Close Linkage Between Birth Control Policies And Abortion
Want to reduce teen pregnancy and abortion? Start with long-term birth control. "Earlier this week, an influential pediatrics group offered a pretty significant new recommendation: that teenagers use long-acting contraceptives, like intrauterine devices and hormone implants, as the 'first line' of defense in preventing pregnancy pregnancy. And a new study released Wednesday night helps illustrate why the physicians group offered its endorsement. Teenage girls who were offered these types of contraceptives at no cost were significantly much more likely to use them, and they had substantially lower rates of pregnancy, birth and abortion when compared to U.S. teens, according to the study." Jason Millman in The Washington Post.
Chart: Pregnancy, abortion rates drop with free birth control. Sarah Kliff in Vox.
The policy angle: The ACA impact. "The Affordable Care Act, which generally guarantees coverage for all forms of contraception with no co-pay, makes providing teenagers with free, long-acting contraceptives more achievable, social policy experts said. But there are practical obstacles. Many pediatricians are not trained to insert implants or IUDs. Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, noted that insurance provided low rates for counseling, which could affect some doctors’ willingness to spend time doing it. And the idea that doctors should recommend long-acting contraception to teenagers is almost certain to inflame the political and cultural debate." Pam Belluck in The New York Times.
Republicans face a contraception puzzle. "Republican candidates are hoping to do a better job of appealing to women voters....To make inroads, the party has tried out a variety of talking points. Recent calls for better access to contraceptives are not among the more convincing....It's not as simple as a change of heart: Gardner continues to cosponsor federal legislation that's very similar to the state legislation he's denounced....Republicans do truly appear to be doing something new in openly embracing certain forms of, and ways of accessing, contraception. Could it be they're open to some kind of grand bipartisan compromise? Dan Grossman, a doctor and spokesman with the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, isn't so sure." Lucia Graves in National Journal.
Not all forms of birth control work the same. "The most effective choices turned out to be the hormone implant and the copper IUD, both of which had perfect records over a combined 690.6 teen-years of use. As for the others: The hormone-releasing IUD had 5.1 failures per 1,000 teen-years of use; The hormone injections resulted in 5.2 failures per 1,000 teen-years of use; The contraceptive ring produced 51.8 failures per 1,000 teen-years of use; Birth control pills resulted in 56.8 failures per 1,000 teen-years of use; and The transdermal patch had 60.8 failures per 1,000 teen-years of use." Karen Kaplan in the Los Angeles Times.
Appeals court decision will close all but 7 abortion clinics in Texas. "The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stays a lower judge's ruling and allows Texas to put into effect restrictions that were part of its abortion law passed last year and pushed by Republican Gov. Rick Perry....The decision follows a ruling in August by U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel that part of the Texas law requiring clinics to spend millions on hospital upgrades was aimed at making access to abortions more difficult rather than ensuring patient safety. Texas has appealed that decision." William M. Welch in USA Today.
Related: Alabama law putting teens on trial for abortion fought. Andrew Harris in Bloomberg.
Poverty is also killing American babies. "The US currently ranks 56th internationally when it comes to infant mortality. We're doing worse than just about every other rich country, and a bunch of non-rich ones too. Cuba, Poland, Bosnia, and Serbia are beating us, for example. Explanations for this vary*, and a new working paper by USC's Alice Chen, MIT's Heidi Williams, and University of Chicago's Emily Oster provides a nice overview of them. But the paper's most striking finding isn't about the precise causes of the mortality gap between the US and peer countries. It's about who bears the cost of that gap" Dylan Matthews in Vox.
Earlier this week: The recession's baby bust. "There’s a reason why 'boom times' and 'baby boom' both contain an onomatopoeic signifier of the procreative act. In developed countries, fertility rates tend to go up and down with GDP. What does that mean in real terms? A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Princeton researchers Janet Currie and Hannes Schwandt quantifies just how many fewer babies were born because of the Great Recession. Their answer: at least a half a million." Olga Khazan in The Atlantic.
The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism
The hard, central "fact" of contemporary "conservatism" is its insistence on a socio-economic threshold above which people deserve government assistance, and below which people deserve to die.
The sooner the better.
Unless conservatives are showing n'er-do-wells The Door of Doom, they just don't "feel right."
To allay this chthonic anxiety, they resort to Human Sacrifice, hoping that spilled blood will placate "the angry gods," including the one they've made of themselves. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/harvard-study-45000-americans-die.html
Having poked their eyes out, they fail to see that self-generated wrath creates "the gods" who hold them thrall.
Almost "to a man," contemporary "conservatives" have apotheosized themselves and now -- sitting on God's usurped throne -- are rabid to pass Final Judgment.
Self-proclaimed Christians, eager to thrust "the undeserving" through The Gates of Hell, are the very people most likely to cross its threshold.
Remarkably, none of them are tempted to believe this.
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