Anti-choice group at it again
Campaign Life Coalition is at it again, handing out a slick flyer this past weekend, full of unattributed “facts,” demanding the government defund abortion because “it is an elective procedure and not medically necessary.”
These pro-life zealots don’t believe that abortion should be funded in any case. If the woman has cancer and needs to terminate in order to get treatment, too bad. If the girl is 14 and pregnant resulting from incest, too bad. If a woman is violently raped and is pregnant from that rape, too bad. Hell, they don’t even believe these women should be allowed to have an abortion at all.
Overwhelmingly, these groups are populated with ideological extremists, using religion to fuel their arguments. They refuse to believe that the welfare, safety and health of the woman carrying the fetus is even relevant in this equation. Isn’t it interesting that most of the pro-life mouth pieces are male?
And, as for those “facts,” like the one that states “96% of abortions are performed for convenience,” I’d like to see the source. A credible one.
(H/T @cbcqueenspark for tweeting the flyer)
Access to legal abortion is not a very good predictor of the abortion rate. Abortion in Brazil, for example, is illegal, but the abortion rate there is several times higher than the abortion rate in Canada. If you want to reduce the abortion rate the best way of doing that is by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. In a Western context, the best way of reducing the number of unwanted preganancies is to provide ready access to contraception and providing robust sex education. Holland is great case in point. Whereas the rate of US teenage girls getting pregnant is 79.8 and the abortion rate 27.5 per thousand, the rate at which teenage girls are getting pregnant in Holland is 8. 7 and abortion rate is 4.2. Just once I want to hear an anti abortion activist call for robust sex education programs in the States so as to cut down on the number of abortions.
Koby
January 17, 2012 at 6:40 pm
I googled Campaign Life Coalition today to get some more info about their next projects and came across this, and couldn’t help but comment.
When it comes to rape: a child conceived in an act of love is not more human than a child conceived in an act of violence. It’s pretty simple. Yes, it’s a tragedy- but why should the child pay for the crime of his father? That’s like your dad committing a crime and you getting the death penalty because of it.
You talk about lack of “facts” in the pamphlet.. yet you accuse CLC of using “religion to fuel their arguments”. I’ve looked all over the CLC website, their Facebook page, and ALL their defunding brochures/info… and have not seen one single religious argument to back up what they’re saying. Perhaps you can take your own advice and provide evidence for these claims?
As for the “96% of abortions are elective” part… CLC was wrong about that. It’s actually 98%. See the link here: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html. “This report reviews available statistics regarding reasons given for obtaining abortions in the United States, including surveys by the Alan Guttmacher Institute and data from seven state health/statistics agencies that report relevant statistics.”
FYI.
Julia
January 18, 2012 at 10:06 am
Get real.
First, I said “Overwhelmingly, these groups…[are] using religion to fuel their arguments,” referring to pro-life groups.
Second, you obviously didn’t read the statistic the CLC claimed as fact, and that I quoted at the end of the post. The flyer states: “96% of abortions are performed for convenience.” I don’t know a single woman who aborted her fetus because it was the “convenient” thing to do. Where’s that source?
gritchik
January 18, 2012 at 10:50 am