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The Death of Sanity in the Abortion Debate

An abstinence-only program in Montana told teens that “condoms cause cancer,” birth control pills are only 20% effective and cause cervical cancer and sterility.

By Real Monsters Published 3 years ago 4 min read
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Source: AP

The American experiment is a beautifully chaotic thing. Opposing sides go at it and are supposed to hammer out a compromise in the process – getting to a position both can live with, a solution that hopefully combats whatever social problem is being debated.

The intent of this process is to avert tyranny and to get to a result that is mutually acceptable to all parties involved. It keeps our politics relatively moderate and adds overall stability and rationality to political solutions. That is, as long as both sides play fair and respect the mores that have been laid out in our history.

Increasingly, the rational perspective is being attacked on one hot-button issue: abortion. I’m sure you’ve seen it, someone on your Facebook friends’ list posts an incendiary meme with an infant saying, “I’m a baby, not a choice!” or another with “get your laws off my body!”

The government has even said this kind of extremism is on the rise, especially on the right.

Post a response (to whatever meme) saying the abortion issue is more complicated than a simple one-liner and you get called “commie cuck” by the right and berated into submission or silence. This is unfortunate not just because of the lost friendships but because a true solution to the issue lies in a rational perspective.

It is vital to realize abortion is far from a zero-sum game if your goals are realistic; namely, zero abortions makes zero sense as a goal if you care about the women seeking them out. We can lower abortion rates while not interfering in the rights of women with draconian laws like those recently passed in Alabama or Georgia.

The real way to lower abortion rates without undue interference is to make sure women have enough options (i.e. non-abortion birth control) and the attendant medically accurate and comprehensive education in using those methods. Abortion shouldn’t even have to be thought about unless something horrible happens where the mother’s life is gravely threatened or where rape or incest occurs.

You may think, “Wait a minute! We have that already!” Unfortunately, we don’t have that already because many sex education programs are still Abstinence Only Until Marriage programs. This kind of “sexual education” has been called “ineffective” and “scientifically and ethically problematic”. The problem here is that pesky word “only”: kids deserve accuracy and full knowledge of their options, which can only happen through comprehensive, medically accurate sex education.

Abstinence Only programs – and their highly-paid speakers – often teach absurdly inaccurate information on scientifically vetted birth control methods (like condoms) by distorting the truth. A program in Montana told teens that “condoms cause cancer”, birth control pills are only 20% effective and cause cervical cancer and sterility, and the lie that condom use increases teen pregnancy. The study they cite here actually said that the effect was driven by not providing “mandated counseling” with the condoms – if kids don’t have that needed education, what do you expect will happen?

President Obama made significant progress in dismantling these programs.

Yet, just like he did with everything else Obama did, President Trump did his level best to roll these reforms back too.

Evangelical, pro-life groups – if they are seriously committed to actually lowering abortion rates in ways that don’t promote greater harm – should significantly rethink their support of Abstinence-Only education; especially when it has been shown to be “positively correlated” with teen pregnancy rates, meaning kids don’t listen, hormones take over, and women get in the position where they are thinking about abortion. If we as a society care about the woman in this equation – and those who don’t unquestionably have forfeited their credibility in this debate – why aren’t we doing what we can to make sure no one gets to that place where they are considering an abortion?

This gets to the other plank of the rational position on abortion: easy (free) access to non-abortion forms of birth control. Washington University showed in a 2012 study that free access to birth control for women reduced abortion rates “by a range of 62 to 78 percent compared to the national rate.” This is a finding which has been consistently repeated.

Why then is the true solution of proper education and easier access to birth control as the way to reduce abortion rates not being championed more?

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About the Creator

Real Monsters

Covering the macabre, weird, abberational, and criminal. Catch the podcast on your favorite service today, or head to:

http://www.realmonsters.live

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