Republican Hypocrisy on Teen Pregnancy

[chefmike]

More proof that the bible-banging loonies of the far right OWN the repug party...

Republican Hypocrisy on Teen Pregnancy
Bob Geiger

The Republican-controlled, 109th Congress has invented new modes of hypocrisy on an almost weekly basis and the Senate yesterday sure kept that ball rolling.

By a vote of 65-34, the Senate passed S. 403, a bill that made it a crime to go around parental-notification laws by transporting a pregnant minor across state lines for an abortion.

Shortly before that, Senate Republicans mobilized to reject an amendment by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) that would have funded programs to reduce the very teen pregnancies at issue in the bill that was passed.

OK, you try figuring out whether or not the GOP wants teenagers to have babies.

"We all want to reduce teen pregnancies and abortions. To achieve that, we must do what works, not what pleases political constituencies," said Lautenberg, referring to the GOP tendency to kiss up to the Religious Right, by supporting abstinence as the only solution to unwanted pregnancies. "A comprehensive approach to sex education, which includes both abstinence and information on contraception, is the proven way to reduce the number of teen pregnancies."

"If the Senate passes this punitive bill but fails to do anything about teen pregnancy, it would prove that this exercise is only a political charade and not a serious effort to reduce abortions," said Lautenberg, referring to S. 403.

As if on cue, Tom Coburn (R-OK) stepped up to the microphone and mouthed all the appropriate words for the Religious Right, saying that abstinence is the only solution.

"How many people really think it's in the best interest of young people to be sexually active outside of marriage? Does anything positive ever come from that?" Coburn piously asked on the Senate floor.

Lautenberg's amendment, which was cosponsored by four other Democrats, including fellow New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, accounted for both abstinence programs and common sense educational measures to help teens make informed choices.

Here's a critical part of the legislation, straight from the bill:


The Secretary of Health and Human Services may make grants to States, local educational agencies, State and local public health agencies, and nonprofit private entities for the purpose of carrying out programs of family life education, including education on both abstinence and contraception for the prevention of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease, and education to support healthy adolescent development."

I guess we can see why radical ideas like that would scare the hell out of most Republicans.

The vote on the pregnancy-prevention bill was 48-51, with Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), Susan Collins (R-ME), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) joining all Democrats except GOP-lite Ben Nelson (D-NE) in voting for the program.

"Our role as a community is to provide opportunity and education for young people to help prevent teen pregnancy from happening in the first place," said Menendez. "We can achieve this by making the community more available through after-school programs, as well as, partnerships with faith-based and other community organizations."

Ah, but Menendez is not accounting for the reality that what matters to at least half of our U.S. Senators is what James Dobson and Tony Perkins say on the subject.

The federal government currently does not fund comprehensive sex-education programs, despite the fact that 75 percent of parents say that in addition to abstinence, sex-education should cover contraception and other forms of birth control.

Meanwhile, S. 403, the Child Custody Protection Act, passed, with Republican Senators claiming it would protect pregnant teens while their Democratic colleagues argued it would do just the opposite.

"No parent wants anyone to take their children across state lines or even across the street without their permission," said Mitch McConnell (-KY). "This is a fundamental right, and the Congress is right to uphold it in law."

But many Democrats strongly disagreed, saying that the measure would make criminals out of concerned extended-family members and place young girls in even greater danger by making an already-difficult decision even harder to deal with.

"I think it will make them fearful. I think it will make them feel alone," said Barbara Boxer (D-CA). "This bill needs a lot more work."

"We're going to sacrifice a lot of girls' lives," said Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) while Ted Kennedy (D-MA) -- as he has done so often in this Congress -- called into question why the GOP leadership continues to waste time on such issues.

"Congress ought to have higher priorities than turning grandparents into criminals," said Kennedy.

Abortion rights groups also came out strongly against the bill with the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) calling it the "Teen Endangerment Act" and planning a legal challenge to the law.

"The Center for Reproductive Rights strongly opposes the abortion bill passed today by the Senate," said the CRR in a press release. "Far from providing protection, this legislation endangers the health of young women and criminalizes grandmothers, aunts and sisters for simply helping a loved one in a highly personal time of need."

"The Senate showed a frightening lack of compassion for American teens and a disturbing willingness to play politics with their health and safety today," said Stephenie Foster of Planned Parenthood. "We all want our daughters to come to us, but what is most important is that they are safe. Parents need support to keep their kids healthy and safe -- not laws that criminalize family members for helping teens get access to good medical care."

But this bill still has a bit of a journey before it becomes law, with significant differences in the Senate's version and the similar legislation passed last year by the House of Representatives. Those bills must be reconciled before the consolidated measure can hit George W. Bush's desk for a certain signature.

And it's important for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and his House counterpart, Dennis Hastert (R-IL), to know that their patrons on the far Right are watching.

"Senator [John] Ensign and his colleagues are to be praised for the hard work in passing this important legislation," said Tony Perkins, President of the ultraconservative Family Research Council. "I fully expect a strong bill to come out of conference and be passed by both bodies."

I'm sure Frist and Hastert will make sure that it's done right away, Mr. Perkins.

You can reach Bob Geiger at geiger.bob@gmail.com

Update:

Excellent numbers from Lautenberg as he argued on behalf of his pregnancy-prevention amendment on the Senate floor yesterday:


"The U.S. teen pregnancy rate is the highest by far among developed countries, and here is some of the evidence we use to prove this.

"In Germany, the teen pregnancy rate is 16 per 1,000. The U.S. rate is 84 per 1,000. I ask my colleagues to look at this chart which shows several countries teen pregnancy rates compared with the U.S. This is teen pregnancy rate for ages 15 to 19, among developed countries per 1,000 persons. In Sweden, it is 25 young women per 1,000; in France, it is 20 young women per 1,000; in Canada, 46; in Great Britain, 47; and here we are. Are we the winners in this contest? I hardly think so. We have 84 unintended teenage pregnancies per 1,000 persons.

"I mentioned before that Germany has a teen pregnancy rate of 16 per 1,000, and again, I mention the rate in the United States is 84 per 1,000. So it tells us that there is something terribly wrong about the way we do things here.

"I look further at Belgium, which has a teen pregnancy rate of 14 per 1,000; the Netherlands, 12 per 1,000; and ours is 84 per 1,000. We cannot continue to ignore facts such as these. We can pass all the abortion restrictions we can think of, but unless there are fewer teen pregnancies, the results will be tragic for thousands of young women."


What a not-so-amazing correlation that the countries that are the least uptight about sex-education are the ones with the lowest teen-pregnancy rates.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-ge...t_b_25827.html

[chefmike]

Another sane response regarding the religious lunacy that drives the GOP base...also note the usual lame response from political whore Hillary Clinton, who clearly lusts after the oval office as much as the hypocrite repugs on this board lust after forbidden tranny flesh...

"One Small Step for the Senate, One Large Step for Mankind"
Jayne Lyn Stahl

And womankind, too, I might add. Making it harder for girls under the age of 18 from exercising control over their bodies, the Senate today passed an important measure on the way to deconstructing Roe v. Wade which now goes to the House..

While the Middle East has been up in flames today, the Senate passed a bill, by a margin of nearly 2 to 1, that makes it illegal to transport a pregnant girl for an abortion, across state lines, without first notifying her parents.

This legislation stipulates that it is illegal to "transport" an underaged female interstate "for purposes of evading parental notification laws." (AP) How, pray tell, would one know that the purpose of transporting the teenager across state lines is to avoid parental notification laws in one's home state? Clearly, one wouldn't expect a teenager, or her companion, to acknowledge their interstate journey is to avoid notifying her parents; "Yes, officer, we're leaving Missouri, and heading out to California, so my folks won't find out I'm having an abortion." Hmmm....I don't think so.

So, by implication, the bill is designed to make it a felony to help a youngster get an abortion in another state, or to cross state lines for the purpose of terminating a pregnancy, or at least lay the groundwork for such legislation. As Senator Ted Kennedy aptly suggests this Congress has better things to do than "criminalize grandparents." Might one suggest, for example, that Congress look into the constitutionality of this president's abuse of signing laws, as well as the NSA's circumvention of FISA law, for openers. Oh, and what about outsourcing torture? Why not have our elected representatives use our tax dollars wisely, and investigate this administration's practice of sending detainees to Jordan, and other countries, for physical, and psychological abuse? What kind of warped logic seeks to prosecute a child's aunt for helping her cross over to another state to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and, at the same time, lets commanding officers off the hook when infantrymen rape, and murder fourteen year old girls during the invasion, and occupation, of a sovereign country? Moreover, will these officers face charges when they cross from Iraq to the United States?

In an election year, when a president is scoring low marks with the conservative wing of his Party, what better time to introduce draconian, and utterly irrelevant legislation which is aimed to pacify the ultra-right, even those who think of themselves as ultra-lite ultra-right. We would expect women in the Senate to be unusually vocal on this issue. But, the absence of California Senator Dianne Feinstein was conspicuous, and Ms. Play Both Sides of the Fence Clinton, as always, managed to cloak her inchoate neutrality behind the phrase: "We're going to sacrifice a lot of girls' lives here." Indeed, and we're also going to sacrifice a lot of common sense if we think, as Oklahoma Republican Senator Coburn suggests, that abstinence is the most effective prophylactic for teen pregnancy

What a frightening thought that we live in an age when we can communicate with people 8,000 miles away with the speed of light, and members of the United States Senate are still advocating abstinence. What a thought that we're dealing with a public health issue of seismic proportions, an international crisis, HIV/AIDS, and there are members of Congress, and high up in this administration, who think they can turn the clock back to the days of Queen Victoria or, better still, to the days when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Unremarkably, these folks are members of the same class of dinosaur that brought us Creationism under the guise of "intelligent design."

More terrifying still is the thought that most Americans agree with parental notification laws for girls under the age of 18. In the best of all possible worlds, girls should be able to notify their parents. I did---about 20 years after my abortion which, fortunately for me, happened right after Roe v. Wade passed. I can tell you this---my parents would have been just fine, thank you, had I never told them. And, if we force even one teenager girl into a pregnancy for which she is unprepared because of her parent's' agenda, that's one too many.

Ironically, proponents of abstinence, and supremacy of parental rights are often the ones to scream the loudest about welfare, and food stamps. Yet, these are the ones who want the law to intervene, on their behalf, to insure that they get to have the last word on whether or not their daughters give birth. Does it occur to those who demand to be notified before their child can legally have an abortion may, in some cases, be condemning her to a life of poverty, and unfulfilled dreams should they insist that the birth proceed? It's essential here that we distinguish between legal and moral. While it may be the right thing to do to notify a parent, is it the legal thing to do, or does this youngster have constitutional rights to protect her privacy that are being implicitly infringed upon? More importantly, how can we expect emotional maturity from our youth when we deprive them of choice, and make no mistake, these decisions affect young men as much as young women.

By handing out prison sentences, in cases like these, we are, in essence, criminalizing choice, and sending the message to our daughters and sons that they're old enough to procreate, but not to choose whether or not to parent. The criminal justice system is not now, nor must it ever be, the proper domain for hashing out family politics, and a society that deprives its young people of their privacy deprives them of the right to choose and, by extension, the right to self-determination.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jayne-...s_b_25855.html

[JRon]

This was always one of those conservative hypocrisies that always got me - - don't allow for abortion but don't teach proper sex ed and education on contraceptives. It's like the criminal justice system - - why are we expanding prisons but decreasing rehabilitation and prevention? This shit does not add up - - its so fucking counterintuitive.

Besides the fact that I DESPISE abstinence only sex-ed.

Funny story - About 15-20 years ago, my health teacher from high school caught a big conservative backlash against his use of a college level health textbook, which discussed masturbation. There was this huge public forum where he was allowed to publicly defend himself. The leader of the religious/conservative side condemned him for teaching his students masturbation, as it is a "sin against God." A student of his, bright kid, comes up to the mic to give a comment. He says, "Quite frankly, Mrs. X, I knew how to masturbate way before I took this class or read this textbook."