What Pro-Choice Presidential Candidates Should Be Saying

[Dardedar]

DAR
An excellent and powerful article on abortion (many links at the site backing up the claims):

What Pro-Choice Presidential Candidates Should Be Saying

Pro-choice presidential candidates are missing a huge opportunity to win over an unlikely voting bloc: pro-life voters. The debate over reproductive rights has for decades existed in the abstract, a volley of "values" that's been heavy on emotion and light on fact. But the facts reveal surprising truths and they don't bode well for the right to life movement. The facts show the pro-choice movement is doing a better job at what the American public views as "pro-life" goals i.e. reducing the number of abortions, preventing late term abortion, than the pro-life movement. "Pro-life" presidential candidates may campaign on the "immorality" of abortion but the policies they support seem to lead to more of them. The pro-life establishment is expert at finger wagging, but isn't it time to turn the tables? Shouldn't pro-life groups and leaders be accountable for finding solutions to the high rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion, too? Especially since they're the ones who have a problem with abortion? Instead the pro-choice movement alone takes responsibility for finding effective solutions. And here's an unacknowledged fact that must be inserted into the public discourse this election: it's pro-choice policies that result in dramatic declines in the need for abortion. That's something both pro-choice and pro-life voters would be interested to know.

The pro-choice movement is the only side working on prevention of unintended pregnancy. It, alone, champions wider access to birth control -- fighting for health insurance coverage and even bringing new and more effective contraceptives to market (i.e. emergency contraception, not to mention the birth control pill itself, is available to Americans entirely because of the efforts of the pro-choice movement.) Check out your local NARAL affiliate's agenda and you'll see that most of their work is devoted to increasing access to prevention. Up until Bush took office, the sex education curricula the pro-choice movement promoted was also classified on the Centers for Disease Control's website under the heading "Programs that Work." Their scientists deemed it worthy of that title because of the reams of empirical/quantitative data showing the programs lead to reductions in the teen pregnancy and STD rates.

The right to life movement may have sanctimony on its side but, sadly, sanctimony has proven ineffective at preventing abortion. Study after study suggests the right to life approach is actually the root of the problem: leading to more abortions and later ones too. And here's where pro-choice candidates may discover an attentive pro-life electorate.

Americans, pro-life and pro-choice, support contraception particularly because its the only proven way to reduce unintended pregnancy and abortion. (Only 11 percent of sexually active women don't use contraception and from this 11 percent comes 50 percent of the nation's abortions.) But very few voters are aware that not one pro-life organization in the United States supports contraception. Instead, pro-life groups lead campaigns against contraception. Ninety-one percent of the American public strongly favors contraception. When pro-choice presidential candidates make the discussion about prevention, contraception and results, they'll win. No less than 80 percent of self-described pro-life voters strongly support contraception too.

The rest at: Huffington Post

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

The anti-abortion groups (they are NOT pro-LIFE) have the not so hidden agenda of "children, kitchen, and church" - I don't remember it in the original German - for women. The best way to keep women in the serving class is to keep them "barefoot and pregnant". That's why they are anti-contraception as well as anti-abortion and anti-sex education.

[Tony]

"Conservatives want live babies so they can make dead soldiers."
George Carlin

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Well, Hitler did say that war is the natural state of a strong society. Can't have war without soldiers.