Amanda Marcotte on the pro-choice "Mississippi miracle"... and the power of the secret ballot.

It's not something I've ever seen an extensive study on, but the folk wisdom of pro-choice circles is "pro-life in the streets, pro-choice in the dark", as it were. In other words, there's an intense amount of pressure to identify as "pro-life" in conservative communities, even if you secretly disagree. To be vocally pro-choice is to be marked as a pervert and a feminist, and so it's avoided, to the point where some polling data suggests that half of people who identify as "pro-life" are actually pro-choice, at least to some extent. Certainly enough that they're not willing to see women thrown in jail for having miscarriages. Because of this intense social pressure, I suspect many people who side with pro-choicers on this law or that law won't say so to a pollster over the phone. Not only are you admitting out loud something that can get you marked as a "pervert" in your community, you may be doing so in front of friends, colleagues, or family members who overhear your conversation with the pollster. No wonder so many people say they're "undecided". But when you actually have your ballot in hand and you know that no one will ever find out how you voted, a solid percentage of voters go with common sense (and with sex!) instead of prevailing community pressures. Frankly, the way the poll numbers turned out, it appears many people who said they would vote yes on 26 instead voted no.

Source: Pandagon

That sounds about right.

I think I'm coming down with another cold, or at least I'm feeling a little muzzy-headed. So I can't remember the sociology term I'm reaching for. But it seems to me like this is another one of those cases where public sentiment is dominated by the desire of a majority not to be outed as "the only one who feels that way." When, in fact, the majority really doesn't feel that way. And where, in fact, the kind of understandable desire not to be outed when it seems like "everybody else" feels that way is kind of strong. And where, I suspect, the urgent desire not to be outed leads to sometimes increasingly zealous efforts to go the other way. Thus you have people like J. Edgar Hoover or Rev. Haggard leading the charge against homosexuality. Or people like Herman Cain or Dan Quayle spouting sometimes ridiculous affirmations about no-exceptions anti-abortion policy while totally considering it a free choice for their own family members.

I think it's a big problem with so-called "conscience clauses" for healthcare providers, the ones that allow, say, pharmacists to refuse to stock emergency contraception due to their (nominally!) "private" objections. When, in fact, they may personally only be succumbing to public expectations in their communities... expectations set, as Amanda suggests, by a majority in the community who... themselves don't think it's a problem but definitely don't want to be seen as "the only ones who feels that way."

Update: I didn't read far enough before posting this, but Amanda draws the same conclusion in her post.

When they say things like, "the only way to prevent STDs is for two virgins to marry and stay faithful" or "contraception thwarts God's intentions for human sexuality", they face a chorus of amens from people who then often turn around and demonstrate, with their behavior, that they simply don't agree.

Again, that sounds right.

So a bunch of clowns at something called "ProLifeBlogs" gives a whole two and a half lines, plus a link to another website, for a new report about stillbirth.

More than 2 million babies are stillborn every year worldwide and about half could be saved if their mothers had better medical care, according to research estimates published Thursday in the medical journal Lancet. ...

Source: "ProLifeBlogs"

Two and a half lines? Is this the best a "pro-life" organization can do?

Their blog's search feature turns up exactly four other posts about stillbirth, only a handful about miscarriage, none more recent than 2007. None are actually relevant to the millions of unanswered stillbirths every year, the tens of millions more unanswered miscarriages and spontaneous abortions, and... just all kinds of stuff about how "pro-life" those folks imagine they are.

There's only one way to measure whether someone's interest is authentically "pro-life" or if instead they just want to control women: what they do about stillbirth, miscarriage, and spontaneous abortion. If they don't do anything about it, but still call themselves "pro-life" they're liars.

You know why the pro-choice movement calls itself "pro-choice?" Do you know why it fights against forced abortion in places like China even as it fights for the right to choose to terminate an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy in the United States? Because it's not about forced pregnancy, and it's not about forced abortion (and it's sure as heck not about the "sanctity" of forced sex!) Instead it's about *choice!*

A stillbirth stops a *wanted* beating heart. A miscarriage almost always stops a wanted beating heart too. Miscarriage, spontaneous abortion, and stillbirth are almost as prevalent worldwide as induced abortion and yet "pro-life" organizations do, what? Nothing!

You know that old quip about the pro-life movement? "Caring about children from conception to birth but not a minute after?" That's not even true is it? Because they're doing exactly what? Sure, they're willing to gun down a doctor in his church or kitchen, willing to waive banners, splash blood, "ex-communicate" honest legislators, put out vaguely racist ads, to celebrate this imposition on a clinic, that imposition on women, the other "tough minded" choice to extend a rape victims nightmare from minutes to nine months.

But a minute later they're willing to... waive bye-bye to two million stillborn babies a year with a flipping two and a half line post?  Yeah, that's "pro-life" alright.

You know what will happen to the "pro-life" movement when the Supreme Court overturns Roe V. Wade? Every last one of them (those who don't turn their attention to outlawing condoms) will pack up their bags, say "that'll teach those hoors and floozies" and never again trouble their little brains with another thought about "unborn life."

Meanwhile? Two million unanswered stillbirths will still happen every year. Between tens and hundreds of millions of unanswered miscarriages and spontaneous abortions a year will still happen every year. Every one of them an "unborn life" that not a one of them ever has, or ever will care about.

Because really? If they did care then someone, somewhere in the "pro-life" movement would have already stepped up their game.

If you follow the link in that casually tossed-off post you know who it turns out helped fund that Lancet Stillbirth study? The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. You know who were still pro choice last time I looked? Bill and Melinda Gates. You know why they're putting time and money into this instead of a "pro-life" organization? Because unlike "pro-life" agitators they aren't just into this to punish women. They're not into this "pro-life" business to use fetuses to smack women back into line. Unlike some people. They're into it because they believe that if you make the choice to have a baby, as most people actually do, then we should all do everything we can to support that choice. Just as we should support every reproductive choice.

Instead of la-dee-daing two million stillbirths into oblivion with a miserly two and a half lines. No surprise though. That's is about what one ever expects from a bunch of lazy, immoral, unethical, inconsiderate, and hateful liars.

Update: My mistake!  A bit more research suggests that "pro-life" organizations have been agitating to... send "birth" certificates to grieving parents after stillbirth.  Because, after a hard day of defunding prenatal-care providers and imposing capricious restrictions on women's healthcare decisions what else could one possibly do about stillbirth?

Sungold has what might help explain the right's otherwise inexplicable* intolerance of contraception.

Here’s an item from the annals of “no shit, Sherlock!” science: A UCSF study shows a stunning decrease in unintended pregnancy and abortion when women are dispensed a year’s supply of birth control pills at once. What’s stunning is not the basic trend line, but the magnitude of the study’s findings. Science Daily recaps it:

"Researchers observed a 30 percent reduction in the odds of pregnancy and a 46 percent decrease in the odds of an abortion in women given a one-year supply of birth control pills at a clinic versus women who received the standard prescriptions for one — or three-month supplies."

Can I rephrase those numbers? Pregnancy declined by nearly a third, and abortion by nearly half!

Source: Kittywampus

More contraception means fewer abortions.  Since at least the 1980s hard-core anti-abortion activists have worried (correctly in my view) that there's an abortion rate threshhold below which the "squishy middle" will lose interest.  Since the hard-core's goal is absolute elimination of abortion (or at least abortion rights), again at least in the 1980s, they made a strategic decision to oppose any and all initiatives that only reduce abortion rates.

Consequently contraception is to an anti-choicer as garlic is to a vampire: a horror to be avoided and eliminated at all cost.

Cutting abortion demand by half is the last thing those assholes want.

See also

• Proposed Legislation: The Responsible Education About Life (or REAL) Act
• Prevention Promotes Predictability and Peace of Mind
• The Prevention First Act: Reweaving the Fabric of Society
• Gaining Ground With "Common Ground" Initiatives
• For Crying Out Loud! "Common Ground" Is About Recruiting the Moderate Majority, Not Compromising With Hard-Core Anti-Choicers
• Radical thinking on abortion politics
• First they came for my belt, then they came for my suspenders

*Until maybe the middle 1970s there were on balance probably more highly-placed Republican supporters of birth control than Democratic ones it seems particularly hard to understand.  In 1947 George W. Bush's not particularly liberal grandfather Prescott Bush was nevertheless the first nationwide capital fundraiser for Planned Parenthood!  This connection probably cost him a Senate seat in Connecticut when Democrats teamed up with Catholic churches to oppose his election.  He lost by only 1,000 votes, but he still lost.  Nor was the Bush family unusual.

Speaking of emergency contraception, and the tendency to blame women for using it, and the tendency to blame women, for that matter, for just about any choice they make regarding their reproductive choices and/or opportunities, and especially for anti-choicers to blame them for all of the above because they're convinced that hormonal contraception is really a closet abortion conspiracy, Jenna of My Sex Professor brings a little potentially welcome news

Many men are disappointed with their lack of contraception options: between the barrier method and vasectomy lie few other choices. A new method (RISUG) is being tested, which entail a one-time reversible injection that prevents sperm from penetrating the egg. The procedure would take five minutes and be effective for at least ten years

Source: My Sex Professor

While for years we've heard stories about how male contraceptives are just around the corner, and are thus justified in feeling a little wary, it's worth pointing out that at least the stories are coming closer and closer together.  And this one actually sounds fairly promising!

It's great news, obviously, for at least the following reasons

1) There really aren't a lot of contraception options available for men.  Worse, of the three available -- condoms, vasectomy, and withdrawal, the most recently developed, vasectomies, were introduced nearly 200 years ago! Since then?  Nothing.  And say what you will about condoms (I say they're pretty good at preventing disease and pregnancy if they don't break and if you use them correctly) they're kind of hard to use correctly until you've really gotten the hand of it, by which point... but I digress.  What I was going to say is this sounds promising because it would be really, really nice to have something intermediate to the permanence of vasectomies and the uncertainties of condoms

2) The introduction of reliable, realistic, reversible and hard to screw up contraception for men will change the blame-women-first-and-always dynamic.  Because once solutions become available for men there won't be that sort of shoulder-shrugging "what can ya do, man" resignation men who fuck up are able to rely on from their peers.  Because, in part, the obvious answer to "what can ya do, man" would then be "what you can do, asshole, is get a shot once every ten years.  You're not getting any sympathy from us."  So that's a big deal.

3) When it comes to the situations where emergency contraception is most likely used (condom breaking, or not using a condom for first-time sex after a long drought, or when functionally incapacitated by drugs or alcohol) the odds of neither party being on some form of contraception can be way lower.

4) Taking items 1-3, above, into account, the focus of responsibility for contraception can shift away from 100% women to more like 50/50 men and women.  (If the product Jenna mentions is as effective and non-intrusive as promised responsibility could shift further onto men.  Although, obviously, an easily used saliva- or semen-based test to quickly confirm effectiveness would be welcome as well.)

But then there's

5) The beauty of the proposed method is that by robbing sperm of the ability to merge with eggs it'll make "conception" impossible! Which ought to shut the ugly pie holes of the "contraception is really abortion" covens.

And, if I can put on my speculative psychopathology-of-the-anti-choice crowd had for a moment, it could even be that...

6) If contraception happens inside men's bodies the anti-choice crowd won't actually care.  Or at least if they do they'll have to start basically from scratch.  And while yes, as a matter of fact it would be better if the anti-choicers were really anti-choice and not just anti-women-as-autonomous-agents, as most evidence suggests. But even then...

7) If the anti-choicers did turn on men and start running the same ill-willed intrusions at least it would put men squarely on the front lines  with women, as opposed to the status quo where most men have basically been confined at best to the sidelines.