Dear Colleague:

Prepare for the coming clever assault on pro-lifers from the leaders of
the newly Democratic Congress.

Steven W. Mosher
President

PRI Weekly Briefing
26 January 2007
Vol. 9, No. 4


Dividing and Demonizing Pro-Lifers
By Joseph A. D'Agostino


Democratic leaders in Congress have quietly begun the next phase of their
new strategy to divide and demonize pro-life Americans.  This strategy
includes targeting crisis pregnancy centers because of their tremendous
success, a strategy led by Rep. Henry Waxman (D.-Calif.), the new chairman
of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee thanks to last
fall's election results.  Waxman and others are miffed because CPCs tell
women about the incontrovertible connection between abortion and breast
cancer.  He is also the Democrats' point man against teaching children to
abstain from sexual relations.  Yet going after CPCs is unlikely to divide
pro-lifers or go far in demonizing us outside of the Dems' base voters.

More insidious is the issue of contraception.  Having learned the hard way
that the unabashed celebration of abortion was losing them votes,
Democrats in the last election cycle sought to portray themselves as
moderate on the issue and even recruited a fair number of pro-life
candidates to run for Congress, with considerable success.  Now that they
have taken control of our national legislature, they must appear to care
about reducing abortion while not doing anything that would actually
reduce abortion and alienate their fanatically pro-death base, and at the
same time isolate truly pro-life Americans in the minds of the so-called
"abortion grays."  These are American voters who have qualms about
abortion but do not wish it outlawed, and are thus susceptible to appeals
from either side of the abortion divide.  Most abortion grays view as
unpleasantly extremist both the NARAL, Barbara Boxer types who embrace
even partial-birth abortion and principled anti-abortion activists who
believe every single unborn child should be saved however inconvenient he
may be.

Because of Roe v. Wade and political realities, banning most abortions is
not on congressional pro-lifers' agenda for the time being, so
pro-abortion forces have found another way to do harm, in more ways than
one.  Their approach could not only divide and demonize pro-lifers, but
would spread disease among youth, increase their psychic distress, and
inflate the number of abortions.

The Dems' plan is to promote contraception as a means of reducing abortion
and watch pro-lifers, who know contraception increases abortion, squirm as
the media portrays any opposition to more federal funding for
contraceptive programs as hypocritical extremism on the part of
pro-lifers.  Of course, a plan to reduce abortion by increasing
contraceptive prevalence has highly persuasive surface plausibility.  More
contraception means fewer unwanted pregnancies, right?  And fewer unwanted
pregnancies means fewer abortions, right?  It seems so obvious,
common-sensical, and practical.

Yet experience has proven it false.  You don't need statistics to know
this, and this time I will refrain from offering a passel of them.  When
contraceptive use exploded in the United States during the 1970s, so did
the abortion rate.  Continued promotion of contraception, including the
distribution of free condoms en masse to high-schoolers, in the '80s and
'90s did nothing to reduce the abortion rate, which has dipped slightly in
the past few years-coinciding with a rise in abstinence and anti-abortion
attitudes among young people.  Foreign countries have experienced the same
pattern: Wherever contraceptive use has become widespread, so has
abortion.  Far more often than not, they go in tandem, not in opposition.

Why is this?  For one thing, contraception isn't very effective.  Some
methods work well in the laboratory, but few people conduct their sex
lives in laboratories.  In the real world, contraception fails all the
time.  In fact, 53% of unplanned pregnancies happen to women who are using
contraception.

More fundamentally, the contraceptive mentality causes abortion.  When
women and girls choose to sleep with men whose children they don't want,
they will take steps to ensure those children aren't born.  If
contraception fails, they will abort.  And because abortion is easily
available, these women can be lax about using contraception, knowing there
is a cheap and legal fall-back option.  As long as women and men view sex
as recreation and children as annoying consequences of fun time, the
contraceptive mentality will produce a large demand for abortion.  This
isn't just a theory; it is what has actually happened again and again in
recent decades in country after country.

The London Daily Mail this week had a fine article about this phenomenon.
Headlined "I Had Four Abortions by the Age of 17 (and I'll Never Escape
the Guilt)," the article told the story of 23-year-old Louise Kelly.  "But
with free contraceptives on offer to teenagers, why do so many girls like
Louise end up back in the abortion clinic time after time?" asked the
Daily Mail.  "Statistics released last month revealed that 100 teenage
girls a month are having their second abortion, with some girls on their
third termination before they reach 18.  At least one girl had had six. .
. . But Louise's story is no more than a reflection of our times, in which
teenagers grow up in a moral climate where sex--for some--has almost
become a compulsory recreational sport, and abortion the quick solution to
the unwanted consequences.  After all, any under-age teenager knows that
if they forget to take precautions, they can have an abortion or the
morning-after pill without being compelled to tell their parents.  So it
can't be wrong, can it?"

Said Louise, "These days I see 13-year-old girls on the bus who change out
of their jeans and polo-necks the minute they leave home to put on short
skirts and skimpy tops, and it makes me feel so sad for them.  It was
simply peer pressure that made me have sex at 14. . . . I knew about the
pill and condoms but was too immature to realise the implications of not
protecting myself."  Sure enough, one of her unwanted pregnancies resulted
even though her boyfriend used condoms.

Some anti-abortion Democrats, though, are pursuing the pro-contraception
strategy.  New Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.), who says he
opposes abortion, introduced a bill on Congress' first day this year that
would increase funding for contraception and the morning-after pill.
Senators Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy have signed on-which should tell
you something.  Rep. Tim Ryan (D.-Ohio), another abortion opponent, has a
bill that would fund more contraception but also provide help to women who
decide to carry unplanned pregnancies to term.  These sort of bills could
split pro-life members of Congress and make those who oppose them seem
extreme and heartless.

They should remember that contraception increases abortion.  They should
also remember that contraceptives give young people a false sense of
security, leading them to engage in riskier behavior than they otherwise
would even though contraception is of limited effectiveness in preventing
pregnancy and disease (and many forms of contraception actually increase
disease risks, at least for women).  Moreover, all forms of artificial
contraception cause illness.  For example, there is no doubt that the
contraceptive pill increases cancer risks.  Putting more pills into the
hands of young women means federal funding for killing American girls.

And no pro-life person can possibly support the morning-after pill.
Dishonestly called "emergency contraception," MAP prevents the
implantation of an already-conceived child and thus is an abortifacient,
not a contraceptive.  The standard oral contraceptive pill, too, can do
the same-meaning that all those who oppose abortion should oppose all
chemical means of disrupting fertility.  Sadly, the one new "pro-life"
Democrat in the Senate, Bob Casey (Pa.), supports MAP, which studies have
shown does not reduce the incidence of conventional abortion.

Pro-lifers should be ready for these controversies when the Democratic
establishment and their media allies choose to move them to the front
burner of American politics.


Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.

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