To have a child or not. To have this child or not. To have a child at this time or not. Having a child or not is a complicated and exquisitely personal decision. Which is why the only one who can make it is the individual who is pregnant. Everything else is commentary.
Kathleen Parker [“Terminate abortion, please,” op-ed, June 9] and others are entitled to their own opinions about abortion. But they cannot and should not feel entitled to prevent — or judge me about — mine.
Susan Bodiker, Washington
*****
It would be great to make abortion irrelevant. Kathleen Parker is either naive or, more likely, willfully cherry-picking the facts regarding the reality for many of the women who need this type of health care.
Ms. Parker wrote in her June 9 op-ed about those millions whose “profound religious conviction” should be respected. The result is that federal funding for abortion is banned. In fact, those beliefs hold much of the country hostage. People refuse to do their jobs in the form of conscientious objection by healthcare workers, beliefs that deprive women of the means to avoid pregnancy and that drive the dissemination of false information about the reality of the procedure.
Why must my federal tax dollars, and those of the millions who believe as I do, be withheld from helping women in need who would choose an abortion? How come only religious beliefs count? How does Ms. Parker see a clear path to making birth control freely available with the likes of the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Green family, who either refuse to cover any birth control or will cover only the forms of birth control they designate as acceptable for their workers? Why can parents opt their children out of sex education in schools in some parts of the country?
“We should be talking about” it, she wrote. Yes. Let’s.
Nancy Poole, Newton, Mass.
*****
Paul Kane ended his June 9 @PKCapitol column, “Democrats on defensive as abortion foes wonder if party tolerates their views,” with a quote from former congressman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.): “It’s not the same party anymore. You’re driving people away.” I am among those who were driven away.
I registered as a Democrat in West Virginia way back when I was first old enough to vote, but I threw in the towel at long last about three years ago. I am pro-life, yet I believe in gun control and climate change, so I could find no seat at the table of either party. I’m now registered as independent.
It seems that right now one has to favor abortion rights, including late in pregnancy, to be included in the Democratic Party. Extremists in both parties and their litmus tests are driving people away. Some of us feel we have nowhere to go without being attacked for our beliefs.
Sharon Klees, Hyattsville
*****
I'm mostly in sync with the last one, that of Sharon Klees. As a pro-life Democrat, I tend to feel I have "nowhere to go" politically these days. None of my party's 20-plus presidential candidates seem to be even tangentially pro-life. This is especially true of leading candidates such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris — not to mention the one whose poll numbers are currently the highest among Democratic voters: Joe Biden. Biden recently flipped his erstwhile support and came out against the Hyde Amendment which currently blocks federal Medicaid payments to cover poor women's abortion costs.
As I pointed out in my earlier post, "Contraception, Pregnancy and Abortion," almost all women can today get health insurance that covers the full cost of contraceptive medications and techniques: birth control pills, IUDs, implants, etc. Women without jobs that provide health insurance can, during "open season," get it online through "Obamacare," i.e. the Affordable Care Act. Households with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level are eligible to receive federal subsidies for policies purchased via Obamacare, so for those households Obamacare is reasonably affordable.
*****
I'd like to find out why there are there so many unwanted pregnancies that often result in abortion. Why aren't more sexually active women — not to mention the men they have sex with — using "protection," if they don't want to get pregnant? Or, if they're using it, isn't it working all that well?
My Catholic religion is super-strict about topics related to sexuality and reproduction:
- Sex is permissible only between married heterosexual couples. It is never permissible prior to or outside such unions.
- Means of contraception other than the so-called "rhythm method" — whose official name is "natural family planning" — are impermissible. They are considered "artificial," therefore sinful.
- Willfully obtained abortions, even for women who have strictly obeyed the first two rules and have still become pregnant, are in all cases contrary to the church's moral teachings.
I suppose one reason why certain couples might avoid using "artificial" contraception has to do with a religious ban such as the Catholic Church imposes. But I'd say that that can't be the main reason for so many unplanned pregnancies. According to the Washington Post story "Almost half of pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned. There’s a surprisingly easy way to change that":
Many women get pregnant while using birth control. From a behavioral economics standpoint, the most widely used forms of birth control in the United States — the pill and condoms — are pretty terrible. They require frequent and specific action, offer little room for error, require action in times of emotional distraction, and have comparatively high rates of failure: For every 100 women who rely on the pill for one year, nine will get pregnant; for every 100 women who rely on condoms for one year, nearly 20 will get pregnant. By contrast, if 100 women rely on the IUD (intrauterine device) or the implant (a matchstick-sized plastic rod inserted just below the skin in the arm that releases pregnancy-preventing hormones) for one year, just one, or possibly none, will get pregnant.
This story points to better ways of avoiding unplanned pregnancies (IUDs and implants) than those which are currently widely used (the pill and condoms).
If only such facts would get more exposure, the greater part of the hot abortion controversy in today's politics would become moot. Wouldn't that be a great thing? I think so.
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