Help Lower Abortion Rates
Senators Harry Reid and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who stand on opposite sides of the abortion debate, will offer an amendment to the Senate budget this week to set aside funds for programs that will help reduce the need for abortion by preventing unintended pregnancy.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist opposes a woman’s right to choose. So shouldn’t it be safe to assume that he would support the Prevention First Act – a bill to reduce unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion? Unfortunately, Sen. Frist doesn’t see it that way. He is willing to restrict the right to choose without improving women’s access to birth control. It’s a good thing that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid – who opposes a woman’s right to choose – is willing to bridge the pro-choice/pro-life divide by offering the Prevention First Act.
Could the U.S. Senate really vote against a bill that would end insurance discrimination that favors Viagra over the Pill, funds teen-pregnancy prevention programs, and educates women about the morning-after pill? With anti-choice leaders like Sen. Bill Frist setting policy and hard-line anti-contraception activists at his side, this common-sense proposal could actually be defeated.
A national reproductive health policy must institute reforms that will revitalize contraceptive research and development, ensure that safe and effective birth control methods are widely available and promote public education about sexual responsibility and reproductive health. Promoting ignorance and denial is not the way to go.
You can use the Naral link (where I got this information), or the contact box on the right, to send an email to your senators. It’s better to call.
Please tell your senators to vote “yes” on the Reid-Clinton prevention amendment. The vote is too close to call. Your senators need to hear from you.
5 thoughts on “Help Lower Abortion Rates”
The NARAL site makes a simple but valid point: It’s not fair to pay for Viagra but not the Pill. Frist is voting right-wing ideology, not common sense.
This is a great post. I wanna link to you so we can get the word out!
Great site. A lot of information thats cool !
Where do you get off saying that Harry Reid (D -NV) is opposed to a woman’s “right” to secure an abortion? He has a very poor record by any prolife standard…28%.
The so called Reid-Cllinton prevention act will only benefit abortion providers. Contraceptive clients at Planned Parenthood become its clientele for abortion.
Roberta – you have issues with preventing more abortions? That’s the topic on this three-year old post. I\’m not sure I understand your vehement response to a bill that calls out insurance companies who favor Viagra over the Pill, funds teen-pregnancy prevention programs, and educates women about the morning-after pill. If it makes you feel any better, the bill was defeated.
As for Harry Reid, he has a mixed record but it looks like it is fairly anti-abortion to me. Even the Right to Life people say he’s mixed (50%).
This is an old post, and perhaps it wasn’t sufficiently clear that this call to action was a quotation. Still, “where do you get off?” is a very strong wording.
I guess I’m just more reality-based than ideological about it. The expansion of access to preventive health care services can help reduce unintended pregnancy and reduce abortions. Last year, Congress found:
1. The reduction of unintended pregnancies is an important health objective to achieve over the first decade of the new century.
2. Although the CDC included family planning in its published list of the Ten Great Public Health Achievements in the 20th Century, the US still has one of the highest rates of unintended pregnancies among industrialized nations.
3. Each year, 3,000,000 pregnancies (nearly half of all pregnancies) in the US are unintended, and nearly half of unintended pregnancies end in abortion.
4. In 2004, 34,400,000 women, half of all women of reproductive age, were in need of contraceptive services, and nearly half of those were in need of public support for such care.
5. The US has the highest rate of infection with sexually transmitted diseases of any industrialized country. 19 million cases impose a tremendous economic burden, as high as $14 billion per year.
6. Increasing access to family planning services will improve women’s health and reduce the rates of unintended pregnancy, abortion, and infection with sexually transmitted diseases. Contraceptive use saves public health dollars. For every dollar spent to increase funding for family planning programs, $3.80 is saved.
7. Contraception is basic health care that improves the health of women and children by enabling women to plan and space births.
8. Women experiencing unintended pregnancy are at greater risk for physical abuse and women having closely spaced births are at greater risk of maternal death.
9. A child born from an unintended pregnancy is at greater risk of low birth weight, dying in the first year of life, being abused, and not receiving sufficient resources for healthy development.
Source: Prevention First Act (S.21/H.R.819) 2007-HR819 on Feb 5, 2007