Family Planning Saves $4 for every $1 Spent

Here is a MUST READ article about the real impact of family planning spending by the Federal Government put out by the Guttmacher Institute.

Some Factoids:

Publicly funded family planning services are highly cost-effective. More than nine in 10 women receiving them would be eligible for Medicaid-funded prenatal, delivery and postpartum care services if they became pregnant. Avoiding the significant costs associated with these unintended births saves taxpayers $4 for every $1 spent on family planning.

AND

By providing millions of young and low-income women access to voluntary contraceptive services, the national family planning program prevents 1.94 million unintended pregnancies, including almost 400,000 teen pregnancies, each year. These pregnancies would result in 860,000 unintended births, 810,000 abortions and 270,000 miscarriages, according to a new Guttmacher Institute report.

The GOP is trying to spin their cutting of Planned Parenthood and Title X as "austerity measures," but financially the math doesn't work out that way. What it really is, is anti-contraception and anti-woman base appeal. They said they were running to create jobs, but they have no "conservative" ideas that will generate job growth because "conservative" ideas simply expand the impact of a recession, see THE GREAT DEPRESSION for an idea as to how "conservatives" make recessions worse. Perhaps, a crazy person, might argue that by forcing women out of the work-force due to forced pregnancy, it will free up a job for a man, but that thinking was faulty in the 1930's, let alone today. Support Planned Parenthood, Support Title X by CALLING your representative in the house.

Disinformation Campaign Targeting African Americans and Planned Parenthood

There's a really good article up on Jezebel HERE about a disinformation campaign aimed at African Americans and Planned Parenthood to equate abortion with slavery and to suggest that African Americans are being targeted by Planned Parenthood for "elimination" through abortion. Planned Parenthood is being pro-active in trying to get the real statistics out, that African Americans account for 15% of their clients and that the general population of African Americans in the US is 13%, which is within the expected population range of use. Also, what stuck out at me is that the organization already has several well-regarded African American healthcare workers and health policy folks in their organization, so there isn't some sort of "white organization seeks leaders in black community" implication of this story--they are a highly diverse organization that seeks out people of many races and genders to do their good work as a matter of principal (and as a matter of greater effectiveness). Read the whole thing, but one other thing that really shocked me was a statistic about infant mortality: "The African-American infant mortality rate is more than twice that of white infants. College and graduate school-educated African-American mothers have a higher infant mortality rate than white mothers who didn't finish high school." You read that right, white high school dropouts are less likely to have their children die in the first year of life than a GRADUATE SCHOOL EDUCATED African American Woman. I'm not saying that high-school drop outs deserve to have their babies die, but education is linked to longevity, access to healthcare, general health, etc. Why are highly accomplished women of color experiencing infant death for their children more than would seem plausible? Gotta be racism...seriously, it has to be...unless somebody can prove to me that black babies are super delicate and white babies are made out of that airplane black box material that survives plane crashes...its gotta be racism.

Don't Let Republicans Re-define Rape

Disgusting, seriously disgusting. Shakesville shares resources to fight HR3 HERE and Amanda Marcotte once again lays it all out on the table HERE. The official (and seriously misleading title of the bill) is: “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.” Here's the thing though, tax-payer funded abortions are already illegal, except in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother. This bill seeks to do a couple disgusting things: outlaws PRIVATE INSURANCE MONEY from covering abortion, therefore, if you are currently employed through your insurer, you might be covered for abortion services, but after this legislation, that would be banned. Secondly, it seeks to redefine RAPE to "forcible rape" which means that rape by intimidation, rape by drugging, rape by a superior, statutory rape, 'date' rape or acquaintance rape and pretty much any rape in which you weren't beaten nearly to death wouldn't count as rape at all. This also seeks to exclude the incest provision if you are over 18 and raping the mentally incompetent is totally hunky-dory as well. Over 9,000 women every year become pregnant from A REPORTED RAPE. Just let that sink in...how many women become pregnant and don't report the rape? We don't know, there can only be estimates.

Back to the first provision, banning private insurance from paying for abortion: most women who seek out an abortion pay out of pocket, afraid to leave a medical record of shame or that an abortion would get back to their employer, which is sad in and of itself, but when abortions are generally paid for by private insurance, they tend to be the more difficult, surgical abortions. The later term abortions and they are often had because the woman's life or health is in danger or because the fetus isn't viable. Those abortions can be very expensive and they are generally due to crummy luck. Often those are wanted pregnancies, but circumstances turn them into tragedies. Now, those tragedies get to bankrupt families because some self-righteous Republican perverts want to punish dirty sluts because that's their favorite way to pay back their rabid misogynistic base. This isn't about life, its about female sexuality being used as the whipping boy of the culture wars.

Update: Another excellent article breaking this situation down on Alternet, again by Amanda Marcotte, read it HERE.

For Republicans 2 + 2 = ???

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The quality of public education is of great concern to me--especially since its decline is impacting elected leaders ability to comprehend basic math concepts. Republican math is not real-world math unless of course its just blatant hypocrisy.