Can Common Ground Prevail?

By Cristina Page

When it comes to the abortion conflict in the U.S. a fascinating new consensus is emerging: the need for common ground. Americans, it seems, are weary of the acrimonious and seemingly endless fight. People want pro-choice and pro-life advocates to work together to reduce the need for abortion.

According to Faith in Public Life Poll, the vast majority (83 percent) of voters, including white evangelicals (86 percent) and Catholics (81 percent), believe elected leaders should work together to find ways to reduce the need for abortion.

For years, pro-choice groups have pushed measures designed to prevent unwanted pregnancy. They have promoted social programs that support poor pregnant women who are forced to make decisions based on economic need. They have pushed prevention over punishment. And now, after decades of resistance, some in the pro-life movement are stepping forward in support of at least some of these pro-choice goals, even if that means jeopardizing their standing in the established pro-life community.

Interestingly, the time may be ripe for a spirit of cooperation. Barrack Obama, with his promise of a new era of post-partisan politics, may be just the leader to promote this cause. When asked about abortion in one debate, Obama predicted, "We can find some common ground." Indeed, the abortion conflict may emerge as an early test case of Obama's belief that cooperation can prevail.

The key development, the one that may make common ground possible, is the emergence on the pro-life side of willing partners in this venture. Recently, several daring pro-life leaders have publicly announced a shift in their focus. Instead of seeking bans and restrictions on abortion, which have proven to have little effect on abortion rates, a new breed of pro-life activist appears motivated more by results than timeworn arguments.

Take Douglas Kmiec who has an impeccable pro-life, Catholic, and republican credentials. Kmiec served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel for Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush and was the former dean of the law school at The Catholic University of America. He also started "Pro-Life, Pro-Obama." Kmiec, like the entire new breed, still opposes abortion on moral grounds. He still does not embrace an increase in availability of birth control as area worth common exploration. Still it is impossible to overlook his remarkable, and seemingly decisive, break from his pro-life comrades. Perhaps most striking is this admission from their website: "Legal status of abortion does not necessarily impact abortion rates." Instead, Kmiec's group has turned to prevention and, in particular, social programs that can affect decisions. "Studies show that economic support for women and families reduces abortion," announces one section of the website.

Catholics United is another new pro-life group calling for a common ground approach to the abortion conflict. The group's website lists as one of its top priorities "common ground abortion reduction initiatives," including moving, "beyond the angry rhetoric of the abortion ‘culture war’ and enact policies that achieve actual results by addressing the root causes of abortion: lack of jobs, health care, and other economic supports for women and families."

While what might be called a "common ground movement" has yet to formalize, there is at least one signal of its potency. These new common ground pro-life leaders have won the ire of the traditional anti-abortion hierarchy. Indeed the old-guard pro-life leader views this new approach as a form of treason. In fact, several openly seethe over the calls for cooperation. Doug Johnson, of National Right to Life, called Obama's common ground approach an "abortion reduction scam." Last month, Joseph Schiedler, president of the Pro-Life Action League, told the Washington Post, "It's a sellout, as far as we are concerned. You don't have to have a lot of social programs to cut down on abortions."

It is apparent that many people who are genuinely pro-life want real results, and equally as clear to them is that the current pro-life establishment and the Republican Party have failed to provide those. The facts show that the countries with the lowest abortion rates are those which promote prevention, and support for poor women who want and need help to continue their pregnancies -- traditional pro-choice policies.

We on the pro-choice side are eager to have a willing partner, people who like us, seek progress on what has been until now been an intractable and divisive issue. Let us hope that the "pro-life" establishment doesn't stand in the way of this nascent common ground movement.
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Page is the author of "How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex" and spokesperson for BirthControlWatch.org
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Copyright (C) 2008 by the American Forum. 12/08

A Mom Before the Prom

By Cristina Page

Now that the national attention on Bristol Palin's pregnancy is fading (for the time being) it seems the only discussion it inspired was about John McCain's vetting process and, by extension, his decision-making abilities. But there is another far more important subject raised by the 17-year-old's pregnancy. For decades, teen pregnancy has been viewed as a problem, a danger to the children of young mothers and a hurdle to the success of the adolescent mothers.

But recent public displays of contraceptive failure by girls of visibility and means gives the misleading appearance that teen motherhood might be a lifestyle upgrade. Clearly one of the exacerbating factors is that someone like Bristol Palin is part of what feels like a growing trend: the normalizing of teen pregnancy and teen motherhood in the United States. Bristol is not alone in suggesting that to be a 17-year-old mother is not only acceptable, but exciting. Last year Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney's then 16-year-old sister, had her baby. (The Spears', it's worth noting, were proponents of abstinence-only too.) Last year also featured the movie Juno, in which star Ellen Page played a 16-year-old whose quick-wit and sarcasm made her unwanted pregnancy seem as challenging as a bad case of acne. The attention garnered by each of these girls stripped away layers of what had for years been cautions against this very fate.

None of these occasions has prompted examination of the risks and damage caused by teen pregnancy and teen motherhood. And, it should be noted, recent data show that the rate of teen pregnancy in the U.S., which is already the highest in the developed world, is on the rise. The last year witnessed a dramatic 3 percent spike in the number of pubescent parents.

Of course, Bristol, Juno and Jamie Lynn don't exemplify the average American girl confronting unintended pregnancy. And the problem is the average American teen doesn't really know that. The choice the fictional character Juno made, adoption, is almost a fiction these days too. Approximately 1 percent of pregnant teens opt to give a child up for adoption. And then Jamie Lynn Spears is a teen millionaire. Her pregnancy only enhanced her fortune. The first photos of her baby fetched a million dollars. The spotlight on Bristol Palin offers false comfort too. Bristol has resources available to her that none of her pregnant teen counterparts does -- like the secret service, the ultimate nanny.

The average teen girl would be led to believe that teen pregnancy doesn't ruin adolescence, but instead brings lavish amounts of attention, an adoring and adorable teen father, and an endless supply of parental support. The reality for most teen moms could not be more different.

According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, eight in 10 teen fathers do not marry the mother of their first child. Kids without involved fathers are twice as likely to drop out of school, twice as likely to abuse alcohol or drugs, twice as likely to end up in jail, and two to three times more likely to need help for emotional or behavioral problems. Children who live apart from their fathers are also five times more likely to be poor than children with both parents at home.

Teen mothers, typically left to go it alone, are less likely to complete the education necessary to qualify for a well-paying job -- in fact, parenthood is the leading cause of school drop out among teen girls. College then becomes the remotest of possibilities. Less than two percent of mothers who have children before age 18 complete college by the age of 30.

Too often heartbreaking sacrifices are also foisted on the child of a teenage mom. The children of teen mothers are more likely to be born prematurely at low birthweight compared to children of older mothers, which raises the probability of infant death and disease, mental retardation, and mental illness. Children of teen mothers are 50 percent more likely to repeat a grade and are less likely to complete high school. The children of teen parents also suffer higher rates of abuse and neglect (two times higher).

Teen girls and their children are not the only ones paying dearly. Teen childbearing in the United States costs taxpayers (federal, state, and local) approximately $9.1 billion each year. Most of the costs are associated with services to address the negative consequences detailed above.

The issue of teen pregnancy needs to be taken seriously and there's no better time than an election year to demand that.
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Page is the author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex and spokesperson for BirthControlWatch.org
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Copyright (C) 2008 by the American Forum. 10/08

HHS Proposal Undercuts State Birth Control Laws

By Cristina Page

The Bush administration's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been called "ground zero for the ideological wars in this country," and a new HHS proposal leaked this week proves why. In a spectacular act of complicity with extremists on the right, HHS is proposing to allow any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception.

The American public is nearly unanimous in supporting contraception: 90 percent favor wide availability for birth control, and 90 percent of sexually active women of reproductive age are using it. It is simple common sense: the average woman spends nearly three decades of her life attempting to be sexually active without getting pregnant, and access to contraception is the only proven way to avoid an unintended pregnancy.

For most women, birth control is a basic health care need. But with this new proposal, the Bush administration plans to hand over the gears of health care to the few extremists who want to impose their deeply unpopular right-wing doctrine on the many. The "Pill Kills" fringe has generally been ignored for its warped pseudo-science, but not at Bush's HHS. Its new proposal would make agencies receiving HHS funding promise not to discriminate in hiring against anyone who objects to abortion -- and then redefines abortion so as to include most commonly used forms of birth control including oral contraceptives and IUDs.

This is the latest -- and now incontrovertible -- proof that the anti-abortion movement, and the administration that appears beholden to it, opposes basic pregnancy prevention and is firmly committed to control over Americans' sex lives. If the HHS proposal is approved, anti-contraceptive operatives will seize health financing, one of the most important levers of control. The regulations would be vast in scope and serve as an open invitation for local extremists to directly meddle with your most important life decisions.

Under the new rule, any health care provider who receives federal funding and would like to prevent women from having access to prescription birth control would have federal protection for doing it. State laws requiring hospitals to give pregnancy prevention to rape victims would be automatically invalidated. Pharmacies nationwide could be granted instant permission to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control. Health centers may be forced to hire religious extremists who would refuse to provide contraception to their patients, even if contraception service is the main focus of the facility.

The new regulation would overrule laws in 27 states requiring health insurers to cover contraceptives. Keep in mind that reluctance of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) to cover contraception was what led to these state mandates in the first place. Health insurance plans would likely be able to eliminate contraceptive coverage, re-imposing on women 68 percent more in out-of-pocket health care expenses than men pay.

President Bush has been committed to restricting Americans' access to pregnancy prevention since his first days in office. In 2001, he attempted to eliminate contraceptive coverage for federal employees and soldiers. At the request of the anti-contraception movement, he has obstructed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's process of approving proposals for wider access to contraception; appointed self-described anti-contraception leaders to oversee the nation's federal contraception program for the poor; eliminated funding for international family planning programs; appointed anti-condom activists to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS; promoted programs that withhold information about birth control from sexually active teens; and sunk unprecedented sums of public funding into these no-sex-until-marriage programs, even after witnessing, as governor of Texas, that the result there was the highest teen birth rate of any state in the union.

The proposed regulation is just one of many campaigns against contraception, all led entirely by the anti-abortion establishment. Few Americans know that not one anti-abortion organization in the United States supports contraception. Even fewer understand that every effort to ensure Americans' access to pregnancy prevention is met with fierce, well-financed, and increasingly successful opposition by anti-abortion groups.

The Bush administration has been able to implement these deeply unpopular attacks against birth control and family planning because the American public doesn't really believe that an anti-contraception movement even exists. Under the cover of public denial, behind the banner of "Who could be against contraception?" ideological extremists have accomplished much of their agenda. Approval of the HHS proposal would be the most encompassing and far-reaching attack on the right to contraception they could hope for. What the anti-birth control extremists need now is for the public to continue to believe it can't happen.
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Page is the author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex and spokesperson for BirthControlWatch.org
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Copyright (C) 2008 by the American Forum. 7/08

How the Christian Right Goes Wrong

By Cristina Page

New research reveals that female students in programs that promote abstinence exclusively are more likely to get pregnant than those in programs that teach about the full range of contraceptives as well as abstinence. The news, published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, is just the latest proof that the $1.5 billion dollar “just say no to sex” experiment on our teens has failed. And while Christian conservatives defend their approach even in the face of this latest devastating news, it’s time to ask them one simple question: Shouldn’t the results matter?

At current rates, half of all teenagers will have sex before graduating high school and 95 percent will before marrying. These statistics infuriate the abstinence-until-marriage proponents. Their hope is that, by keeping teens in the dark about protection, ignorance will somehow lead to temperance. Those most committed to the abstinence approach seem to have paid most dearly though. Earlier findings by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities revealed that teens taking part in virginity pledge programs (they pledge to stay virgins until marriage) are more likely than their non-pledging peers to engage in risky unprotected sex. The study also showed virgin pledgers were six times more likely to have oral sex and male “virgins” are four times more likely to have anal sex than those who do not take the pledge. These “virgins” had the same rate of STDs as other teens but were much less likely to be treated for them.

Southern school districts, which are five times more likely to use the abstinence-only approach than northeast schools, have much to show for investing in the abstinence-only. Today, southern states lead the nation in the acquisition of STDs, are home to the highest rate of new HIV/AIDS cases, and have the highest percentage of teen mothers in the country. The damage is so staggering that 17 states have opted to reject federal funding for abstinence only. In the long term, they concluded, the costs of their failure outweigh any benefits.

Abstinence is not the only policy that Christian conservatives pursue despite evidence that it doesn’t work. In fact, much of the movement’s policies have, even by their own standards, led to perverse outcomes. Consider the drive to outlaw abortion. Last year, 11 states moved to ban abortion immediately and create a case to test Roe vs. Wade in the Supreme Court. But, if ending abortion is the goal, banning abortion is quite possibly the worst strategy. The countries with the highest abortion rates in the world are those that have banned abortion. Take Latin America, where most countries have outlawed abortion yet have the same rate or- as in the case of Peru, Chile and the Dominican Republic -- rates twice as high as the United States. And where on earth have the lowest abortion rates been achieved? In countries with the strongest pro-choice policies; like the Netherlands, Germany and Italy where abortion is not only legal, but in several cases available free of charge. This pro-choice policy/lower abortion rate trend has been true in our country as well. We witnessed the most dramatic decline in abortion in the history of our country under our first pro-choice president, Bill Clinton. These declines continue today and notably where it is falling sharpest is where the strongest pro-choice policies, namely prevention through wider access to contraception, have been adopted.

And while banning abortion has failed to stop abortions, limiting abortion rights has also produced undesired outcomes. A favorite tactic of the “right to life” movement is to impose mandatory delay policies on abortion. A woman must receive information about her right to an abortion and then must wait 24 to 48 hours before receiving a procedure. Sounds harmless enough. However, while these policies have had little effect on the frequency of abortion they have dramatically increased late term abortions. In the year after Mississippi passed a mandatory delay law, second trimester abortion increased statewide by 53 percent. Nearly half the number of women presenting for an abortion late in pregnancy these days cite pro-life restrictions as the cause.

The danger of policies guided by ideology is that the means often are the end. There is no better example of the deleterious effects of policies based on wishful thinking than in the reproductive rights debate. We need to respect people’s ability to make their own life decisions and not impose our values and views upon them. If Americans were to set aside the catchy sound bites and suspiciously simplistic reasoning and instead judge by results, most would find the pro-choice movement is a more comfortable home for their stated values.
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Page is the author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex and spokesperson for BirthControlWatch.org
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Copyright (C) 2007 by the American Forum. 4/08