We need yet more contraceptives
Via Lex Communis comes this article.
In most of the United States, 24 abortions are carried out for every 100 live births. In New York, 72 abortions occur for every 100 live births.
The continuing boom in abortions--90,157 were performed in the city in 2006, the last year for which statistics are available--apparently means that many women are using abortion as their birth control method of choice. That concerns health advocates, who point out that the procedure sometimes causes complications and is more expensive than contraception. The high rate also shows that these women are not protected against AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
"No doctor would ever tell a woman that abortion was one of the choices she should rely on for contraception," says Iffath Hoskins, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn.
The high rate is especially troubling because it indicates that more city residents are turning to abortion. Years ago, most abortions in the city--up to two-thirds in some years--were performed on women from out of town who flocked to New York because of its liberal abortion policies. Now, however, 93% of the abortions in New York City are performed on city residents.
The easy availability of abortion and not enough access to affordable contraception may be reasons behind the city's high abortion rate. An average of 250 abortions are performed in the city each day at more than 200 clinics and doctor's offices. And even though free or low-cost contraception is offered through 59 publicly funded programs at 218 sites in New York state, mostly in New York City, more could be provided, says Deborah Kaplan, deputy commissioner of the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
"To me, the problem is access," says Ms. Kaplan. "If we improved access to contraceptives, there would be a reduction in abortion."
"I keep pouring gas on the fire and it keeps getting bigger. If only I had more gas."
The question for pro-choicers is why is a high rate of abortion troubling anyway? If it really is a morally neutral act than it doesn't matter if there is one or one thousand. So what if it is a backup-contraceptive?
That would be good news to taxpayers. In a time of fiscal constraints, abortion is costing the state at least $16 million in Medicaid spending annually, and city taxpayers still more through a city Health and Hospitals Corp. policy that provides free abortions to poor women at its facilities. The surgical costs alone are between $1,000 and $1,800 per abortion, compared with the $425 average annual cost for birth control pills.
Whatever you subsidize you get more of.
But the biggest concern over the high abortion rate is the impact it is having on women's health.
Most health experts agree that it is wise to keep abortion safe, legal and available in New York, but some are also concerned that too many women are not using other methods to prevent unwanted births.
Surgical abortion always carries risks, though slight, of complications--including ones that can tear or scar the uterus and compromise a woman's ability to have healthy children in the future, Dr. Hoskins says.
What there are risks? How did did that make it into the aritcle, must be a mistake by the editors..Next we have one of the strangest bits of logic I have seen.
It may be especially difficult for black women in communities where men are scarce, due to incarceration or addiction problems, to insist that their partners use condoms.
Yes scarce men cause pregnancies.
Known as 
One of the biggest problems with the high number
of abortions is lack of funding for Crisis
Pregnancy Centers. I help run a Catholic center in
Georgia and we get 50-60 impoverished girls every month seeking reasons not to get an abortion.
We help them out as much as we can, with
counseling, financial support, supplies, etc.
but we can only do so much, when individual
donors can only send us $5 - $25 month. With no support from the diocese, priests who don't want you talking at their churches, foundations (including Knights of Columbus) who would rather support Special Olympics or Mentally Challenged Citizens rather than save babies... it's a difficult situation; trying to change lives without the resources. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL CRISIS PREGNANCY CENTER!
It may be especially difficult for black women in communities where men are scarce, due to incarceration or addiction problems, to insist that their partners use condoms.
Okay, I can't help but thinking that the logic behind this is that if women insist men wear condoms the men will get offended and won't want to have sex with them...because men are so "scarce"...
Am I the only one reading that paragraph this way?
Most health experts agree that it is wise to keep abortion safe, legal and available in New York
I was going to joke that this is the one exception I would make to my opposition to abortion, but I can't hate New Yorkers that much, and this wording makes it sound like I'd really have to.
the procedure ... is more expensive than contraception.
...not enough access to affordable contraception may be reasons behind the city's high abortion rate.
These articles must be written by an Excel macro. I can get the blindness of ideology, especially a sinful one, but would it be that hard to hire a contradiction-checker after merging the specific details of a news story with a random selection of contranatal "facts?" Sometimes this propaganda is even less subtle than the "smother the flames with gasoline" analogy.
Sometimes I wonder how dumb they expect us to be in order not to see it. Then I wonder if they're trying (and succeeding) to dull our intellectual weapons.
um...Sex in the City?
There's no reciprocal correlation between people and culture. Nope. None.
Amy, that's exactly how I read it. Men are scarce, so the women can't insist upon 'protection' or they risk losing their mate to a less-fussy girl. There are so many insulting things within that statement that I hardly know where to begin.
Amy, that's exactly how I read it. Men are scarce, so the women can't insist upon 'protection' or they risk losing their mate to a less-fussy girl. There are so many insulting things within that statement that I hardly know where to begin.
Has anyone ever heard of abstinence?
Amy and Andrew - yep, that's about it.
I know when I swore off premarital sex I was afraid no guy would ever want to date me again once he found out he wasn't getting lucky. When there are a lot of women around who take premarital sex as a matter of course, one is at a bit of a competitive disadvantage, so to speak. I think they're arguing the same is true for women who insist on condoms.
Not that I'm condoning condom use as opposed to abstinence, but if there's any truth to that argument, I guess I would say to those women the same thing I had to say to myself: if he's worth keeping, he's not going to leave you over that.
(Disclaimer: Yes, I recognize that the contraceptive mentality contributes to abortions. No, I am not advocating condom use, even for non-Catholics, because bottom line, abstinence works better. End disclaimer.)
Has anyone ever heard of abstinence?
B-b-b-but...that requires self-discipline! And self-control! And I have a "right" to sleep with whatever I please, whenever I please! How dare people suggest I control my urges and wait!
/sarcasm
B-b-b-but...that requires self-discipline! And self-control!
Okay, then, next question: Has anyone ever heard of self-discipline or self-control? :)
Has anyone ever heard of self-discipline or self-control?
Yeah - but those are old-fashioned concepts only used by conservatives and Catholics to oppress women and control everyone's lives... ;)
As a Protestant, I defend birth control only as a means to prevent abortions. Of course self-control and discipline, aka Abstinence, are still the most fool-proof ways to avoid pregancy, but let's face it, Ed Pie hit the truth, the old attitudes are still too firmly entrenched to just dig up yet. Certainly the number of abused/neglected children is nothing to add to, and hardly any girl gives up her child anymore. A thing like Norplant at least keeps any more innocent lives from being lost in the womb.
I realize this is hardly an ideal and I'm going to get a lot of flack for this. My view is that contraceptives are like lifeboats, and right now we're surrounded by a lot of sinking ships.
The problem with all this talk of discipline and abstinence is, I thinking it either assumes:
1: people all marrying childhood sweethearts right after school\college
or
2: people remaining virgins into their late twenties (or futher)
I'm sure lots of you would like things to be that way (haven't been for me, so I guess i'm a horrid sinner) but, ya know, real world calling...
Stoo, the popular term is "wretched sinner", and we're all THAT. :)
As for "real world", I just sat through a conference that included discussions about what we're going to do for/about the 9- and 10-year-olds having sex. (And how to keep away from the second-graders.)
So just think of us as as trying to balance out the assumption that people have to sleep with everyone they date or the sex-first-relationship-later-maybe trend that's been going on since the '70s.
Stoo:
No, the talk of abstinence assumes people are either able to exercise self-control (you know, the same principle that applies to preventing me from downing a six boxes of Twinkies or a liter of alcohol) or are prepare to accept the consequences of their actions...which means not offing the unborn child they create by hopping in the sack with someone.
Contradict me if you must, but in the whole of human history I don't think a single person has died from not having sex...
And that's what we're talking about.
Panda Rosa,
That "let's face it" is killing more children than it is saving. Statistically, the majority of abortive women were using contraceptives. Contraception increases promiscuity, promiscuity keeps abortion clinics in business.
If birth control methods (most of which may act as abortifacients) reduce the number of abortions, why is it that the pusher of birth control, Planned Parenthood, performed MORE abortions at last count?
Then, of course, there are those diseases that are not prevented by contraception, but are on the increase due to promiscuity...
I think what we need to face is that there is no such thing as "safe sex" outside of marriage. I am interested in knowing, though, if you interpret some part of Scripture as the basis for birth control acceptance.
Amy
".which means not offing the unborn child they create by hopping in the sack with someone."
Hang on, if you use a condom there's no unborn child to off in the first place.
Oh and yeah you do have a right to sleep with anyone (willing and of age of consent) you please, I'm not sure what the quote marks were doing around the word? It might not be a good idea to do that, but that's another matter.
If you want to wait, fine. The questions is why others are obliged to follow your moralising.
Joannne:
"I think what we need to face is that there is no such thing as "safe sex" outside of marriage"
This doesn't make sense. What makes sex in marriage safer than that in any other comitted relationship? What differences does the formal contract make here?
Always astounding how some can take the straight-forward and make it complicated. That is, the truth is that sex within marriage=good, fornication=bad. When you hear someone throw in the word "realistic" and it's variants, what they are really saying is that Good is illusion, Evil is real. Few have the stones to take it to the logical conclusion: Evil is Good and Good is Evil, but we see such rot-think in action when we hear how the Church teaching on sexuality is causing the spread of AIDS>
Stoo,
Sex is ordered to marriage (by definition, marriage is between a man and a woman). Outside of that relationship sex puts body, soul, and psyche at risk. It is as reasonable to reserve sex for marriage as it is good to eat with our mouths and not our ears, or to restrict ourselves to sleeping to appropriate places and not nap behind the wheel of a moving vehicle, etc.
The act of marrying is certainly not risk-free, (hence vows, marriage contracts, etc., and also, sadly, divorce, etc) but how can complete self-donation to someone other than a spouse be "safe", ever?
I appreciate you taking the time to answer but I'm still not quite following.
What's special about the formal process of marriage that makes sex in a loving relationship safer than it was before?
I'm don't see the complication. Yes, a couple where one or both have had past sexual histories may have contracted a disease, or where one or the other is unfaithful and contracts a disease does mean indeed that any sex would be unsafe. What does that have to do with the stone cold truth that fornication and contraception are bad?
>In New York, 72 abortions occur for every 100 live births.
Add the number of deaths from other means, one wonders if NYC will ever have a population increase.