3 January 2006 - 10:14pm
De-Funding the 'Contraceptive Mentality'
from Talk to Action
What is the contraceptive mentality, anyway? If you think it sounds like a good idea, not only are you probably going to hell, but you'll never, never cut it as a Texas legislator.
Courtesy of the American Life League, Monsignor Vincent Foy provides us with a brief primer on this insidious threat to our very survival as a nation. The monsignor would understand perfectly why a group of influential "Christian" legislators in Texas have embarked on a crusade to stamp out birth control while there's still time.
Fostering the Culture of Life does not only mean respect for life from conception until natural death. It means also repudiation of contraception, the root cause of all other attacks on human life. Contraception, which shows a willingness to sacrifice life to lust, is a fuse that ignites a whole chain of evils destructive of a just society, from abortion to euthanasia.
Worse than the ten plagues which devastated Egypt, the contraceptive mentality is a multi-pronged attack on society. It tends to permeate more and more social structures and even creates its own institutions.
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The contraceptive mentality diminishes the level of love in society and increases the level of selfishness and lust. In education, it promotes sex-education and the resultant corruption of the young. In hospital care, it leads to sterilization, abortion and euthanasia.
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If this contraceptive mentality continues to prevail, our society is headed for disaster. Statistical proofs show that if the present course is continued, by the year 2050 the U.S. will be a Third World nation.It is only by a miracle of grace and mercy that the contraceptive mentality can be turned into one of love and life. The hour is late; a dark night of the social order approaches. We need to be heroic in our support of pro-life causes. We need to recognize that contraception is the new terrorism.
Some of our leading "pro-life" heroes in the Texas Legislature appear to have recognized the evil of contraception for what it is. In apparent agreement with Msgr. Foy, they seem determined to eradicate its pernicious influence and engineer the breaking of a new dawn upon the social order here in Texas. Among the institutions spawned by the contraceptive mentality are Planned Parenthood and many other state-funded family planning clinics that serve tens of thousands of low-income women around the state every year. Now -- after decades of helping women to prevent unplanned pregnancies and untimely deaths from breast and cervical cancers -- their day of reckoning has come.
The anti-contraception campaign began in earnest in 2003, when state Sen. Tommy Williams (pictured above, fourth from left, with his good friends at Texas Right to Life) -- a champion of the "pro-life" lobby and an avowed enemy of Planned Parenthood -- devised a plan to close down Planned Parenthood clinics across Texas. State money would no longer fund any entity connected in any way, however tenuously, to the provision of abortion care. Planned Parenthood immediately mounted a legal challenge, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals eventually sent Williams home with a scolding, but the law itself remains on the books. And this year, Williams' anti-choice jihad is finally bearing fruit, closing down the family planning clinics of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
Leaders at UT Southwestern, which had run the program for decades, were worried about possibly violating the law because some of its doctors practice medicine at hospitals where elective abortions are performed.
Dr. Ron Anderson, Parkland's president and chief executive officer, said the state Legislature was attempting to take money away from Planned Parenthood.
"I don't think the state Legislature understood the consequence of this," he told the hospital board. "It's a big snafu."
Planned Parenthood officials said at the time that the 2003 law was an effort to penalize the agency for providing legal abortions by cutting money for other services. Money instead went to public clinics that did not provide family planning. The organization sued successfully to hang on to all but 5 percent of its funding.
Emily Snooks, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of North Texas, said it was a shame that any family planning program would cut its services. Thirteen of the agency's 28 clinics in North Texas depend on such federal funds.
"It's the thousands of underserved North Texas women who are going to suffer the most," she said. "Planned Parenthood is the only family planning provider for uninsured women in Tarrant and other rural counties."
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Parkland officials took over the UT Southwestern program after realizing that the charity hospital would end up delivering more babies without such a program. Its annual 16,000 births usually are the highest in the nation.
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A family planning program for low-income women in Dallas County is planning to close three neighborhood clinics and lay off more than 30 employees despite efforts by Parkland Memorial Hospital to keep the program intact.As many as 11,000 women could lose access to postpartum care and birth control next year, doctors from UT Southwestern Medical Center warned Parkland's Board of Managers on Tuesday.
The doctors, who are running the program for Parkland, blamed an almost 25 percent cut in federal funding distributed by the state next year – a loss totaling $1.7 million.
The family planning program cared for 33,738 women at seven clinics over the last year.
If, as Dr. Anderson supposed, the Legislature as a whole didn't understand what it was doing, Tommy Williams certainly did. Because in the 2005 legislative session, he came back and did it again. And this time he not only crippled the purveyors of the "contraceptive mentality" even further, but accomplished his pet faith-based initiative by diverting millions in state funds intended for family planning and primary health screening into financing the highly dubious practices of crisis pregnancy centers.
Senate budget writers want to shift $5 million from programs that provide birth control and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases to a pregnancy counseling program that only pushes alternatives to abortion.
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Proponents argue that the money would be funneled to a needed social service, and that Medicaid could pay for the services that will lose some funding.Critics say the change effectively would eliminate basic medical care for more than 16,600 low-income women who are served by the family planning program.
"It's almost ridiculous that they will take money from a program that will prevent abortion," said Peggy Romberg, CEO of Women's Health And Family Planning Association of Texas.
The reduction in state money will reduce the availability of birth control services, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and urinary tract infections, and breast exams at clinics that receive state money through the program, Romberg said.
"There's a lot of money in that Family Planning strategy, and what we did was earmark $5 million for pregnancy assistance centers," said Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, one of the lawmakers who voted for the amendment.
Pregnancy assistance centers, which are not receiving state money, provide pregnancy testing and counseling that advocates against abortion. Finance Committee chairman Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said the reduction is relatively small compared with the Family Planning program's total budget of $54 million, and Medicaid provides many of the same services for low-income women.
"People need to keep in context that the $5 million being taken away from Family Planning is out of a Medicaid budget that is almost $25 billion. "Because it's so small, it doesn't really justify all the hyperventilating that goes along with it."
In a typically misleading attempt to downplay the effects of his and Tommy Williams' anti-birth control shell game, Ogden conflates the Medicaid budget for all health care in Texas with the already underfunded family planning program. And here's some entirely justified hyperventilation, reproduced exactly as I received it.
so,
this morning i dragged myself out of bed before dawn to be at planned parenthood at 730 and wait in the freezing morning shade until 9 for my
annual exam. at 930, myself and the 25 other women (of color.of course) grumbled in solidarity and confusion, wondering why we were still waiting and shivering. finally an employee opened the doors and coralled us inside just to inform us that there would be no walk-in exams today.or tomorrow.or ever. are you kidding me? i thought. nope. no joke. turns out the good ol
boys at the texas state legislature cut pp's funding by 40% last friday.i stood in the office stunned while 3 mothers began to cry. another women, at least 65 years old, turned to me and asked, "que dijo?" what did she say? as i tried to explain what i still didnt understand, i began to feel my anger swell. overnight one of the safest, most reliable, most critical social services vanished. all patients over 24 years old have to seek new clinics, all birth control now costs $25/month, all annuals $125, all pregnancy tests $30.
i stood waiting for the chance of one more pack of birth control pills, asking questions answered with shrugs and apologies, watching faces full of exasperation. when my name was called i tried again to get more information, but the fact was clear and simple; accessible family planning and women's reproductive rights are not a priority. i left with a pack of pills after giving all my $35, sat in my car and cried.
here's the kicker. texas lawmakers are promoting crisis pregnancy centers instead. that's right, slash funding for sexual health and preventive services and create crisis centers. this whole freakin country is a crisis center. i want to see those lawmakers walk into clinics all over this state and have the guts to tell a room full of women, "sorry, go home and buy condoms" or "sorry, god willed those children and you're on your own to figure out the rest". i want them to watch women lose the thread of hope they were gripping.
so now what? write letters and make phone calls? i dont think so. the truth is i dont know what to do. i do know nothing will be done if people dont know. so in my emotional, reactionary state, that's what i am trying to do.
i'm fighting hard to keep my faith.
thanks for reading,
-tanya
Planned Parenthood in downtown Austin now has this notice for its patients:
Because of decisions made by elected representatives in the Texas government, this clinic will not receive enough money to take care of all the patients who need services. Our state government made decisions to limit services from trusted family planning providers like Planned Parenthood—for purely political reasons.
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As of January 1, 2006, the only patients who will be able to receive services at this clinic are women who are 24 years old or younger and who are residents of Travis County. Also, clinic hours have been cut.
Planned Parenthood in Waco is hoping that an emergency fundraiser will help to keep its doors open.
All across the state, tens of thousands of women are being deprived of their only access to family planning services that also include primary screening for cancer, high blood pressure, anemia, STDs and other threats to their health.
The state's Health and Human Services Commission tells us that this is a good thing, because "the active promotion of childbirth" is now the official policy of the State of Texas. That the women affected by this dictate might not want to bear children in the service of the state's policy is not an official concern.
But wait; there's more, as detailed by the Houston Chronicle.
Women, children last
An irrational, secretive redistribution of millions of dollars robs Texas' poorest women of health care
It's not as if they weren't doing their job. In a state with the nation's highest number of uninsured residents, family planning clinics across Texas for years have offered women preventive medicine, including cancer screening, contraception and gynecological, prenatal and postpartum care.
This winter, however, these providers have been slammed by laws quietly crafted last spring. In riders that required no public discussion, Texas legislators arranged to shift $5 million of the federal money on which these clinics rely to a different sort of service: programs "for women seeking alternatives to abortion focused on pregnancy support services that promote childbirth." Another $20 million was diverted from the experienced clinics to alternative programs that may not provide the same level of service.
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El Paso's [Family Planning Department], which loses 50 percent of its funds, must now turn away some of its clients. The disruption will force more women into the county hospital at late stages of illness.
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In Dallas, withdrawal of $1.7 million is forcing the closure of three family planning clinics. In Houston, where the Legislature cut more than 50 percent of Planned Parenthood funds, as many as 10,000 women will lose access to well-woman exams, contraception and cancer screenings. Under federal law, none of these Texas clinics could have used these funds to perform abortions. Nevertheless, legislators chose to cripple the clinics.The pivotal operating funds will go to pregnancy crisis centers or to 19 Federally Qualified Health Centers — some of which never requested the help. These FQHCs are valuable resources, offering primary care to poor neighborhoods. But the clinics are scarce, far-flung, and often lack family planning services such as contraception. They can't replace the multiservice family planning clinics that have treated Texans for decades.
Legislators have every right to push abortion alternatives — as long as they don't abdicate their other duties. But ravaging working clinics during a health coverage crisis has nothing to do with protecting women or children. It's self-interested strutting, and it's trampling on the health of thousands of Texas wives, mothers and daughters.
Dozens of long time family planning and women's health care providers have lost millions of dollars in state and federal funding. A training program for women's health care nurse practitioners has closed. Clinics that have served communities for decades already have closed or will be closing soon, while the FQHCs selected to receive huge amounts of unrequested funding are so unprepared to offer family planning services that many are not even making applications for the money.
If you object to the heroic efforts of our faithful public servants to save Texas women from the "new terrorism" of contraception, if you fail to understand that contraception is the gateway to abortion and a dark night of the social order, perhaps it is only because you, too, have been deluded and deceived by the contraceptive mentality. But if you are fortunate enough to live in Texas, your salvation is at hand.
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Comments
...to impose their sexual anxieties on everyone else. Thank you for posting this.
and admit they don't want women to enjoy sex. That's the whole thing. If those girls learn about orgasms, it will be the end of civilization as we know it! Well, good. I say pass out the batteries and let's bring this mother down. Patriarchy dies a little every time a single girl gets off, so do your thing, ladies.
Support the Women's Autonomy and Sexual Sovereignty Movements
for the additional food stamps, housing, medicaid, and educational costs for the children who get born because their mothers couldn't afford to get birth control? Oh I forgot -- while they are full of concern for the pre-born, they could give a rat's ass about anyone post-born and pre-dead.
I've read the entire article and the three comments. One thing strikes me. The woman who stood in line at Planned Parenthood for hours only to be forced to pay $35 for her month's supply of the pill. The fact is that Planned Parenthood buys a month's supply of the pill for $1.50. If it was really concerned about the women, it would have cut the prices -- particularly for this one-time sale. But it didn't. It got every penney it could. Many people are upset about Planned Parenthood not because of the products but because of the enormous profits it makes every year. PP made $35 Million in profits in 2003-2004 and over $500 Million in the last 16 years. PP is a business preying on women. Oh, and by the way, 70% of PP's customers are under the age of 25. Since it was stated that this age group will still get services paid for, it is even more outrageous that PP wouldn't lower its prices for the older women.
they keep the lights on, pay staff, provide services for the indigent? They pull money out of thin air?
Always distortions with you people. They are not "profits" if the money is plowed back into the organization.
...is that they're Communists?
Uh... I used to work for PP.
PP had several nurse practitioners, and dozens of medical staff on hand.
PP have rent to pay, bills to pay, often additional security to pay for.
PP has to pay medical malpractice insurance for the staff- as with anyone practicing any kind of medicine.
People may not agree with this but they also pay a lot of lobbyists and lawyers to keep contraceptives and choice legal in the US. Lemme just say that they pay a lot less to their lobby/law team than other organizations like... the oil cartel.
Seriously, do you think doctors should work for free? What about police and firemen?
The money that PP makes goes back into the organization. Even at 35 bucks/pack, that's still cheaper than a lot of pharmacies.
I spent years on the Pill and Depo...had NO SEX DRIVE, which studies are now confirming may be permanent, had all kinds of unpleasant side effects...and for what? So that the man in my life could have his kicks scot free? No thanks and no more.
I wish more women would see that contraception, especially hormonal contraception, is harmful to their health and suppresses their amazing fertility just so men can use them without consequence. By the grace of God someone introduced me to natural family planning--which, by the way, is FREE and can be used BY ANYONE--and I said goodbye to the hormones forever. Why in the world is being willing to take the Pill, which even the WHO just declared a "major carcinogen," somehow more "empowering" to women than teaching them to learn about their bodies and to force the men in their lives to restrain themselves during the fertile times if they want to avoid a baby?
Sorry...I for one am not singing the blues over efforts to squash contraception. All its done for women is endanger their health, teach men to use them, and reinforce the idea that children are plagues who occasionally "slip through" our best efforts to avoid them. Blech.
big jackpots playing the dollar slots, too!
i can't tell whether you are serious, or just some troll looking to get a reaction out of people. on the off chance that you are serious, please let me enlighten you.
the pill is not a major carcinogen. further, it works for a great many women without any side effects at all. the rhythm method is highly unreliable. if you insist on using it and have side effects from the pill, please use other non-hormonal forms of contraceptive as a backup. condoms for instance. a diaphram maybe. something! anything! besides relying on your body temperature and the phase of the moon. the catholic church permits the rhythm method. look how well its worked for all those catholic women with 9 and 10 children.
what i find most sad, however, is your view of sex. perhaps it because you have such a low sex drive that you see sex as being smoething that benefits men only at women's expense. as a lesbian, i can't say that i disagree with you. i can't imagine anyone getting turned on by sex with men. but many women do. and for them, sex with men is actually something they enjoy, something they seek out, something they pursue. these women aren't being used by men when they consent to sex with men. and women who enjoy sex with men should be free to use whatever form of birth control works for them, including the pill.
i hope that someday, whether its with a man, a woman, or by yourself, you can discover that sex is a natural, enjoyable act for women, that an orgasm is a wonderful thing.
i strongly urge you to check out The Women's Autonomy and Sexual Sovereignty page.
Artemis,
Most of what you say is erroneous.
First, natural family planning is NOT the rhythm method. It is highly effective, as effective as any oral contraception. People have not used the rhythm method for 30 years. See:
http://www.bygpub.com/natural/natural-family-planning.htm
Second, the Pill IS a major carcinogen. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported in its July 29, 2005 press release that a team of scientists has determined that combined oral contraceptives (estrogen plus progestogen) are "carcinogenic to humans." In fact oral contraceptives were upgraded to a Group 1 classification, "sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans." See http://health.dailynewscentral.com/content/view/0001386/43/
The Pill does affect libido, sometimes permanently: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,17.... I don't see how insulting my sex drive makes any point other than to paint me as an oppressive prude, but maybe you ought to consider that taking a libido-suppressing pill for 10 years might have something to do with the reason many women claim "headache" to the men in their lives. My husband is profoundly grateful I got off the Pill because for the first time I am interested in sex, too! And guess what, we even have orgasms without using hormones!! GASP! The horror!!
The side effects also don't occur for a "few" women...40% of women experience one or more side-effects on hormonal contraception: http://www.unm.edu/~shc1/pill-side-effects.html.
Some are even susceptible to death: link. [Link converted to html -mg] I can give you a dozen stories about the birth control patch killing almost two dozen women in two years, but I won't.
And let's not forget...even Planned Parenthood admits that 60% of the women who come in for abortions were on contraception when they got pregnant. So acting like hormonal contraception is the panacea for unplanned pregnancies is absurd.
I'm not a troll. But I do find the "pro-birth control" arguments to be uninformed. Women thought the Pill was going to liberate them, but all it really did was endanger their health and make them sexually available to men without consequences. And we wonder why we can't get men to commit...why they treat us like pieces of meat and why they can't seem to see beyond our sexual utility. Given the personal empowerment I have experienced by insisting that my husband exercise sexual restraint so that ~my body can work as nature intended,~ I wish more women would see the beauty and effectiveness of natural fertility awareness methods of family planning.
you seem to miss the fine points of the statistics you site.
here's what your New Mexico Student Health link actually says:
So the vast majority of that 40% experience only minor, transient side effects and only during the first three months. And many of those effects, if they don't resolve themselves, can be resolved by changing to a different pill.
Further, as I state below (with the exact quote from the report), the July 29, 2005 WHO report you refer to specifically says that the Pill causes a slight increase in risk for some cancers while at the same time protecting women from other cancers. It goes so far as to speculate that the net result may in fact be that the Pill overall is beneficial to women in cancer prevention. That is a far cry from calling it "a major carcinogen."
You are also muddling the facts when you argue that Planned Parenthood admits that 60% of women who come in for abortions were on contraception when they got pregnant. Assuming that statistic is ture, it clearly includes all forms of contraception, including those that are far less reliable than the Pill. The Pill has a very high success rate in prevent pregnancy.
Regarding your story of a woman's death from Texas online, the article clearly states, "Although the actual cause for Nicole's pulmonary embolism was not identified after numerous tests, experts say that this might be a rare result caused by the birth-control pills that she was taking. " Key words and phrases: "actual cause...not identified" "might" "rare." Even acknowledging that in very rare cases the Pill may cause embolism, the article goes on to say that only 10% of those embolisms are fatal.
As for the low libido, I don't dispute that some small percent of women may experience that side effect. As for whether it is permanent or not, I am unconvinced. At the very least further study is needed to determine whether other factors are affecting the libido of those women.
I don't dispute that any drug that a person takes can have adverse or unintended affects. All gynocologists are supposed to inform women of the risks and potential side effects to taking the Pill. As with any drug, if the patient is willing to accept those risks, they should have a right to do so.
Finally, I am still confounded by your failure to acknowledge that there are many non-hormonal forms of birth control. While most are not as effective as the Pill, they can still provide significant protection against pregnancy. For instance, a properly fitted diaphram coated with spermicide can be very effective without any of the hormonal side affects you are worried about.
I'm glad your libido has rebounded since you have stopped taking the Pill. It's clearly not for everyone. But the fact that it wasn't right for you doesn't make it wrong for all women.
Mostly though, i am very saddened by your perspective on the relationship between birth control and men's treatment of women. I don't dispute that many men treat woman as pieces of meat. Your view clearly implies sex is a carrot that women should dangle in front of men in order to get men to commit. Even if I were hetero, I wouldn't want to be with a man who married me just so he could fuck me. Furthermore, if your new version of the rhythm method is so successful, why wouldn't that have the same affect as other forms of birth control, allowing men to have sex without the consequences of commitment and fatherhood?
Many men are pigs who treat women like pieces of meat. That has been true as long as our patriarchal culture has existed. I see no relationship between that behavior and birth control, and I challenge you to provide any evidence of such. Before birth control was widely available, it was not men who suffered the consequences of that behavior. It was women. Women get pregnant. Women were stigmatized for having a child out of wedlock. Women raise children. Birth control, in any form, doesn't liberate men from responsibility. It liberates women to enjoy and explore their own sexuality.
one final note: please use tiny url to shrink long hyperlinks to a manageable size. The long ones blow the margin on the page and make it necessary to scroll left to right to read every paragraph on the page.
...that men did not use women before The Pill. Nor do I believe that The Pill created STDs. The pill didn't appear until the mid-1960s, long long after fatal STDs have been on the scene. So you can't blame the pill for any of that.
The wonderful thing about this country, though, is that people (presumably) have self-determination and can make choices that best suit themselves. If you believe in rhythm method, that's great. But it's hardly reliable to be a prescription for women.
For one thing, women don't always have a choice when intercourse happens. And yet rape is a violent crime that is vastly under-prosecuted, with barriers to conviction higher than any other violent crime.
As for your claim that the pill is a "major carcinogen," I wonder if this is just another "pro-life" myth being perpetrated. A google reveals only "pro-life" sites.
Meanwhile, WHO says about EC:
Not only that,
So much for claims that EC causes abortion. Those claims are simply lies.
As for the pill, aka "low dose combined oral contraceptives," WHO says nothing about being "a major carcinogen".
So if you're against contraception, maybe you want to make a decision based on science and not on lies being promulgated by religious ideologues with an agenda.
you say:
which even the WHO just declared a "major carcinogen,"
The Scientists employed by the Government of the United States at the National Cancer Institute says these issues aren't quite so clear cut.
i'm sorry that you have side-effects from oral contraceptives. you were right to quit because of them. it's nice though, that you had the choice to either use OC or handle things in your own way.
i support that and support you in your choice.
choice. nice word isn't it?
Choice is a good word...but how many women honestly know what they're signing up for on the Pill or patch? I doubt it was much of well-informed choice for the young women who dropped dead from complications related to the hormones.
Real choice is knowing that there are alternatives and making an informed decision. Yet when I try to introduce an alternative family planning method on here, I'm flamed and insulted by most. Thanks for being open-minded.
...are hardly credible. Your "proof" has been discredited. You call that flaming? I call it a reality check.
I live in Texas and am familiar with many of the poeple who passed this legislation and their opinion of why they passed it has little to do with access to contraceptives. I should note that I do not know the sponsor of the bill, but 6 of the people who voted for it definitely stated it wasnt about access to contraceptives. For all intents and purposes, contraceptives are readily available and the only issue is how much of a price support should the government supply.
Planned Parenthood was targeted for cuts because the Texas legislature did not feel they were a social program that matched the desires of most of their constituents. It had nothing to do with making contraceptives illegal. It had everything to do with consitituent taxes funding something that a majority of the constituents oppose. This is primarily an abortion and social spending issue. Contraceptive availability apparently did not enter into the discussions of most of the policymakers.
i think.
you state:
their opinion of why they passed it has little to do with access to contraceptives.
so you're saying that we, as citizens, shouldn't concern ourselves with the consequences of a law, only the intentions of the lawmakers.
then it follows that if i bump into you with my car while your walking on the sidewalk and injure you, the fact that i didn't intend injury absolves me of all responsibility for how i drive.
that about it?
Consequences matter, but if you are going to effectively oppose the legislative activity of your opponents, you have to understand why they are succeeding. You will not manage to reverse this trend in Texas if you frame it as a need to subsidize Planned Parenthoods contraception provision program. The majority of voters do not support their programs.
If you frame the argument as a claim that the elimination of PP subsidy prevents women from having access to contraception they will laugh you out of the state. Contraception is relatively cheaply available and only a limited group of women are conceivably denied by the loss of the PP subsidy.
If you are truly interested in providing govt. subsidized contraceptives to the poor, then you would have to realize that another delivery method beside PP is your best chance. PP is extremely unpopular due to their abortion and educational efforts.
If it makes you feel good, you can argue all day that the Legislature is opposed to contraceptives. They aren't and focusing on that kind of argument will cause you to be much less effective. They are opposed to Planned Parenthood.
Failure to understand your opponent will prevent you from attaining your goals.
there was no movement in the state of texas to reduce funding for PP, other than the legislative /anti-choice movement. the leg passed the latest $20,000,000 diversion of funds in secret without public notification, and didn't release the information until months later, on the afternoon of the day before Thanksgiving, hoping that no one would notice. I guess you just doesn't read the papers.
here's why my opponents succeed. it's got nothing to do with "we the people"
"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."
Michael Scanlon, former aide to Tom Delay
Polling information for elections has repeatedly shown PP to be unpopular. Texas is a conservative state. In many districts publicly supporting PP is the kiss of death. I have worked enough campaigns and done enough consulting to verify this. Pretty much only the Austin area and some heavy urban districts support it.
That being said, the anti-PP forces have been fighting a pretty continuous battle for many years to reduce their scope and funding. If you wish to see a similar campaign in its infancy I suggest the anti-MADD campaign. The reason you don't see an all out legislative effort focusing on PP funding in open debate is because that would be an incredibly ineffective way to accomplish the goals of the anti-PP crowd. This method is much more effective.
Incidentally, I do read the papers, but they are not a good source of political info in Texas. They are often inaccurate, way behind the time and rarely do their homework. Mostly they provide sound bite level coverage. Definitely not enough info for an informed opinion of how the political sphere of activity operates.
The Texas legislature, an elected representative body, tried to cut funding through an anti-abortion bill but ran into challenges from the judiciary, an unelected body. As long as the elected body is anti-abortion, they will continue to pass laws restricting the activity of any group supporting abortion. If direct assaults fail, the elected body will start attempting subtler methods. The only way to prevent this is to win some elections. To do that you need to focus on the key conflict...abortion. Most of the people opposed to PP are not opposed to contraceptives, but to abortion and the zealous PP education programs. Note, there isnt a large successful movement to legislatively make contraceptives illegal. Only a small fringe group supports that position.
what the fuck does THAT mean? They tell women ALL of their options?!?
Well, we can't have THAT.
No, that's a good idea. However, many families did not like PP giving out condoms to 6th-8th graders along with an explicit birds and bees talk. Quite a few did not want their kids exposed to it and did not feel it was PP right to impose on their kids, even if it was a school sanctioned event.
due to our diet in this country and other factors, children, especially girls, are entering puberty at younger and younger ages. I'm sorry if a parent isn't an enough of an adult to talk to their children about the realities of life, but their kids are going to be under enormous peer pressure, societal pressure and hormonal pressure. To those parents, I say "grow the fuck up."
This is a public health issue, ESPECIALLY if we're going to stop girls from having any kind of access to private and safe women's health care without their ignorant parents hovering over their shoulders. We're all going to be paying to help take care of that unwanted child. We're all going to be exposed to STD's that will continue to spread b/c people would rather relie on fairy stories than deal with reality. Information can only help her to make better choices, take more control ... oh, wait, THAT'S what the REAL problem is, isn't it?
Nine times out of ten parents resist education b/c of some religious belief. How paltry and weak are those beliefs? How little faith in them do parents' have? Are they so uncertain about what they teach their that they can't allow any kind information to be presented that isn't rigidly controlled? Small, paltry and weak would be how I would describe such a faith.
Your post is an excellent example of my point on PP. It isn't that people are opposed to contraceptives, it is they are opposed to being told by someone else how to run their own households. By bundling contraceptives for adults, abortion and sex education for minors into one delivery platform (Planned Parenthood), the proponents of these causes have inextricably linked them and are catching a lot more opposition than they normally would.
My original post referred to adult contraceptives. In this case, very few people are actively opposed to adult contraceptives, but since its delivery is bundled through PP, attempts to defund PP for its abortion and sex education activities are reducing access to subsidized adult contraceptives. Planned Parenthood is reasonably well designed as a private organization, but it has much too broad a charter for a publicly funded organization. Voters do not feel they should have to fund all of PP activities and since there isn't a line item veto on PP activiities, tthe only way to stop the ones you don't like is defund all of them.
Furthermore, I would take exception to your post that most of the opposition to PP is religiously based. My experiences on the ground working with homeless shelters and PP show this not to be the case. The organization is just much more liberal than the conservative Texas populace it is serving.
I mean opposition in general to sex education for children is religiously based.
I'm truly frightened by the idea that full and accurate information is "liberal". This wallowing in ignorance affects us all. "Conservatism" didn't used to encourage such ignorance, but rather a preservation of what was good. Kids used to learn the "facts of life" pretty young by being around animals, or living in large extended families where privacy is hard to come by. This weird neo-Victorian idea that children are some precious groups of "innocents" living in their own private bubble Eden is dangerous, both to their health and the public health in general. INFORMATION ISN'T LIBERAL. It's just information.
Knownothingism will be the death of this country.
The extremely vocal PTA and school board meetings I sat through opposing the PP sex education were not dominated by overtly religious types. I think you are letting their vociferousness cloud your perceptions. Most opponents of the sex education based their opposition on child psychology and civil libertarian arguments, religion wasn't a talking point.
I miss the Know Nothing political party. Rarely do stupid people so aptly name themselves.
...but to call it "civil libertarian" is laughable. Libertarian means free from governmental intrusion -- yet governmental intrusion all the way into the human body is what the conservative right is demanding.
In the end, that's why I find the right wing scary and borderline fascistic.
Not sure what this has to do with my point? Most of the complaints in the board meetings were based on the belief that the govt via PP did not have the right to intrude and teach a sensitive subject to our kids. I would call that a civil libertarian view and completely irrelevant to right wing or conservativism. The interesting thing about the opposition to PP is that it crossed ideological lines and was not driven by the religious right.
...but a campaign to de-fund one organization because of a political agenda is de facto a government program. Make no mistake, Planned Parenthood has been targeted for providing abortion care. That's where the money came from, the lobbying pressure on the legislators, the framing of the debate. Planned Parenthood was de-funded due to the push of a vocal minority that believes women's wombs are property of the State.
And that is not a libertarian agenda.
I agree that PP was defunded because of its support of abortion and sexual education policies. That was one of my original points. The corollary to that point was that contraceptive subsidies were targeted not because most people were anticontraceptive but because it was bundled in with the rest of PP's mission. However, that was not the topic of the last 2 or 3 threads. The topic of those threads was that PP sexual education policies for minors were being opposed on civil libertarian grounds and I haven't seen a refutation of that point.
Lastly, I'm not so sure that the supporters of defunding PP are a vocal minority in Texas. I'd bet they are a majority. There is a big difference between supporting the right to abortion and supporting PP. Many abortion rights supporters do not support PP (e.g., me and the majority of parents in my PTA). My original post was a warning that you are wrapping all of these points up together and it is causing our side to formulate strategies poorly and lose. Make no doubt about it, reproductoive rights are on the defensive in Texas and our most avid supporters are the ones who hurt us the most because they refuse to understand their target audience. The opponent is not a monolithic entity, it is a collection of several groups that only agree on about 60% of their platform, but they are willing to work together.
here yourself.
What about the shutdown of UT Southwestern's network of satellite clinics, that provided care to over 33,000 women in Dallas County last year alone? What about the county hospital's family planning program in El Paso that has been defunded by 50%? What about all the other providers of primary health screening and family planning across the state -- none of which are connected to Planned Parenthood in any way -- that are being either crippled or completely shut down?
The Tommy Williamses, Bob Deuells, Steve Ogdens and their so-called "Christian" allies have learned that all they have to do is whisper "Planned Parenthood is coming to get your children" to make otherwise intelligent adults pull the covers over their heads and stop thinking. The Houston Chronicle is right:
These men are not incompetent fools who are ignorantly unaware of the outcome of the actions they have taken -- far from it. Theirs is a deliberate agenda that inevitably will result in the denial of family planning care to tens of thousands of the women least able to cope with unplanned pregnancies, and you are completely mistaken if you believe that family planning care is readily available to these women from alternative sources. I have been involved with the provision of women's health care in Texas (with no connection at all to that dreaded and terrifying red-eyed bogeyman, Planned Parenthood) for many years, and I know better.
To defund Planned Parenthood, county hospital clinic systems and most of the many other providers of affordable family planning in Texas is to compel low-income women into unwanted pregnancies and to even further increase the number of women who feel left with no realistic choice but abortion.
And nothing can possibly justify that -- nothing.
1. Family planning does not equal contraceptive availability. Contraceptive availability is a relatively small subset of the whole of family planning. That's why I was addressing contraceptive availability in my first posts.
2. Govt. subsidized family planning got hammered. This should not have been a surprise to anyone. The budget is tight and they still havent figured out school finance reform. Any line item that a special interest group can get reasonable support behind is doomed.
3. Planned Parenthood is what everyone thinks of when they think family planning. Thus it drew lightning. Given the way our budgeting and legislative processes work, this also means that many good programs got toasted along with it. That's just the way ademocracy is. Not terribly efficient, but most people get a say in what happens.
4. I am not justifying what happened. I am trying to point out that if we want to prevent it from happening again we are going to have to decouple the more mainstream family planning and natal wellness programs from the more confrontational programs. The pro choice side does not have the votes to protect them all at once.
5. All Texas social welfare programs are likely to take big hits until the school financing bill and the budget are settled.
6. This is just a prelude to the deluge that overturning Roe vs. Wade will cause. Unless we change our mindset from one of righteous indignation to strategic and tactical planning we are going to get steamrolled. The Republicans were an excellent opposition party that planned and sacrificed tangential goals to get their primary goals. They are a lousy dominant party. The Democrats have been accustomed to the dominant position for so long that they are an even worse opposition party. Prioritization, planning and understanding voter attitudes is generally replaced with polemic, overgeneralization (and yes I know someone is going to accuse me of it) and righteous indignation. Failure to plan for a shift in judicial control combined with existing Republican legislative control will be devastating.
planned and sacrificed tangential goals to get their primary goals.
Your full autonomy as human beings is a "tangential goal" ladies!! Good to know.
Since Planned Parenthood forced nothing on anybody, your assertion that opposition to Planned Parenthood is a "libertarian" position is simply ludicrous. There is nothing of substance in your statement to refute.
As for what I'm causing, I can't say it has anything to do with public policy in Texas. That boat don't float.
Not true, the PP sexual education classes were forced onto kids over the objection of their parents. That's why everyone was so pissed.
If someone's forcing things on kids, that's a government problem, not Planned Parenthood's problem.
Gee Dawn, it's a good thing that ...I for one am not singing the blues over efforts to squash contraception.
Like I said, a huge percentage of women/girls who come in for abortions were on contraception when they got pregnant. Why do people act like the only way to keep people from throwing their baby in a dumpster is to flood them with the Pill??? Ever heard of STDS? AIDS?? Last I heard, there are plenty of risks associated with the Pill other than having a baby.
This girl needed help, not contraception. She needed parents who loved her enough and made her feel secure enough that she didn't need to seek love through sex at such a young, obviously immature age. I can't believe you think a teenager who can't even remember to clean her room or do her homework on a consistent basis is going to remember to take a Pill every day at the same time. Ever wonder why we still have rampant rates of teen pregnancy even when contraception is widely available?? Probably because the root of teen pregnancy isn't lack of access to contraception, but parental neglect, emotional immaturity, and a whole host of other problems unrelated to "access."
the time or effort.
This girl is product of your rulz:
* Desperate to hold on to a man for validity
* Ashamed about sex like you are
* Ignorant of her choices (probably had only abstinece only classes)
Yet... she was STILL let down... funny you make no mention of the fact that she was patriotically serving her country until the Air Force had no more use for her... I thought you people were for the govenment upholding the sanctity of motherhood... oh yeah... you people want to control a womens body but you don't want to pay for her babies with your taxes... mighty good christians you are.
Thump your so called values and bible all you want just stay the fuck away from me and mine... you can make your OWN girls backwards and ignorant ...hey... it is a "Free Country" so they say...
I'll teach my girls to take care of themselves... and if you dare try to force the government to undereducate and to underempower my girls... well then you will truly see that "hell hath no fury"... so go climb back underneath your rock and take your rulz and your women folk with you.
the time or effort.
This girl is product of your rulz:
* Desperate to hold on to a man for validity
* Ashamed about sex like you are
* Ignorant of her choices (probably had only abstinece only classes)
Yet... she was STILL let down... funny you make no mention of the fact that she was patriotically serving her country until the Air Force had no more use for her... I thought you people were for the govenment upholding the sanctity of motherhood... oh yeah... you people want to control a womens body but you don't want to pay for her babies with your taxes... mighty good christians you are.
Thump your so called values and bible all you want just stay the hell away from me and mine... you can make your OWN girls backwards and ignorant ...hey... it is a "Free Country" so they say...
I'll teach my girls to take care of themselves... and if you dare try to force the government to undereducate and to underempower my girls... well then you will truly see that "hell hath no fury"... so go climb back underneath your rock and take your rulz and your women folk with you.