Ashcroft seeks Planned Parenthod Records

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

And the world's going to end and the sky is going to fall and the Cubs are going to win the World Series...blah blah blah.

My thoughts exactly.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Just look at the statitistics they don't lie...

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904509.html

Actually, people lie with statistics all the time, and Darryl Huff and others have

actually written books about it. But the site you provided is very informative, so thank you.

 

A lot of the more interesting information on the site:

 

Only 19% of women getting abortions are teens.

 

More than 60% of women getting abortions already have at least one child, so they KNOW what it takes to raise a kid and the know that they can't make it work with another one.

 

Black women are more than three times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are two-and-a-half times as likely. There is a tight correlation between race, socioeconomic status, education, and the incidence of abortion.

 

Maybe most interesting, as much as 43% of the decline in abortion between 1994 and 2000 can be attributed to the use of emergency contraception. Wow. There is no reason to believe that if teens were given confodentiality in getting access to and education about preventive birth control, that it wouldn't

similarly result in a decline in the need for abortion.

[BrandoFan]

It's all so easy when you don't worry about considering any lives in the situation other than that of the fetus. Once the fetus pops out and is just another of the millions of a poor, neglected, hopeless kids then screw it.

 

I wonder what the relationship between early teen pregnancies and welfare royalty might be....

 

Teens have been having sex for 1000s of years and will continue to do so despite all efforts to stop it/ignore it/moralize against it, etc

 

Unless chastity belts with a 21st century (electrical?) twist is the way to go.

 

There isn't another person here who wishes that open dialog within loving, supportive families was the rule an not the exception as much as I do. Sadly, that's not the case

 

But if you wax wishful thinkingly long enough and coat it in sloganeering rhetoric, it might just become the case.

 

Or not.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

I actually just read a really good book "When Abortion Was a Crime". It's a history of abortion from 19th Century America until 1973 when it was legalized.

 

It disturbed me greatly that the original anti-abortionists argued for the criminalization of abortion (and this is in the public record of America Medical Association publications of the late 1800s and early 1900s) because it would cause "race suicide" and immigrants and blacks would take over the population and take over political power. There was an overt sentiment of racism injected into the criminalization of abortion. Even when abortion was criminalized, abortions were still able to be had because women wanted them and many doctors knew women would do it themselves, so the doctors tried to do it medically as to minimize the death of the mother. Most of the AMA elite did not want abortion legalized because they admitted that they would lose money of child births and the new kids that they would have to give check-ups et al. It should also be known that for years until the criminalization of abortion that abortion before quickening (being able to feel the baby kick and move inside) was deemed perfectly acceptable. Women still proceeded to get abortions before quickening even into the 1900s because they still clung to the idea of quickening.

 

In the 1930s, especially during the height of the Great Depression, abortion was widely accepted even though it was criminal because women could not raise children in a good home and the costs of giving birth would sink their families economically. As the 1940s and 50s rolled in, many physicians came forward to act against the criminalization of abortion and wanted it legalized. As the backlash against abortion came in full force in the 1940s and 50s, these doctors saw that women who wanted them were forced to go underground to get them. In these underground backroom abortions, women were forced to give "package deals" (a.k.a. trading sex for an abortion), the tools were not sterilized and damn near all the time, the abortionist was not a trained doctor at all. This drastically put the woman's life at grave risk. And oddly enough, the sociological data that Leslie Reagan (the author) uses shows that most women who got abortions were married and had kids but could not afford more...and this was also during the times that contracentives and anything resembling birth control was being criminalized for being distributed so there was no other real option (unless you think married couples just would abstain from having sex altogether which ain't bloody likely) The doctors were the original ones starting in the 1950s promoting the legalization of abortion and were later joined in the 1960s and 1970s by feminist groups.

 

Having a woman's right to choose is key and integral because, as history shows, they will do whatever they have to to get an abortion if they need/want one.

 

Personally, I think an open discussion about sexuality and contraceptives would drastically reduce the need for abortion in the first place. We live in a highly repressed society that views sex as taboo as can be seen from anti-sodomy laws that were recently struck down to laws that limit the amount of sexual toys one can have in their home (I'm looking at you, state of Texas) to the idea that abstinence education will stop kids from having sex. In my eyes, taking away the protective measures (i.e. condoms, birth control etc.) will not stop children from engaging in sex, but rather increase the amount of kids having sex...and this seems to be the case in Bush's tenure as governor of Texas. Since his tenure as governor of Texas, President Bush has made no secret of his view that sex education should teach teenagers “abstinence only” rather than including information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Unfortunately, despite spending more than $10 million on abstinence-only programs in Texas alone, this strategy has not been shown to be effective at curbing teen pregnancies or halting the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. During President Bush’s tenure as governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000, for instance, with abstinence-only programs in place, the state ranked last in the nation in the decline of teen birth rates among in the decline of teen birth rates among 15- to 17-year-old females.38 Overall, the teen pregnancy rate in Texas was exceeded by only four other states.

 

The fact that the Bush administration ignores the scientific evidence, troubling though that is, is not the primary concern of this report. Rather, it is the fact that the Bush administration went further by distorting the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) science-based performance measures to test whether abstinence-only programs were proving effective, such as charting the birth rate of female program participants. In place of such established measures, the Bush administration has required the CDC to track only participants’ program attendance and attitudes, measures designed to obscure the lack of efficacy of abstinence-only programs.

 

In addition to distorting performance measures, the Bush administration has suppressed other information at the CDC at odds with its preferred policies. At the behest of higher-ups in the Bush administration, according to a source inside the CDC, the agency was forced to discontinue a project called “Programs that Work,” which identified sex education programs found to be effective in scientific studies. All five of the programs identi- fied in 2002 involved comprehensive sex education for teenagers and none were abstinence-only programs. In ending the project, the CDC removed all information about these programs from its website.

 

Source: Scientific Integrity in Policymaking Report

http://www.proudliberals.com/home/index.cf...8&T_ID=1&C_ID=0 This link has the source on it (I can't direct link to it since it's a .pdf file)

 

Even Ronald Reagan said that he believed sex was "inherently tinged with evil." If we live in a society that is so Puritanical that it loathes its own bodies and desires, then no wonder we're having the problems we're having. An openness about sex and sexuality in American culture might just be the means to lower the need for abortion instead of criminalizing it (which has shown that it does not do anything to curb women getting abortions)

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Actually, people lie with statistics all the time, and Darryl Huff and others have actually written books about it.

Darryl Huff's book is fantastic. I'm glad somebody else has heard of it.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Darryl Huff's book is fantastic.  I'm glad somebody else has heard of it.

Yeah, "How to Lie With Statistics" great little book. I have used parts of it as a cautionary tale in biostatistics and experimental design lectures and workshops for several years. Huff's term 'statisulation' - to describe the use of statistics to intentionally mislead - is a part of my working vocabulary It was out of print for quite some time, but it is now available again. Huff also has a couple of 'how things work' kind of books out that show studenst how much math and science there is in their everyday lives. I haven't picked any of these up yet, but I know some middle school and high school teachers that have found them to be quite good.

[Rex Kickass]

I'm confused. Why does Ashcroft want to subpoena medical records for Planned Parenthood? Are we talking all medical records? Or are we just talking about minors who had abortion procedures performed?

 

Open ended anythings lead to slippery slopes. Listen, once you start something its easy for it to creep into something else.

 

A lot of people are worried about a constitutional amendment against gay marriage for the same reason. It's a slippery slope. A vague amendment in the constitution that doesn't spell out specific limits to its scope could lead to ultimately the ability to codify discrimination legally against gay people in housing rights, employment rights, etc. on a Federal level. Many people may say its a far leap from what the amendment says - but look at the bill of rights and how far we've gone in interpreting there what the constitution says.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Yeah and parents don't go absolutely apes*** when they find out their kid did something wrong like got busted for alcohol or what not.  Right? 

Of course they would go apes*** but that doesn't mean that they are going to beat the kid to death. But that's so typical of you leftists. You think parents incapable of making the decisions that are in the best interest of their kids so you say the government or groups like planned parenthood should make them instead.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

It's infuriating whhen the people who so oppose reproductive choice are soooo often the same people that make sure sex education in the schools is firmly rooted in the 30s, and that condoms are not made freely and anonomously available to this at-risk sexually active age group because that somehow promotes/endorses/condones teen promiscuity.  Teens have been having sex for 1000s of years and will continue to do so despite all efforts to stop it/ignore it/moralize against it, etc.

Rooted in the '30's ? How does that work? If it is because abstinence is preached then they can stay there as far as I'm concerned. I am not someone who says that people should be married before they have sex at all but I do believe that people, regardless of age, should wait to have sex until they are fully ready to accept responsibility for the potential consequenses of their actions. That's not moralizing, thats common freekin sense.

 

That being said, nobody on this earth can convince me that a high school student or anyone in their teen years is ready to accept that responsibility. I think abstinence should be taught along those same lines in the schools because shoving condoms in kids faces only encourages the behaivior.

 

BTW, just because "everybody's doing it" doesn't make it right.

[FlaSoxxJim]

But that's so typical of you leftists.  You think parents incapable of making the decisions that are in the best interest of their kids so you say the government or groups like planned parenthood should make them instead.

Very many parents are incapable of that very thing.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Rooted in the '30's ?  How does that work?  If it is because abstinence is preached then they can stay there as far as I'm concerned.  I am not someone who says that people should be married before they have sex at all but I do believe that people, regardless of age, should wait to have sex until they are fully ready to accept responsibility for the potential consequenses of their actions.  That's not moralizing, thats common freekin sense.

 

That being said, nobody on this earth can convince me that a high school student or anyone in their teen years is ready to accept that responsibility.  I think abstinence should be taught along those same lines in the schools because shoving condoms in kids faces only encourages the behaivior.

 

BTW, just because "everybody's doing it" doesn't make it right.

You have a major disconnect from reality on this one, though your sentiments and ideal view of the way it should be is sensible enough.

 

You're right - just because "everybody's doing it" doesn't make it right. Your right, teens are not mature enough to make a lot of decisions considering all angles. Ditto for lots of adults.

 

But teeens are going to have sex, just like they did in the 50s, 30s, 12th Century, or whenever.

 

A war against pre-teen sex by arming kids with abstinence as the only thing in their arsenal is as doomed to fail as the current laughable war on drugs. Abstinence IS the best way to stop teen pregnancies. But it requires self respect and respect for your partner. There is a lack of this in too many cases today, stemming from lots of social and family sources.

[mreye]

Very many parents are incapable of that very thing.

Just because "very many" parents are incapable doesn't mean you should disrespect my rights as a parent.

 

Edit: By "you" I mean the left, Planned Parenthood, etc.