Shit Anti-Choicers Say - The Gift From God

The October 2, 2012 edition of Newsday, Long Island's major newspaper, featured a letter-to-the-editor from a Marc de Venoge, who decried what he refers to as "[d]ecades of values-free... government and school policies" that "fail to treat the root cause" of teenage pregnancy.

The solution, according to de Venoge, is "to teach the basic notion that...any pregnancy is a God-created gift from the moment of conception." (Emphasis mine).   Of course, what de Venoge means by "any pregnancy" is every pregnancy, even if it results from rape or incest.

This echoes what former senator and failed Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said in an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan earlier this year:

"I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you."

Let's set this straight right away.  Pregnancy is not a "gift from God," it's the consequence of a biological process.  Here are a few excerpts from WebMD's slideshow on conception:

"A man may ejaculate 40 million to 150 million sperm, which start swimming upstream toward the fallopian tubes on their mission to fertilize an egg. Fast-swimming sperm can reach the egg in a half an hour, while others may take days. The sperm can live up to 48-72 hours. Only a few hundred will even come close to the egg, because of the many natural barriers that exist in a woman's body."

"The fertilized egg starts growing fast, dividing into many cells. It leaves the fallopian tube and enters the uterus three to four days after fertilization. In rare cases, the fertilized egg does not leave the fallopian tube. This is called a tubal pregnancy or ectopic pregnancy and is a danger to the mother."  (Emphasis mine).

Does de Venoge believe that God is monitoring the progress of each sperm cell and intervening where necessary so that the favored sperm reaches and fertilizes the egg?  And if it is such a divine gift, what divine purpose is served by an ectopic pregnancy?

There's also a flip side to this "Gift from God" argument.   According to the CDC, as cited in this pregnancy fact sheet, "About 10 percent of women (6.1 million) in the United States ages 15-44 have difficulty getting pregnant or staying pregnant."  de Venoge and his ilk are basically saying that women who are unable to conceive apparently are unworthy of such a gift from the Supreme Being.

Well, thankfully, at least for some women who have trouble getting pregnant the old-fashioned way, there's help that does not require divine intervention.

From the same fact sheet:

"Infertility can be treated with medicine, surgery, artificial insemination, or assisted reproductive technology. Many times these treatments are combined. In most cases infertility is treated with drugs or surgery."

That's right.  Where God fails, human ingenuity can sometimes fill the gap.

But even if I were willing to entertain the claim that human pregnancy is a gift from God, what about pregnancy that results from sexual reproduction in other species?  Or does it only apply to humans?

Todd Akin, Republican nutbag member of the House of Representatives from Missouri, who is currently running to be a Senator from that state, not long ago notoriously said that during a "legitimate" rape, a woman's body has the means of mounting a biological defense against the rapist's sperm to prevent a pregnancy.

Seriously though, if our anatomy was truly the result of the handiwork of an Intelligent Designer, then the human female could have been designed to either accept or reject a man's sperm regardless of whether the sexual encounter was consensual or coerced.  Just imagine, there would be no problem of teen pregnancy or abortion!   Now that would be a really useful gift.

God Is Pro-Choice

Well, that's the conclusion I draw considering that yesterday in New York City the rain was absolutely pouring around 1 P.M., and yet today, for the rally I attended in support of Planned Parenthood in downtown Manhattan, the weather was about as nice as one could hope for in February. Because you know if it had rained during the rally like we experienced yesterday, some Bible Thumpers would be saying "You see, God's showing you how much he disapproves of what you're doing."

The rally itself was in response to the recent vote by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives to strip federal funding to Planned Parenthood for the terrible sin of providing abortions in addition to the majority of their work, which is health care and birth control. I myself utilized Planned Parenthood's services during a time of crisis in my life, so I know first hand the valuable work that they perform. It's not often that I feel motivated to get off my duff to stand up for a cause, but the actions by the Republicans not only in Congress, but increasingly in state legislatures across the country, have made me realize that when it comes to defending what I believe is a woman's fundamental reproductive rights, I can't just be a passive supporter.

Below are some pictures I took at the rally this afternoon. The first one, which is partly obscured, is of a sign carried by one attendee that reads "Keep Your Boehner Away From My Planned Parenthood," referring to the Speaker of the House John Boehner, who is apparently more concerned with making a woman's uterus a public domain rather than focusing on job growth. A couple of other amusing signs follow.

Of course, the rally featured more than just some catchy signs. There was also some important politicians and celebrity figures. Below is New York Senator Charles Schumer.

Next up, the fiery Anthony Weiner, who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens in the House of Representatives. I believe Weiner's district is the one that Schumer formerly represented in the House before Schumer was elected to the Senate.

In the celebrity department, we have actress Kathleen Turner, her voice huskier than ever. I kept hoping she would say "Pussywillows, Dotty." Apologies for the grainy shot. She was far from me and I had the lens on near maximum zoom.

Another amusing sign. It's the one in the middle that reads "Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries."

Another well known personality, at least in the blogging community, is the feminist blogger Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon. Again, apologies for the grainy picture.

Last in batch, I couldn't leave out my own representative in the New York State Assembly, Charles Lavine. It's starting to become something of a running gag with us that we keep crossing paths with one another. Last autumn, we met at an open house at the Islamic Center of Long Island in Westbury. Then on Election Day I was eating lunch at my local Cosi when he stopped in to eat with a couple of other people. He recognized me from the Islamic Center and we spoke briefly. So, as I was leaving the rally shortly after he spoke, I passed by him and when we made eye contact I greeted him again and was like "Hey, remember me?"

There were numerous other elected officials and feminist activists who spoke to the crowd, but I decided to focus only on the ones that I knew. Sadly, to me at least, all of the elected officials at the rally were Democrats. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate their support on reproductive rights, and since 2004 I have voted mostly for Democratic candidates either on the Democratic line or if they appear on other party lines, such as the Working Families Party. But it was not all that long ago that you could still find a few Republican politicians in New York who supported abortion rights. Regrettably, the Republican Party is increasingly solidifying itself as a party that opposes abortion rights even here in New York. For me as a voter, I find it difficult to pull the lever for a candidate that opposes abortion rights, but sometimes it puts me in the position of having to vote for a pro-choice candidate who is lackluster or who I do not otherwise care for. I would like to see the pendulum shift in the other direction so that opposition to abortion does not become a litmus test for Republican candidates for elected office.

And that leads me to another observation I want to make. Reproductive rights in this country are under a sustained and increasing assault by the anti-choice movement, and what I have noticed is that supporters of abortion rights are constantly on the defensive. What I would like to see from those of us who support abortion rights, access to contraception, and comprehensive sex education, is a counteroffensive to force our opponents to spend their money and resources responding to us rather than forcing us to always play defense. I would be eager to hook up with anyone in the New York area who would be interested in bouncing ideas off of each other and coming up with strategies to make this happen.

Pray For Compulsory Abortion

Sorry, but I couldn't resist the snarky title. It's my way of mocking the anti-choice signs and bumperstickers that read "Pray To End Abortion."

I'm a little late getting to this, but the other day was the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Of course, this brought out the anti-choice crowd:

Tens of thousands of abortion opponents rallied Thursday on the National Mall to mark the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade amid concerns they could face political setbacks under the new president. The rally and subsequent march to the Supreme Court came two days after the swearing-in of President Barack Obama, which many demonstrators said emphasized their need to become more vocal with their message.

It didn't take long for their concerns to be validated:

President Barack Obama on Friday struck down the Bush administration's ban on giving federal money to international groups that perform abortions or provide abortion information — an inflammatory policy that has bounced in and out of law for the past quarter-century.

This elicited predictable denunciations from members of God's Party, excuse me, the Republican Party:

"Coming just one day after the 36th anniversary of the tragic Roe v. Wade decision, this presidential directive forces taxpayers to subsidize abortions overseas — something no American should be required by government to do," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., called it "morally wrong to take the taxpayer dollars of millions of pro-life Americans to promote abortion around the world."

These guys need to get a friggin' clue. While they are so worried about the fate of a fertilized egg inside the uterus of a woman or teenage girl in the developing world, they don't seem particularly concerned with the dangers that pregnancy can pose for women.

From UNICEF's "Progress for Children : A Report Card on Maternal Mortality", comes this sobering statistic: "Each year, more than half a million women die from pregnancy-related causes and an estimated 10 million experience injuries, infections, disease or disability that can cause lifelong suffering."

The report adds, "Most of these deaths and disabilities are avoidable."

And while UNICEF's report "Progress for Children: A World Fit For Children Statistical Review" reports that child mortality rates are in decline, "an estimated 9.7 million children under the age of 5 died before the age of 5" in 2006.

So let's see if I got this straight. If a woman terminates a pregnancy, it is, to quote Rep. John Boehner above, "tragic." But if that same woman dies or is seriously injured from delivering her baby due to lack of adequate medical facilities, or the child dies from malaria at the age of 4, well shit happens, right?

Maybe George Carlin was right about these people after all.

A Really Dumb Anti-Abortion Argument

Abortion is one of the biggest hot button issues in the United States and has been for many years. I personally come down on the pro-choice side of the debate, though my intention here is not to initiate a debate about abortion itself, but rather to address a particular argument I have seen put out by some in the anti-choice crowd.

The gist of this particular argument was expressed not too long ago in the Letters to the Editor section of the December 10, 2008 issue of The New York Times by one Elinor Hite of Carrolton, Texas:

"A nation that runs out of people cannot perform the activities of a sophisticated society.

We have a shortage of primary care doctors. There are other skilled-worker shortages. You cannot kill the future population of a nation and then wonder why that nation does not have the people it needs to do the jobs it requires to function.

Our nation needs to face up to the 48 million lives lost through abortion since 1973. I think at least some of that number would have become the skilled people we need now and will need even more as our population ages."

In a nutshell (with the emphasis on "nut"), Mrs. Hite is treating pregnancy as a form of national service, in which women dutifully crank out babies to provide the country with a future labor force.

But the implications of her assertions aside, Mrs. Hite is just plain wrong on the facts. First, let's look at the big picture. In 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade, the population of the United States was over 203,302,000. The population of the United States today, some 35 years after Roe v. Wade, according to the United States Census Bureau, is nearly 306,000,000. So while Hite is decrying some 48 million people who were never born, the population of the United States has increased by nearly 100 million since Roe!

Hite also portrays the 48 million number as a zero-sum game. In other words, she assumes that if all the women who have had abortions were instead forced to carry their pregnancies to term that we would then have had a net gain of 48 million people plus their descendants. But that is not necessarily the case. It is safe to assume that a significant percentage of women who have had abortions in the last 35 years have went on to have children later on in their lives. However, if these women were prevented from terminating their pregnancies earlier in their lives, they might have ended up having fewer children in the future. That means that some of the people alive today would not be alive if abortion were not legal. (Emphasis mine)

Regarding the shortage of primary care physicians that Hite decries, it can take seven to eight years to earn a medical degree. When you consider that Hite's phantom children who were aborted within a year of Roe would have only graduated high school in about 1992, the small fraction of them who would have gone on and earned a medical degree would have only entered the medical profession within the last 8 years. But that still does not address the problem of the shortage of primary care physicians.

The American Academy of Family Physicians reports that "[p]rimary care specialties have lost their appeal to U.S. medical school graduates, and specific primary care specialties are seeing young physicians look to more lucrative sub-specialization." According to Gail Baldwin, M.D., medical director of the Lake Superior Community Health Center in Duluth, Minn., public and private payment rates for primary care services lag behind those paid for services provided by many other specialties, discouraging physicians from pursuing a career in family medicine. So, the problem is not a shortage of doctors so much as a lack of incentive for medical school graduates to go into primary care practice.

Furthermore, Hite does not seem to realize that if her scenario of an extra 48 million children being born became reality, it would have exacerbated the labor shortage she bewails. These extra children, ironically, would have required an increase in the number of pediatric physicians, not to mention the building of more schools, and the hiring of more teachers and support staff. Where would they have come from?

Well, it just so happens that a good chunk of our labor force within the last two decades has come from abroad. From the report Rise, Peak and Decline: Trends in U.S. Immigration 1992-2004, the Pew Hispanic Center notes that "the foreign-born population grew from 9.6 million in 1970 to 19.8 million in 1990. In the last decade of the 20th century the numbers jumped dramatically by 57% to 31.1 million in Census 2000." From 2001 through 2007, according to the 2007 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, annual levels of immigration have for the most part exceeded one million. So immigration alone has virtually cancelled out Hite's missing 48 million, not even counting the American born descendants of post-1973 immigrants. Furthermore, unlike those missing 48 million, most immigrants have had the costs of their education borne from their countries of origin rather than by the American tax payer. My own wife is an example of this. She was able to immigrate to the United States in 1990 owing to a temporary nursing visa program, which enabled her to immediately participate in our labor force and contribute to our tax base. Of course, my opinion in this regard is highly biased, but it is clear that my wife and other immigrants like her represent a net gain for the United States.

One can of course object to abortion on moral grounds, and it is not my intention to get into that topic with this particular post, but I submit that Hite's argument, which is that we have a labor shortage in this country because of the selfishness of women who have had abortions, is either ignorant or dishonest.