I know that this is not a political blog. Occasionally, there just happens to be so much going on in the political world that I feel compelled to make a comment or two, especially when the possibility for an impact on our finances exists. So let’s talk.
Contraceptives.
Man, oh, man what a landmine these days. Personally, I ever thought that I would see the day when politicians would be engaged in an argument over a woman’s right to access contraceptives, but there they go and here we are.
Are you behind on this subject? Catch up with the video below:
I want to say that I understand the point of view of the (mostly) men who are against big government, but who somehow think that they have a right to tell me what should happen in my uterus. I can agree that everyone is entitled to an opinion and their own religious beliefs, but when opinions and beliefs are combined with the probability that the individual will enact laws that will marginalize one half of the population, I am rightly alarmed.
I don’t hear anyone debating a man’s right for access to Viagra or Cialiss. What I do hear are politicians essentially saying that women should not have a voice in their own healthcare and with what should happen to and within their own bodies. I thought that I lived in the U.S., not Afghanistan.
I’ve sort of covered this topic in a side-stepped way before. I argued that you should not have kids if you couldn’t afford them. That goes for both men and women since most births for women under thirty now occur outside the confines of marriage. We’re not talking about just the 16 and Pregnant age group here. And yes, Virginia, all of those babies can and will negatively impact our finances. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services has an entire white paper on “how marriage affects the economic well-being of families with children.” I’ll cut to the chase for you. On average, single parent households have more financial challenges than families with two adults. There’s no surprise there.
Politicians are telling us, as if we are non-thinking sheeple, to go head and have as many kids as you can, because God would provide. But don’t you dare think about using social programs to fall back on when you can’t feed your kids because the U.S. is not a welfare state.
Does anyone else see what’s wrong with this?
The first consequence of low access to birth control is a higher birth rate, especially amongst women living in lower socioeconomic circumstances. They are the same women who are more likely than not to end up needing help from a government sponsored program, but then we go ahead and yank those programs out from under them as well. I’ve heard stories about people stealing food to feed their kids. Do you have compassion for these people, or should they all be put behind bars? How desperate would you be if your kids were hungry and you could not provide for them?
We should also expect higher instances in terminations of pregnancy, even while state governments fight to limit access to those procedures. Through a combination of factors, abortion rates have been falling since the 1990’s – from a rate of 27.4 abortions for every 1,000 pregnancies in 1990 to a rate of 19.5 for every 1,000 pregnancies in 2007. Those statistics come directly from the Census Bureau.
Whatever side of that debate that you land on, I bet that we can all agree that an even lower abortion rate would be great for everyone. The way to stop that is to begin by education teenagers and young people about their bodies early, and including ways in which pregnancy can be prevented. It’s not from teaching an abstinence only agenda or by telling women to “hold an aspirin between their knees” in order to prevent pregnancy.
Finally, how many children will end up in the foster care children and become wards of the state? Don’t argue that these babies will all get adopted, because if that were the case, we would not have a need for the foster care system, nor would we have children spending their entire lives bouncing from one foster home to another. How willing are you to adopt a five year old minority child? That’s not the picture of the cute, one month old, blond haired and blue-eyed child that people spend years on waiting lists hoping for a chance to adopt. Those children exist right now, and they are languishing.
Now that you’re caught up, what do you think? Should a politician’s own religious affect the way in which they vote, especially when they are intensely debating taking away access to medication that many women consider to be a basic human right? More pointedly, should a politician have a right to take up residence in my uterus and tell me what I can and can not do there?