Date: 10/29/2004