Quote:
Originally posted by Eclipse
There is so much birth control out there today it is not even funny and unplanned pregnancies should be very rare. At one point in my life I was on the pill, using a spermicide and making my boyfriend, now husband wear a condom. I was NOT trying to get preggers! LOL
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This brings up a whole 'nother issue entirely. Abortions are so prevalent in part because the government is failing women on birth control and sexual education.
I would bet anything that if all schools in America were required to give comprehensive sexual education, the abortion rate would go down. By a lot. Not everyone is educated enough to know about the types of birth control that are available as preventative measures -- that's why abortion is sometimes used as birth control. They don't find out until it's too late that no, pulling out is not effective as birth control, that condoms only work about 85% of the time even when they're used correctly, which they often aren't. Most sex ed programs don't even mention the morning after pill. Incomplete sex ed programs lead to ignorance. Ignorance only leads to more women getting accidentally pregnant and/or not knowing or denying that they're pregnant until it's too late -- which lead to both more total abortions and more late-term abortions.
Ditto for price. Not everyone can afford birth control. It's great that you could afford the pill, spermicide and a condom for every time you have sex. Not everyone can. The government needs to make birth control more widely available and cheaper, including having birth control pills, the shot and other methods of birth control covered by health insurance. It still makes me incredibly angry that there are so many places out there that cover Viagra but not birth control pills under health insurance policies.
Honestly, I think anybody who's anti-abortion and does not support these two policies first and foremost before banning abortion is extremely short-sighted.
Third, we need to erase the stigma of being unmarried and pregnant if you want even the slightest chance of "don't abort, give it up for adoption" to be successful. Did you know that one study showed that Catholics are 29% more likely to have an abortion than their Protestant counterparts, despite the fact that the Catholic church's stance on abortion is more vehement than others? This is, depending on who you ask, because of the church's stance on birth control or because of the extreme stigma of unmarried sex -- probably a combination of both. We need to get rid of the shame associated with it before we can even think of encouraging women to carry their babies to full term.
Of course we can never erase abortion entirely. Even if condoms were cheap and widely available, they break. Even if the pill was covered by health insurance, there are those who don't have health insurance, and the pill isn't foolproof either. And there will always be those who are too irresponsible to use it. But the abortion rate could easily be cut in half just by lowering prices and upping the education level. If you're really anti-abortion, why not work for those causes first before pushing for an overturning of Roe v. Wade, which hurts not only those who are needlessly having abortions but also those who legitimately do need them in cases of health problems, rape, etc.?