Important Life Decisions Are Private Family Matters

By Friedrike Merck

Sarah Palin and I have a lot in common. We were athletes and both became hockey Moms, we have held public office in small towns, we like to fish, (I am proud of my marksmanship skills but just can't seem to rustle up what it takes to shoot for sport one of God's creatures), we both have a can-do attitude and serious spiritual lives but we disagree when it comes to matters of privacy and family planning.

Maybe it's my independent New England roots or the tolerant Quaker in me that planted the simple belief that personal choices across a range of important life decisions, like when to have children, are absolutely a private family matter. The choices other people make about the size and timing of their family unit is never anyone else's business and to talk about it, where I come from, is called gossip. Neither is it anyone else's business how a family chooses to cope with the issues of dignity in dying, that's morbid prying. It is no one's right, in this country at least, to insist that there is only one way to believe in or to name a Higher Power, that there is only one way to honor the sanctity of life, that's the kind of holier than thou attitude that drove our ancestors from distant lands to this place of hope for individual liberty.

Lately we've heard the phrase "it's a private family matter" being used to protect the innocent children of candidates, which I am all for, but it has sounded more like a shield to prevent the media from talking about politicians' parading families than it does a sincere belief that we should all be protected from the uninvited bright lights, the opinions and will of others, including the government. I must have missed something along the way but, since when did women's medical decisions, and we women know that pregnancy is both a spiritual and medical condition, stop being a "private family matter?"

Instead of honoring the private discussions between women and their families, between families and their doctors, between people and their God, self appointed groups want to dictate the final say in matters they have no business being in. This dangerous meddling is happening in many areas of people's lives, from government intrusion into the private discussion of when a member of one's family should die to leaders who profess to know the mysteries of life itself. From birth control and emergency contraception availability to deciding whether an unplanned pregnancy should be continued our privacy is being taken from us because someone else claims to know better about how we should conduct our lives. At every step there are individuals, strangers, trying to gain control over our "private family matters" and I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Republicans and Democrats polled by the Women Donors Network show overwhelming support for allowing people to control their own fates in hospitals and at the doctor's office. Just as no one tells us which church to attend, which car to buy or how many guns we can own, we don't want to be limited in our medical choices. Voters across the country strongly believe that they should be able to make their own important life decisions for themselves and their families. A majority of Americans believe that government's role is to provide information, access and services to ensure that we can make these choices responsibly. If politicians can rightly demand a safe space for their "private family matters" then they ought to afford us the same courtesy and keep their noses out of other people's business and bedrooms.

As the next weeks unfold, voters across America should know where candidates stand, not just about "choice", the now polarizing code word for abortion, but more about candidates positions' on a range of common but important life decisions. We must hear the thinking of those hoping to lead this country on critical topics like affordable and readily available birth control, accurate sexuality education and how they define and defend the lines of decency and privacy not only for themselves but for all of us. Yes, the mother from Alaska and I share many similarities but regarding important life decisions, personal family matters, I only claim to know what's best for me and my family.
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Merck is a portrait artist, a member of the Women Donors Network and a grateful mother
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Copyright (C) 2008 by the American Forum. 9/08

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

Legislature Attacks Reproductive Rights Again

by Ann O'Hanlon

RICHMOND, VA.--Here we go again. Extremist state legislators are taking the issue of abortion and using it to distract us as they quietly impose their alarming, turn-back-the-clock agenda on women's issues.

So far, by one or two votes, most of their radical proposals have failed to make it to the governor's desk and because of this do not receive much media or other public attention. But no one who cares about family privacy or the rights of women should be complacent. Right now, one Senate committee -- a committee whose members believe that the most intimate personal decisions should be made without intrusion from government -- is all that prevents these proposals from becoming law.

If those committee members weren't there -- and one day soon some of them will not be -- many forms of birth control, including the pill and the IUD, would be subject to Virginia's strict abortion laws or be made entirely illegal. An exaggeration? Not at all. Here's why.

Pregnancy begins when a fertilized egg implants in the uterus. Ask the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, even the Code of Federal Regulations of the U.S. Government. That's the definition. But every year, the extremists who want to regulate a woman's uterus try to write into Virginia law that a pregnancy begins the moment fertilization occurs. Beyond that, they try every year to legally define that moment as the beginning of life.

When and if they are successful, that moment of fertilization could be equivalent to the moment of childbirth under law. Anything that stopped the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus could be construed as the legal equivalent of an abortion. This includes the birth control pills that 12 million American women use.

So as our state legislature meets for all of six weeks this calendar year to grapple with issues that truly need government attention, such as education and transportation, some politicians have thrown the following backward-looking proposals into the mix:

* A proposal that defines life as starting at fertilization;

* A proposal to dangerously misinform our young people in public schools' Family Life Education classes, including inaccurate statements on abstinence and contraception; and

* A proposal to ban all abortions (except those where the mothers life is in danger) should the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade.

The sponsors of these proposals are legislators who are rightly troubled by the actions some pregnant women take to either intentionally or unintentionally harm their pregnancy. But rather than work to understand and help such women, who may have mental illness or an addiction and nowhere to turn to for help, the proposals would instead intensify the charges and punishments exacted upon these women.

What we need are bills that increase prenatal care for women in poverty and enhance substance abuse screening of all pregnant women with follow-up care if appropriate, or at the very least require treatment or counseling for the woman in conjunction with her court-ordered punishment.

So while these extremists in Richmond constantly use that divisive word -- abortion -- as their bumper sticker and their public face, make no mistake, what they are working on is an intrusion into more than just a woman's privacy, it is an intrusion into family privacy and family choices concerning birth control.

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O'Hanlon is the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia.