Prevention First policy disappointment

In an article subtitled The pro-life case for contraception Will Saletan of Slate.com discusses the first (as far as I know) attempt to implement Prevention-First legislation. And the results are... mixed. Ok, disappointing.

The issue that never changes is finally changing.

If you're one of the millions of Americans who don't like abortion but also don't like the idea of banning it, good news is on the way. In the last three weeks, two bills have been filed in the House of Representatives. Without banning a single procedure, they aim to significantly lower the rate of abortions performed in this country. Voluntary reduction, not criminalization or moral silence, is the new approach.

How do you stop abortions without restricting them? One way is to persuade women to complete their pregnancies instead of terminating them. The other is to prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place. And there's the rub--or, in this case, the rubber. The two House bills used to be one proposal, backed by an alliance of pro-life lawmakers and organizations. The alliance split because one faction wanted to fund contraception and the other didn't.

See the rest of the article here.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon is less surprised that it hasn't turned out so well.

anti-choicers are actually interested in protecting "life" more than limiting women's choices. (Via.) However, he's straining so hard on this latest column that I can't help but think he's going to break a blood vessel. The issue this time out is the 95-10 solution that's being promoted as a "compromise" between anti- and pro-choicers--the idea behind the bill is that by identifying the reasons women get abortions and working to take away those reasons, then the abortion rate should reduce. Pro-choicers get a slew of things they want, like financial help for single mothers and better contraceptive access and anti-choicers get to see fewer abortions.

Now this bill is the perfect wedge issue, of course, because it drives a wedge between the people who actually do want to see abortions reduced and the "pro-lifers", who are primarily about hating Teh Sex. It was predicted that the anti-choicers would balk at this bill because they are all about preventing people from having safe sex. It was patently obvious that anti-choicers would oppose effective measures to lower the abortion rate because those measures would have to deal maturely with the fact that people fuck, which makes it all the funnier that Saletan is acting surprised here.

I read Saletan's piece with different-colored glasses than Marcotte -- for instance if she sees him straining for a silver lining I see him despairing that there is none. But I totally back her, and Saletan's, interpretation that we gave them a chance to reduce abortion the right way -- by preventing unplanned, unwanted pregnancies to make abortion unnecessary before the fact, and by promising enough material support during and after pregnancy to make abortion a genuine choice rather than an economic necessity -- and they failed.

If they were genuinely "pro-life..." even if they'd merely been genuinely "anti-abortion..." they'd have been on that like gravy on turkey stuffing. They weren't. As Marcotte says they're not pro-choice, they just hate Teh Sex. And while they don't perceive themselves as Women's-Wrongs activists (I'm confident they all imagine themselves as helping out "the little ladies") they're Wrong to the core.

I'm particularly disappointed that this isn't being turned into a wedge issue. I've posted over and over about the contraception-first strategy because I passionately share the desire to alienate the vast majority of people who are merely squeamish about abortion but who'd no sooner give up contraception than cell phones from the pedestal pushers and contraception-leads-to-sex haters.

Plus, of course, I actually *agree* with prevention first and have since before Roe made it so our peer group didn't have to smuggle our friends and loved ones off to Washington D.C. or New York City when they needed an abortion.

Anyway, I still believe it's sound social policy and good political strategy to pursue. Not to mention critical in the face of a Roberts/Scalia/Alito et. al. I hope they don't give up.

P.S. I probably don't need to say this but my support for prevention-first policies in no way alters my unwavering support for choice.