The Truth About Abortion Reduction December 17, 2008
Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Women.Tags: abortion, abortion reduction, abortion rights, adoption, catholics, contraception, evangelicals, morality, naral, Obama, planned parenthood, prevention, pro choice, religion, reproductive choice, reproductive freedom, reproductive health, roe v. wade, sarah posner, sex education, unintended pregnancies
add a comment
16 December 2008
by: Sarah Posner, The American Prospect
A coalition of evangelicals and Catholics is trying to lay claim to Obama’s reproductive-freedom agenda. Here’s how the debate is likely to play out in 2009.
A coalition of evangelicals and Catholics who believe they pushed the Democratic Party to adopt the language of “abortion reduction” is gearing up for 2009, preparing to hold Democrats’ feet to the fire to pass abortion-reduction legislation. Because evangelicals and Catholics voted for Barack Obama in slightly higher numbers than they did for John Kerry, some of these religious leaders are threatening that Democratic politicians will lose support if they don’t deliver on abortion-reduction legislation.
Although this evangelical-Catholic coalition claims to represent “common ground,” its position is not the uniform one among religious leaders and holds less sway in the Obama camp than the coalition claimed during the presidential campaign. Obama has consistently advocated for reproductive choice alongside reducing unintended pregnancies. In 2007, as a senator, he co-sponsored Prevention First, a bill that would fund family planning and comprehensive sex education, and he has continued to advocate for that legislation through his transition Web site. In contrast, the religious abortion-reduction advocates support incentives that they argue will encourage women not to choose abortion, such as economic supports for pregnant women and adoption promotion.
But a significant number of religious figures share Obama’s position that preventing unintended pregnancies – not stigmatizing abortion – is the best path forward. Three thousand religious leaders have endorsed the Religious Declaration on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, which advocates comprehensive sex education and “a faith-based commitment to sexual and reproductive rights, including access to voluntary contraception, abortion, and HIV/STD prevention and treatment.” The Religious Institute on Sexuality, Justice, and Healing, which authored the declaration, has also called on Obama to adopt an approach focused on preventing unintended pregnancies.
But over the course of the campaign season, as Democrats built on their 2006 ambitions of cracking the Republican hold on evangelical and Catholic voters, the Obama camp succumbed to the temptation to woo more conservative religious leaders with abortion-reduction talk. After a closed-door meeting between Obama and religious leaders in Chicago in June 2008, many of the clergy praised the candidate’s willingness to recognize the moral complexity of abortion, and his openness to discussing abortion reduction.
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, who was one of the attendees, and whose National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference represents over 18,000 Latino evangelical churches, told the Prospect after the election, “I am so excited that the Democratic Party is looking at abortion reduction as a strategy and objective. That’s unbelievable. That’s the highlight for moral and family values for the past year.”
But since the election, Obama – who acknowledges his respect for those who oppose abortion – has reiterated his belief in both choice and unintended pregnancy prevention, reaffirming his support for Roe v. Wade and Prevention First. “If [Obama] makes a sharp left here [on abortion and gay marriage], it will be difficult for him to get as many votes from the Hispanic community,” Rodriguez says. “We will be strong and forceful to let the Latino community know that a person who promised to govern from the center is dividing us on wedge issues.”
Rodriguez’s followers voted for Obama in far larger numbers than did white evangelicals. They are part of what evangelical anti-poverty activist Jim Wallis claims is a new, pivotal voting bloc of nonwhite evangelicals and Catholics who will supplant the religious right. On abortion, the leadership of this new coalition coalesced around a 2007 report issued by the think tank Third Way, Come Let Us Reason Together (CLURT). They are pushing for the Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act, also known as the Ryan-DeLauro bill, named after its chief sponsors, Reps. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Ohio, and Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut.
Ryan-DeLauro does contain some provisions for contraception and sex education but also includes a panoply of economic and other provisions meant to reduce abortion, including funding for ultrasound equipment, support for pregnant and parenting college and graduate students, and funding for adoption-assistance programs. Most controversially, the bill includes a provision that would require clinics receiving federal funds to obtain “informed consent” from a woman seeking abortion after providing her with “medically and factually accurate” information on the abortion procedure and “possible risks and complications.” A spokeswoman for DeLauro says she plans to reintroduce the bill in the 111th Congress.
Ryan, who is anti-choice, campaigned for Obama, convincing Catholic voters that it was kosher to vote for a pro-choice candidate because of Obama’s position on abortion reduction. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, writing 10 days after the election, warned Obama not to “issue the pro-choice executive orders that the abortion-rights movement expects.” That, Dionne threatened, “would be both politically foolish and a breach of faith with the pro-life progressives who came to Obama’s defense during the campaign. They argued that Obama truly was committed to reducing the number of abortions. He shouldn’t turn them into liars.”
In response to the absence of abortion-reduction language on Obama’s transition Web site, Rachel Laser, director of the Culture Program at Third Way and CLURT’s principal author, said, “What Obama is going to do as president has to be judged based on the totality of what he did in his campaign. He was extremely clear throughout his campaign, in the platform, and in debates, that the approach of the Ryan-DeLauro bill … is his approach.”
Abortion reduction, framed as a package of incentives to encourage women facing unintended pregnancies to carry them to term, “is the new common ground,” says Wallis, who claims that “people on the edges, on the left, and the right, won’t support it.” Wallis frequently accuses those of not agreeing with his anti-abortion “common ground” of restoking the “culture wars,” but there are other ideas of where the common ground lies. According to Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, “Americans want to move beyond the divisive political attacks that defined the debate over abortion during the Bush era. The public wants lawmakers to find common ground – to focus on policies that improve women’s access to birth control and ensure that teens receive accurate sex education – all of which helps prevent unintended pregnancy and reduce the need for abortion without undermining a woman’s right to choose.”
Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, said that her organization “does more than any other organization to prevent unintended pregnancies and reduce the need for abortion. One in four women in this country has been to a Planned Parenthood clinic, primarily for prevention and contraception care.”
Tying economic and social support for pregnant women to abortion reduction places the choice of carrying a pregnancy to term in a position of moral superiority to choosing abortion, said Jessica Arons, director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress and a member of its Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative. “We should be providing supports to women who want to continue their pregnancies to term. We should be doing it because it is the right thing to do for women and their families. We should not be doing it to express a moral preference for the decision that she would make.”
In emphasizing adoption, Wallis frequently encourages “the Juno option,” referring to the popular movie in which a teenage girl decides not to have an abortion and to give her baby up for adoption.
The Rev. Debra Haffner, the president of the Religious Institute, who is a sexologist in addition to an ordained minister, expressed frustration with Wallis’ use of the term “Juno option.” Despite studies frequently cited by anti-choice activists that women experience guilt after abortion, “the overwhelming data is most women feel relief,” Haffner said, even as they “never forget.” (A recent John Hopkins University study confirms abortion is not linked with a higher incidence of depression.)
Haffner points to what she calls evangelicals’ “erotophobia” – fear of sex. “If you just talk about saving the baby, you don’t have to talk about what makes you get pregnant in the first place. That fear of sexuality both personally and institutionally and the desire to control people’s sexuality is playing into this.”
The prospects for passing any reproductive-health bills in the 111th Congress remain uncertain. In the Senate, two Democrats, Sen. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania and Ben Nelson of Nebraska plan to reintroduce the Pregnant Women’s Support Act, based on a Democrats for Life proposal that includes no contraception provisions and that even CLURT’s authors rejected. And different coalitions of support have formed around the Ryan-DeLauro bill and Prevention First.
Passing a comprehensive bill like Ryan-DeLauro could be complicated not only by the reluctance of reproductive-rights advocates to get behind it but also by the refusal of some Catholic groups, under pressure from church hierarchy, to endorse a bill that includes contraception. Many evangelicals are similarly loathe to endorse contraception, as evidenced by the forced resignation of Richard Cizik, the chief lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals, after he told
National Public Radio’s Fresh Air host Terri Gross that he favored government supplying contraception. Despite his departure from the NAE, Cizik remains a powerful de facto spokesperson for the new evangelicals’ coalition. “We’re not Catholics who oppose contraception per se,” he told Gross. “What do you want; do you want an unintended pregnancy that results in abortion? Or do you want to meet a woman’s needs in crisis, who, by better contraception avoids that choice, avoids [the abortion] that we all recognize is morally repugnant; at least it is to me.”
Calling abortion “morally repugnant” shows that even those claiming to stand on “common ground” can still deploy the incendiary language that the evangelical-Catholic coalition claims to eschew. Common ground is a worthy goal, but the abortion-reduction coalition’s claim to define it is itself an impediment to cooperation with the dominant pro-choice elements of Obama’s coalition.
——–
Sarah Posner, author of God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, has covered the religious right for the Prospect, The Nation, The Washington Spectator, AlterNet, and other publications.
roger hollander 
Shhh… Don’t Speak of Abortion: Roe v. Wade at Thirty-Six January 23, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Women.Tags: abortion, abortion access, abortion reduction, anti-abortion, conservative evangelicals, contraception, evangelicals, family planning, frederick clarkson, guttmacher institute, health care, healthcare, morals, planned parenthood, poverty, pro choice, pro-life, reproductive choice, reproductive rights, roe vs. wade, roger hollander, sex education, third way, women and poverty, women's rights
add a comment
Frederick Clarkson
January 21, 2009, www.religiondispatches.org
Recent efforts to reach a compromise between evangelicals and liberals have managed to avoid the discussion of abortion altogether. The fact remains: according to many clergy representing millions of Americans of all faiths and denominations, the moral reality of women’s lives is that sometimes abortion is the best moral choice.
The moral of Rev. Fowler’s story cuts to the core of the politics of abortion in America. Though nominally a right under Roe vs. Wade, decided thirty-six years ago today, the reality is that there are many obstacles—some insurmountable—to both receiving and providing abortion care in the United States. And yet, strange as it may seem, there remains a steady silence about abortion which, according to pro-choice leaders, is party due to the stigmatization of abortion. The result is that much of what passes for discussion is really just an elaborate avoidance of the subject.
The latest high profile exhibition of this avoidance is the “Governing Agenda” recently published by two Democratic Party-aligned Washington, DC-based think tanks, Third Way and Faith in Public Life. This document—two years in the making, and endorsed by a variety of prominent evangelicals—and the process by which it came into being have been met with both accolades and tough criticism. Intriguingly, the document does not actually discuss abortion, that most controversial of subjects on which it claims to have found common ground.
Is the Agenda Broader or Narrower?
In a letter to President Obama and Congressional leaders, the principal authors of the “Governing Agenda” summarized their goal as “Reducing abortions through common ground policies.” They explained, “We agree on a goal of reducing abortions in America through policies that address the circumstances that lead to abortion: preventing unintended pregnancies, supporting pregnant women and new families, and increasing support for adoption.” The method, most agree, is a good one. It advocates the use of comprehensive, age-appropriate, medically accurate sexuality education with an emphasis on abstinence as a way of reducing unintended pregnancies.
But pro-choice leaders contacted by Religion Dispatches feel not only left out of the conversation, but see in the “Governing Agenda” a product that continues to stigmatize abortion and does nothing to further the conversations that are most needed.
The notion of “abortion reduction,” has been a cornerstone of the so-called “broader agenda” of the conservative evangelicals promoted by Third Way and Faith in Public Life. But Rev. Fowler sees a certain “political expediency” at work:
Fowler, who has been a longtime leader in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and has served on the board of Planned Parenthood adds that, “what is missing from this document is any acknowledgment of women’s moral agency and their capacity to make honorable sacred decisions for the welfare of their families and for themselves.”
”What is missing from this document,” she continued, “is recognition of the sacredness of all life, and a moral tradition that allows us to weigh relative values, of potential life versus a lived life in its full spiritual complexity.”
”What is missing from this document is any invitation for faith leaders, both pro-choice and pro-life with whom we disagree, to talk about abortion—and other choices involving women’s reproductive health and to model that dialogue to the country.”
The idea that abortion is sometimes the best moral choice is the view of many major religious institutions representing tens of millions of American Christians, Jews, Unitarians, and others. Many of these institutions are represented in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), including major mainline Protestant denominations (such as the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ), the major bodies of American Judaism, and such organizations as the YWCA.
Rev. Carlton Veazey, President of RCRC and a member of RD’s advisory council, wrote recently in commemoration of the 36th anniversary of Roe: “I call on the faithful to protect the lives of women and children by fighting to ensure that reproductive health care is accessible and that abortion services are safe, legal, and available.”
“The reality,” he continued, “is that the cycle of poverty often revolves around unintended and unwanted pregnancy. A woman living in poverty is four times as likely to have an unintended pregnancy and five times as likely to have an unintended birth as her higher-income counterpart. The link between family planning and overcoming poverty is well established.”
The Stigma
Melanie Zurek, executive director of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Abortion Access Project also hears the silence that surrounds abortion. While she also welcomes the possibility of expanding access to excellent sexuality education, she says that “abortion needs to be part of the conversation.” But she avers that it is also necessary to “remove the stigma against abortion that prevents that conversation from taking place.”
But the notion of “abortion reduction” as presented by Third Way, Faith in Public Life, and their evangelical allies, presumes that abortion is analogous to a dread disease, the incidence of which must be “reduced.” This recasting of the language of anti-abortion moralism into something akin to epidemiology stands in sharp contrast to the mainstream religious traditions of tens of millions of American Christians, Jews, Unitarians, and others. Within these traditions, abortion is often a moral choice, and in any case, women are fully capable of deciding when and under what circumstances to make that choice, without direction from the state or other uninvited agencies. In short, abortion reduction is a term that is imbued with the very stigma that Fowler and Zurek say is a principal obstacle to engaging in a coherent conversation, even in disagreement.
Zurek notes that the prevention strategies involving education and access to contraception would take time to work; and that fully half of all pregnancies are unintended and take place disproportionately among poor women. “There are both economic and health consequences to delays in abortion care,” she warns. “One of the consequences of barriers and delays is that the longer they wait, the more complicated and expensive a procedure it becomes.”
Regarding the “Governing Agenda” of Third Way and Faith in Public Life, however, she notes that “it is not only a matter of having the prevention work and catching up to the reality of unintended pregnancies. We know from the experience of other countries with terrific sexuality education and available contraception that there will always be a need for abortion care.”
In addition to the silence in the political arena, Zurek points to the silence in the health care system, where abortion is not integrated into the training of health care professionals “because it is so stigmatized,” she says. This same culture of stigmatization causes many patients to avoid even talking with their regular physicians about it, preferring instead “specialized settings” like Planned Parenthood.
As a result, access to abortion care is a significant problem of health care delivery in the United States. A major study by the Guttmacher Institute found that some 87% of US counties lack a single abortion provider. The study notes a long-term decline in the rate of abortion in the United States, but could not determine whether this was because of increased access to and use of contraception, or due to the lack of access to abortion providers. And yet, even of the competing plans to reform the health care system currently being debated, and of the many ideas being discussed, Zurek says: “I don’t know of any agenda that proposes to better integrate abortion into the health care system.”
And of course, since the abortion-reduction agenda is an explicitly anti-abortion tactic, albeit not one embraced by all sectors of the anti-abortion movement, it stands to reason that an increased focus on prevention and adoption would likely eclipse the need for improved access to abortion as part of a society-wide program of age-appropriate, medically-accurate sex education and access to family planning services.
Zurek is also concerned that the abortion-reduction agenda overlooks the many barriers to abortion faced, particularly, by low-income women and those from rural areas. An additional set of barriers are what she describes as politically-motivated regulations. She offers, by way of example, the laws in some states that require a physician to mention a link between breast cancer and abortion; a link, she notes, “that has been disproved on numerous occasions by science.”
The Abortion Access Project has several initiatives targeting issues of access due to the long, sometimes vast, distances between abortion providers faced by women in rural areas, as well as those issues faced by low-income women.
“Women in places such as Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arkansas share a troubling commonality,” AAP reports on its Web site. “Because of where they live, these women face daunting barriers to get safe abortion care if and when they need it. These least-access states have the most restrictive laws and the fewest number of abortion providers. These states also share other traits: low levels of contraceptive care, high rates of poverty, and strong anti-abortion cultures. With little help to prevent pregnancy, few financial resources to help pay for abortion care, and the threat of isolation or even harassment within her community, the health and autonomy of a woman living in one of these states is at risk.”
Pro-choice Religious Leaders find their Voice
While the abortion-reduction agenda has gained considerable currency in political circles in both parties, pro-choice religious leaders are increasingly finding their voice and are seeking to be heard.
Rev. Debra Haffner, Director of the Westport, Connecticut-based Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, declared in a recent blog post that “[it is] false advertising to promote this report as evangelical and progressive religious leaders coming together.”
”The fact is,” she continued, “that this is a report by, in the words of U.S. News and World Report, a ‘coalition of prominent evangelical leaders.’ In that it expands their previous call for abortion reduction to include for the first time a call for comprehensive sexuality education and family planning services, it’s an important step forward.” She observes, however, in questioning the inclusiveness of the project, that four out of the five speakers on the press conference call announcing the Governing Agenda, “identified themselves as pro-life.”
Haffner maintains “that one cannot label oneself progressive without a commitment to sexual justice” and that she “would be delighted to help these two organizations bring truly progressive religious leaders to the table to discuss these issues. But until we’re invited, expect us to continue to speak out.”