The Other Sides

Let’s imagine the conflict known as the Civil War. It had been brewing since before the Constitution was ratified. The issues were marrow deep in American society, so much so that any attempt to address the issue of slavery was, in effect, a deal breaker for the new nation. The South made it abundantly clear that any action on the part of the North to write into the new guiding document the idea that black slaves were somehow deserving of the liberty being claimed for their white owners—and thereby signaling the end of slavery among the Thirteen Colonies—would be met with absolute refusal to play. Had the reformers, exemplified by the likes of Benjamin Franklin, tried to assert any kind of racial equality at the time, the United States would have been stillborn. Instead, they put a time limit into the document—20 years—which forbade the topic from even being discussed in Congress until that later year, at which time, presumably, the issue would come to the floor for some kind of resolution. History shows that every such attempt was met with denunciations by southern members of Congress and often with threats of secession—which by then were illegal. Make no mistake, as some revisionists might have you believe, secession was not an option and everyone who voted to ratify the Constitution knew it. Contrary to popular mythology, the original 13 states locked themselves together permanently. [More . . . ]

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What would happen without public funding for family planning?

How important is it to publicly fund family planning? Consider the following information from a mass emailing I just received from Guttmacher Institute:

Publicly funded family planning services play a crucial role in improving maternal and child health, helping women and couples achieve their fundamental childbearing goals and achieve economic security for themselves and their children. These efforts save almost $4 for every $1 invested and help avert almost two million unintended pregnancies per year, which would otherwise have resulted in 860,000 unintended births and 810,000 abortions. Without these services, the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions occurring in the United States would be nearly two-thirds higher among women overall and among teens; the number of unintended pregnancies among poor women would nearly double.
The email included this link for additional information on this topic of public funding. Consider the information provided by Guttmacher under the heading: "WHO NEEDS CONTRACEPTIVE SERVICES?" • The typical American woman, who wants two children, spends about five years pregnant, postpartum or trying to become pregnant, and three decades—more than three-quarters of her reproductive life—trying to avoid pregnancy. • About half of all pregnancies in the United States each year—more than three million—are unintended. By age 45, more than half of all American women will have experienced an unintended pregnancy, and three in 10 will have had an abortion. • There were 66 million U.S. women of reproductive age (13–44) in 2008. • More than half of these women (36 million) were in need of contraceptive services and supplies; that is, they were sexually active and able to become pregnant, but were not pregnant and did not wish to become pregnant. The number of women in need of contraceptive services and supplies increased 6% between 2000 and 2008. And consider the following, under the topic, "Who Needs Publicly Funded Service: • Among the 17.4 million women in need of publicly funded contraceptive care, 71% (12.4 million) were poor or low-income adults, and 29% (5 million) were younger than 20. Four in 10 poor women of reproductive age have no insurance coverage whatsoever. Guttmacher offers a wealth of statistics here.

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Proposed laws aimed at male sexual issues

Hannah Levintova of Mother Jones has collected quite an impressive set of Insane Sex Laws inspired by Republicans.

As Republican lawmakers have pushed ever more intrusive and expansive uterus-related legislation, some of their colleagues across the aisle have fired back with intentionally and equally ridiculous counterproposals. From mandatory rectal exams for guys seeking Viagra to prohibitions on sperm-stifling vasectomies, most of these male-only provisions have, unsurprisingly, flopped. But they've scored big as symbolic gestures, spotlighting the inherent sexism of laws that regulate only lady parts.

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Guttmacher points out fraudulent abortion reseach

Guttmacher Institute recently sent me a mass email sternly criticizing false research suggesting that women who have had abortions are more likely to have mental illness. It turns out that this is not true. What is stunning is the abysmal methodology of the criticized research. Here is an excerpt from Guttmacher's site:

A study purporting to show a causal link between abortion and subsequent mental health problems has fundamental analytical errors that render its conclusions invalid, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Guttmacher Institute. This conclusion has been confirmed by the editor of the journal in which the study appeared. Most egregiously, the study, by Priscilla Coleman and colleagues, did not distinguish between mental health outcomes that occurred before abortions and those that occurred afterward, but still claimed to show a causal link between abortion and mental disorders. The study by Coleman and colleagues was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research in 2009 . . . . “This is not a scholarly difference of opinion; their facts were flatly wrong. This was an abuse of the scientific process to reach conclusions that are not supported by the data,” says Julia Steinberg, an assistant professor in UCSF’s Department of Psychiatry. “The shifting explanations and misleading statements that they offered over the past two years served to mask their serious methodological errors.” The errors are especially problematic because Coleman later cited her own study in a meta-analysis of studies looking at abortion and mental health. The meta-analysis, which was populated primarily by Coleman’s own work, has been sharply criticized by the scientific community for not evaluating the quality of the included studies and for violating well-established guidelines for conducting such analyses. “Studies claiming to find a causal association between abortion and subsequent mental health problems often suffer from serious methodological limitations that invalidate their conclusions,” says Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute. “In thorough reviews, the highest-quality studies have found no causal link between abortion and subsequent mental health problems.” Even when identified, spurious research can have far-reaching consequences. Mandatory counseling laws in a number of states require women seeking an abortion to receive information, purportedly medically accurate, that has no basis in fact. Among other things, mandatory counseling can require that a woman be told that having an abortion increases her risk of breast cancer, infertility and mental illness. In reality, none of these claims are medically accurate. These laws not only represent a gross intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship, they serve to propagate misinformation, intentionally misinforming the patient on important medical matters.

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Author Jessica Valenti discusses the Purity Myth

Jessica Valenti is author of The Purity Myth. She has argued that conservatives who are pushing hard for virginity and chastity (with virginity proms and virginity pledges) are sexualizing women every bit as much as our pop culture, though in an opposite direction. She argues that women should be judged by what they say and do, because of their intelligence and kindness. "Our moral compass does not lie between our legs, but that is what the purity myth is telling young women." And by the way, Media Education Foundation has released a new video about The Purity Myth. Here's the trailer: What follows is a short interview of Jessica Valenti:

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