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Jan
8
It’s not surprising that when the GOP’s Congressional leader, Ohio’s own John Boehner, puts forth statements like this:
“How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives? How does that stimulate the economy?”
Hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives?
The Ohio congressman’s office explains. One proposal included in the stimulus package would expand Medicaid family planning services to all 50 states.
The proposal would enable people who don’t qualify for Medicaid to receive the family planning services, including contraceptives.
“Whether or not you think that is good public policy, it has nothing to do with an economic stimulus,” a spokesman for Boehner said.
that we end up with studies that reveal information like this, from CNN:
Most sexually active unmarried young adults believe pregnancy should be planned, but about half do not use contraception regularly, according to a study published Tuesday [12/15/09].
The survey of 1,800 people age 18 to 29 was conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
…
Many of the people surveyed said they did not know much about contraception to begin with — 63 percent said they knew little or nothing about birth control pills, and 30 percent said they had scant knowledge about condoms.
The sheer hypocrisy of his reasoning, given that he supported tacking on a pro-gun amendment (to let firearms into our national parks) to a credit card reform bill and both of those items were signed by Obama, makes me lose my breath.
And yet, there are so many reasons to know about and share information that exists on reproductive health and reproductive rights, family planning, contraception, sexually transmitted diseases and how all these issues play out around not only the United States but also globally.
Leave it to Planned Parenthood to create tools for the 21st Century to make it easier than ever to access such information on a very individual basis.
Why on earth am I writing about this? Because of the avalanche of information that young people are saying that they don’t even KNOW about contraception. Now, that’s not surprising, given the fact that during the Bush administration, money was poured into abstinence-only education even though the rate of pre-marital sex has been 95% for some time now.
And then there’s the news that a vast number of 18-29 year olds may know practically impractical quantities of knowledge about contraception.
And then there is the global perspective. From the summary of a just-released report from the Guttmacher Institute, “Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing in Family Planning and Maternal and Newborn Health:”
“It is critical to the progress of the world’s most disadvantaged countries and regions to address the high rates of maternal and newborn death that have long been endemic. Investing simultaneously in family planning and in maternal and newborn health is cost-effective,” says Ms. Obaid [Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director of UNFPA-United Nations Population Fund].
“The report outlines how to best focus resources to achieve the greatest gains. Investing in women has enormous benefits, not just for individuals and families, but for societies as a whole. It can truly transform the future of developing nations,” added Dr. Camp.
How important are these findings and acting on these findings? So important that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be giving a speech tomorrow about them.
Why tomorrow? Because it’s the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development.
So, what can you, what can we do to help further these goals, here and abroad? Well, the Internet knows no bounds and Planned Parenthood has created web-based tools – what they are calling All Access widgets that can help people learn not only the basics but also get answers to their personal questions regarding the various topics related to reproductive health.
On my right-hand sidebar, I have the Our Bodies, Ourselves widget that scrolls through important articles related to women’s health. I’ll be adding the widgets for All Access to this post later today (once I get the embed codes). If you run a site or blog about or have readers who are interested in their reproductive health, please take a look and consider how you can help make these tools available where people will see them.
As the report that Secretary Clinton will site tomorrow emphasizes, the health problems related to population and development are preventable. But people have to know how first.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:19 am January 8th, 2010 in Education, Health Care, Ohio, Politics, Sexism, Women, Youth
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21 Responses to “With GOP leaders who scoff at spending on contraception, slack in education picked up by Planned Parenthood”
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I highly recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Youre-Teaching-Child-What-Physician/dp/1596985542/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262976210&sr=1-5
It explains why young people’s intentions don’t match up with young people’s actions.
For those who are very concerned about irresponsible sexual behavior and the STD’s, unplanned pregnancies, and other consequences that follow, start with yourself: Do you have sufficient accurate information at your disposal to guide your own decision-making when it comes to sex? Are you able to match your actions with your intentions? Next, your family: Do your children (even your grown children, if such be the case) and other family members have sufficient and accurate information at their disposal, and are they able to match actions with intentions? These responsibilities to educate self and family should not be considered optional. After these responsibilities are met, then we may seek to influence public policy starting at the community level, perhaps beginning with the school districts. A bottom-up approach, I believe, will better reach its targets than a top down approach that starts in Congress.
I have to admit skepticism toward some of the “think tanks” in this arena. Some of them seem to be angling to sexualize our nation’s youth population and enticing them into sexual experimentation. I think there are some wolves in sheep’s clothing devouring the flock. I think the book I’ve recommended may help individuals in ferreting out where the wolves lie in wait.
Well – I think this is really a set of issues that requires a full frontal assault, Daniel. You make some good points, formulate questions that do need asking and so on. But the relationship building that let’s kids trust parents and let’s parents be heard by their kids, and the armor and discretion our kids need to develop and learn in order to know how to decipher messages not coming from known or trusted sources are also all necessary components of being healthy, safe, happy and making good choices.
Sadly, not all children get the benefit of parenting that involves a priority on these things and so the larger community does serve as a safety net and an information giver, lest all of us end up paying the price.
Since you and I agree that the larger community serves as a safety net, then if the larger community democratically decides it’s in their best interests to furnish contraceptives, then let the larger community procure them. I don’t have a problem with John Boehner opposing the federal government’s procurement of contraceptives at the Congressional level.
This is not apples to apples. I cannot look to a better example of why our federal government should support family planning and why we should be willing to allow our tax dollars to go to family planning efforts than Iran – yes, Iran, which banned ALL contraception and led to the explosion of unemployment and strife they now are dealing with in their 50-70% of their population which is 30 and under.
These decisions have consequences, Daniel. It just isn’t as simple as you outline it – IMO. Or as Boehner puts it.
WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?
I’m not sure I heard you right, and if I did, I’m shocked.
This is all about population control to you? Population control perpetrated by the national government? Are we talking China’s one-child policy here in America?
And what about reproductive choice? Should individuals have it?
It sounds as if you are saying overpopulation is the reason for the climb in unemployment in this country, and the federal government must foist contraceptives upon us to curb our population.
I could never support such a policy and never subscribe to such a philosophy.
Daniel – don’t get knee-jerk on me. Come on.
I don’t know what else to make of it. Perhaps this (overpopulation) would merit more elaboration in a separate WLST post.
Daniel – maybe it has to do with your definition of family planning versus mine? There’s plenty of places to find it, but this one in Wikipedia is a good place to start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning
This concept of overpopulation in connection w/family planning is, imo, very very outdated. It’s how we may have learned about it in the 1970s but we and family planning have come a long long way since then, if only because it’s a more accepted concept to discuss in public.
That only attempts to describe family planning. That does not tell me how you, personally, stand on the topic of overpopulation. At face value, I can’t subscribe to your philosophy reflected in #4. I think this merits a more complete and precise elaboration.
On family planning: It takes place within a family. The family does the planning. What’s government got to do with it?
Daniel, Iran’s case isn’t even about overpopulation – I really don’t know why you keep bringing that in. Iran could probably have planned for and accommodated its decision to ban contraception if it wanted to, but it didn’t and hasn’t and now there’s rampant unemployment – not poverty and starvation and a lowering of living standards as associated with overpopulation.
Please – I fail to understand why you’re making this about that. It’s not – for me anyway. This thread isn’t about most of that anyway – but if you post about overpopulation and its connection to Boehner’s distaste for family planning in our purportedly modern industrialized nation, I would be more than happy to engage.
I’m glad you agree that overpopulation is not at the root cause of Iran’s problems. At least you’ve partially clarified one point. As for the rest, I’m still not sure what you are driving at. If it’s merely that Iran’s government shouldn’t interfere with an individual family’s intimate decisions about childbearing, then I agree, but I don’t know how that translates to a repudiation of Boehner’s vote.
re: “If it’s merely that Iran’s government shouldn’t interfere with an individual family’s intimate decisions about childbearing, then I agree, but I don’t know how that translates to a repudiation of Boehner’s vote.”
I’m laughing so hard – they are separate – completely don’t belong in the same sentence but with this lengthy thread now things are getting conflating – and I’m not necessarily innocent in that.
My point of the post was that Planned Parenthood wouldn’t be stepping up its education steps if folks like Boehner didn’t talk about contraception with such contempt. My point about Iran was that the danger in a knee-jerk policy of just “Ban Contraception!” is that it’s completely unrealistic and is unlikely to achieve whatever contorted goal might be devised to justify it.
That’s all.
Education is good- getting from the family is good – getting from outside the family is necessary as reinforcement – suggesting that our government has no role in supporting these things is unrealistic.
Global kinds of thoughts – no darts at any one thing in particular.
Does that help at all?
OK, that helps. Just because Boehner opposes procurement of contraception by the federal government doesn’t equal a ban on contraception. I don’t think Boehner voted to block people from accessing information on reproductive choices, either. If I were in Congress, I don’t think I’d authorize the federal government to buy contraceptives in bulk, either. Informed citizens can procure them at their own cost. The key is having informed citizens, and the responsibility starts with oneself, then spreads to one’s family, and, if it’s clear that knowledge still hasn’t fully propagated, to one’s community.
“Informed citizens can procude them at their own cost.”
Daniel – this is opening a HUGE Pandora’s box of suggesting that we review EVERYTHING that the Feds given money to re: what it procures for citizens.
I’m very against the faith-based and community-initiative office. Citizens can procure faith on their own too. (JUST AN EXAMPLE – no time to explore further in lots of comments – but I would love to sometime)
We agree on this, really: “The key is having informed citizens, and the responsibility starts with oneself, then spreads to one’s family, and, if it’s clear that knowledge still hasn’t fully propagated, to one’s community.”
But we must acknowledge and cannot ignore that for those citizens who remain uninformed or choose to not educate their kids or follow the education, the broader community winds up paying one way or another, and the innocent kids that are born also often suffer from this reality.
It is in all citizens’ best interest that there be a national tone set focused exactly on what you and I agree on, in recognition of the reality that not all citizens take the actions we wish they would and then the consequences affect us all.
That is reality – I’m not saying it’s the best or the preference.
Daniel – so for academic analogizing only, check this out and tell me, as a person with a great interest in the separation of church and state and as someone who feels about religion being something for the home and not the gov’t the way you do about the procurement of contraception, check this out!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/21/trijicon-will-remove-secr_n_432349.html
What exactly is the analogy? You’ve lost me.
The book I recommended by Dr. Miriam Grossman is not a religious view of sex ed. It’s a physician’s view of sex ed.
Did Boehner oppose the spending on contraceptives at the federal level because he’s advocating religion? I thought his argument was that it’s not an economic stimulus.
There are some local governments that buy contraceptives to distribute for free. I don’t think Boehner said anything about putting a halt to that. I think he just questioned what the federal government was doing by procuring boatloads of contraceptives. For the record, if I were a local government official and the community expressed a heartfelt desire for free contraceptive distribution, I’d be much more inclined to approve of the expenditure at the local level than I would at the federal level if I were a member of Congress making federal appropriations. I just don’t see this as part and parcel of the role of federal government.
I don’t think we had injected any religion into this discussion, did we? Hasn’t our discussion been totally secular?
I think I’m confused, because I don’t know the connection between scriptural citations inscribed on a gun sight and what we’ve been discussing.
Oh, I responded to comment #16, and then I realized you also had a comment #15, so let me address #15.
Ok, let’s say you with your spouse, or I with my spouse, or somebody else with their spouse, in coming to agreement on family planning, arrives at the decision that you/we/they do not want to have a child at the present time. Isn’t it natural that you/we/they go out and buy contraceptives? If I and a spouse decide that we won’t have kids now, I’m not going to expect that the federal government will issue my wife the pill or issue me a pack of condoms. That’s something I can buy when I go get toilet paper, or vitamins, or laundry detergent. What’s the big deal?
If the community has a need for free contraceptive distribution, because of poverty or some other factor, then the local government can procure it for distribution through their health department or other designated distribution point. If the citizens of a community petition a school board to have free contraceptives available to the students in the school nurses office, then let the school board make the purchase. I think most communities wouldn’t make that request of their school board, but, if the community thought the need was urgent enough, it would be handled at the local level, not the federal level.
I’ve also been on the record in opposition to government funding of faith-based initiatives, so you’ll get no argument from me on that score. I’m not even sure why you bring it up in the context of this discussion.
I acknowledge that, though the ideal is for every adult to be informed, and for all adults to inform their families, there are a majority of communities that don’t meet up to the ideal, as ignorance of reproductive choices can be spotted in many communities. Thus, education about human reproduction is mandated for school instruction virtually anywhere one looks. I’m not saying that there’s a problem with that. What I am saying, though, is that such programs, if they are to be optimally effective, are community-based, and are best provisioned at local and state levels. If handled at the federal government level, a scattershot, less-targeted effect is likely to result. Community needs are not uniform across the United States. I don’t see the wisdom of assigning such a role to the federal government.
ed hardy
Do you still have 2 comments waiting in your moderation folder?
Thanks for reminding me – will check – sorry – been in and out of computer!