Daily Kos: Defining Pro-life

The Pregnant Women Support Act was introduced by Democrats in 2009 with the purpose of providing a comprehensive plan that would reduce the number of abortions by 95% in the next 10 years by promoting abstinence, personal responsibility, adoptions and support for women and families who are facing unplanned pregnancy. The 95-10 Initiative seeked to reduce the number of abortions in America through Federal, state and local efforts as well as support and encouragement to volunteers and dedicated people on the front lines helping pregnant women. ?Some of the things it proposed were:

???? establish a toll-free number to direct women to places that will provide support;
???? collect accurate data on why women choose abortion;
???? provide Pregnancy Counseling and Childcare on University Campuses;
???? provide accurate information to patients receiving a positive result from prenatal testing;
???? provide counseling in maternity group homes;
???? increase the adoption tax credit and it permanent
???? eliminate pregnancy as a pre-existing condition with respect to health care;
???? provide grants for ultrasound equipment;
???? support informed consent for Abortion Services;
???? increase awareness about violence against pregnant women;
???? require the SCHIP to cover pregnant women and unborn children provide free home visits by registered nurses for new mothers. ?

The bill died and was not enacted.

What is the cost of an unwanted pregnancy? The Center on Children and Family at Brookings recently presented a paper by Adam Thomas and Emily Monea. Their answer is definitely one that we need to address as a people.

Unintended pregnancy is also associated with an array of negative outcomes for the women and children involved. For example, relative to women who become pregnant intentionally, women who experience unintended pregnancies have a higher incidence of mental-health problems, have less stable romantic relationships, experience higher rates of physical abuse, and are more likely to have abortions or to delay the initiation of prenatal care. Children whose conception was unintentional are also at greater risk than children who were conceived intentionally of experiencing negative physical- and mental-health outcomes and are more likely to drop out of high school and to engage in delinquent behavior during their teenage years.

Stephen Waldman , author of ?Founding Faith?, in his article "Can Social Spending Reduce Abortion? the report by Joseph Wright, assistant professor of political science at Penn State University and Michael Bailey, associate professor at Georgetown University, they focused on figuring out why abortion rates dropped dramatically in the 1990s. Some of their findings are as follows.

* States that spent more on welfare ? or cut welfare more slowly ? had many fewer abortions. The authors estimate that if every state increased spending on welfare by $1,350 per person living in poverty, there would be a 20% reduction of abortion.
* States that spend more generously on aid to women, infants and children (WIC) had lower abortion rates. They estimate that if states were to increase spending on WIC we could see up to a 37% lower abortion rate.
* During the welfare reform of the 1990s, some states instituted ?family cap? policies that would not pay welfare benefits for children born to women already receiving welfare. States that did not have a family cap ? and kept providing welfare even after new children were born ? had about a 15% lower abortion rate than states with a family cap. The authors estimate that getting rid of the family caps would result in 150,000 fewer abortions.
* States that had higher male employment had a 29% lower abortion rate.

Recently Nicholas P. Cafardi in the National Catholic Reporter wrote about which candidate in ?pro-life.? In the article he has this to say about the Affordable Care Act and abortions.

Obama's Affordable Care Act does not pay for abortions. In Massachusetts, Romney's health care law does. Obama favors, and included in the Affordable Care Act, $250 million of support for vulnerable pregnant women and alternatives to abortion. This support will make abortions much less likely, since most abortions are economic. Romney, on the other hand, has endorsed Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan's budget, which will cut hundreds of millions of dollars out of the federal plans that support poor women. The undoubted effect: The number of abortions in the United States will increase.

In their report the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States has this to say about abortions and the economy.

With high rates of unemployment and a harsh economic climate, it is possible that the recession beginning in 2008 has made it more likely that more women are turning to abortion than in past years. Michael New, a professor of political science at the University of Alabama, points to the role of the faltering economy in the stalling of abortion rates, commenting, ?Abortion numbers go down when the economy is good and go up when the economy is bad.? He added, ?If the economy does better, you?ll see numbers trending down again.? A poor economy could mean that an increasing number of women find it more difficult to pay for the contraceptive services that are needed for the prevention of unintended pregnancy, and that fewer women are covered by insurance.

Another pro-life fact that cannot be ignored is that President Obama has not profited from abortions while Mitt Romney profited from Bain?s investment in Stericyle a firm that disposed of aborted fetuses.

So how would I define pro-life? Pro-life means supporting and nurturing life so that the person has a chance to live a decent life. Pro-life means making sure that the life being born is actually wanted. Pro-life means that unwanted pregnancies be avoided by proper contraceptive measures and education. Pro-life means making sure that the 98% have the same chance of a decent life as the top 2%. Pro-life means just that. You are concerned with the life of a person. If the goal is to reduce abortions then the goal should be to do just that; reduce the abortions with education, better social standards, and contraceptives that prevent pregnancies from even starting.

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/21/1122471/-Defining-Pro-life

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