Writing at the St. Louis Tea Party site, PlasticEyes, implies that liberals are racists:
But even though we should celebrate [the Stupak amendment] victory, we must remain vigilant, visible, and vocal because the pro-death Democrats will not give up. They are in thrall to Planned Parenthood, which wants to include abortion in socialized healthcare so they can finally achieve Margaret Sanger’s goal of eliminating “undesirables” before they are born. It’s not hard to imagine a government health care counselor withholding prenatal care from a poor black woman but offering her a free abortion.
The implied empathy of tea partiers for poor black women is touching.
To sum up, we’re accused of trying to prevent the birth of black babies by offering abortions instead of birth control. What can I say? When you’re right, you’re right, PlasticEyes. We do want to prevent the birth of “undesirables”–i.e. babies not desired by the mothers. That final phrase, though, offers kind of an important distinction between what you say we want and what we do want.
Republicans, on the other hand, want neither birth control nor abortions. It was the Missouri Republican House that passed HB 1010 in 2006 banning county health clinics from providing family planning services. Fired Up! observed:
So the GOP has finally come clean that they are opposed to contraception. They used to argue that they opposed family planning because Planned Parenthood played a role. But now the GOP has targeted family planning provided by the county health clinics. Their action is a direct attack on women’s access to traditional family planning services.
The amendment, offered by Rep. Susan Phillips (R-Kansas City) removed “voluntary choice of contraception, including natural family planning” as one of the permissible services that county health clinics could provide with state funding.
All that empathy for poor black women that PlasticEyes evinced rings hollow when you consider that many patients at county health clinics are poor women–and in urban districts, they’re poor black women.
During the spring of ’06, Ed Martin was garnering press by opposing another form of birth control, Plan B, and pretending to do so because it was a form of abortion. Oh, horsehockey. It prevents a fertilized egg from being implanted. That’s not the same as an abortion. But denying it to women does bring on unwanted pregnancies, and, guess what … abortions. Kaiser Family Foundation (via Fired Up!) says:
Researchers estimate that widespread use of EC (emergency contraception) could potentially prevent up to half of the approximately 3 million unintended pregnancies that occur annually in the U.S., and one study has suggested that broader use could help prevent as many as 700,000 pregnancies that now result in abortion.
So now I’m confused. Do Republicans actually oppose abortion? Because they fought damned hard to ensure that hundreds of thousands of unnecessary abortions would occur each year.
Or do they just oppose poor women (aka sluts) enjoying sex without paying a penalty? Okay, not fair. Maybe Rep. Susan Phillips thinks they’re sluts, but PlasticEyes would favor handing them condoms. Whatever. All I know is that tea partiers are not long on logic.
From: Cynthia Davis
Sent: Mon 3/20/2006 8:02 PM
To: (redacted)
Cc: (redacted)
Subject: RE: Contraceptive Article…
Dear (redacted),
I appreciate your dedication to your legislative duties while on Spring Break. Your letter seemed to indicate that if we create chemical and pharmaceutical ways to tamper with mother nature, then we will solve the problem. Even if you solve a physical problem you still have not solved the moral, emotional and spiritual problems that come with a promiscuous lifestyle.
When I was listening to the debate last week I wondered what kind of man would want to enjoy free sex and then expect her to provide for her own contraceptives? These are the kind of men who want free whores. Any man who would be so low life as that does not deserve to have any woman love him. Smart women will stay away from men who use them and abuse them.
Why is it that most of the e-mail letters I get on this topic is from men? I have concluded that the chemicals and drugs are their way to have all the goodies and not pay the price. When you encourage this behavior, you create more of it. In other words, if the state starts paying for contraceptives we will have more babies than if we just teach people to not expect free prostitution from poor people. Don’t you think having to pay child support for the next 18 years is a suitable disincentive?
I learned this from teaching my own children: Natural consequences is usually the best teacher. Bailing them out only encourages them to be irresponsible the next time. Some people think that we will the rate of teenage pregnancy if we put children in classes that teach them how to use birth control. (sic) This backfires for the same reason. More kids are prompted to experiment with sex if you teach them that this is expected behavior.
The irresponsible men love it when women think they are supposed to give away free sex without any consequences. However, you still have not solved the problem of the increase of sexually transmitted diseases that you are creating by encouraging free sex. Susan Phillips said it best when she said that sexual behavior needs to be between a husband and a wife, not between women and the state. The problem is not the babies, it is the lack of a family. Bottom line: publicly funded contraception will create additional moral squaller (sic) and works against the Republican principle of encouraging personal responsibility.
Thank you again for your interest in debating this topic. I am sure that this theme will be coming up again later in the session.
Sincerely,
Cynthia Davis