The Flaw of Free Contraceptives and Reducing Abortion

October 8, 2012 5:20 pmViews: 668

Yahoo News recently posted an article from LiveScience.com (which is now all over the web) citing a study where women who were given free contraception in the St Louis area had a reduced abortion rate averaging 62% lower that the population of the United States in general. In the study, some 9,000 teens and women aged 14 thru 45 in the St. Louis area, recruited through flyers, doctors, word-of-mouth and patients from the city's two abortion clinics were given free, reversible means of birth control.

After the results, Jeff Peipert, lead author of the study remarked,

"The impact of providing no-cost birth control was far greater than we expected in terms of unintended pregnancies, we think improving access to birth control, particularly IUDs [intrauterine devices] and [hormone] implants, coupled with education on the most effective methods, has the potential to significantly decrease the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions in this country."

Liberals are now citing the study as evidence that since free contraception reduces abortions, conservatives and those that are pro-life should strongly support this method of what they call, preventative health care. They reason that if you are pro-life you should want to reduce abortions in any manner possible.

There are major flaws in this study and the logic of this argument trying to recruit and shame pro-lifers into endorsing such a method of reducing abortions. The first and most glaring problem with this study is that the researchers state that it is actually free contraceptives that help reduce abortions, as if contraceptive methods women have to pay for themselves reduce pregnancies, but don't reduce abortions?

When the lead author of the study quoted above states, "The impact of providing no-cost birth control was far greater than we expected in terms of unintended pregnancies" unfortunately many people will not even give a second thought as to how loaded a statement like that is. It is both absurd and insulting because the last time we checked, most people who participate in medical studies don't have to pay for their drugs or treatment. All medical studies are done this way.

The second major flaw in this study is that they recruited women from area abortion clinics which would significantly increase the number of abortions reduced within the number of participants. When you stack the study with women who are already abortion minded and may have already had an abortion and give them free contraceptives, of course the number of abortions will be reduced. Not all women who use contraceptives would choose abortion if they got pregnant while using them.

If taken to its logical conclusion, free medicine could have benefits we can only dream of. One could do a study where employed people were recruited that suffered headaches and they could be given free aspirin and it would be proven, according to this same logic, that free aspirin significantly reduced the number of headaches suffered in participants, making them more productive. And since we all want to be more productive, the government should now force businesses to provide free aspirin to all employes for any reason.

The article cited in Yahoo News also pointed out that it is important to have long acting contraception such as IUD's available for free because women sometimes forget to take the Pill and this would be better suited for forgetful individuals. Of course they pointed out that the IUD should most certainly be free because poor women would have a hard time coming up with the $800 for the device that lasts an estimated 10 years. We are talking about an $800 cost that when spread out over those 10 years would cost less than $7 per month. Any chance someone who doesn't want kids could find an extra $7 a month to spend on birth control?

This kind of logic is exactly why we are broke to the tune of $16 trillion in this country. We somehow keep finding ways to add just about anything one can think of to the government-will-pay-for-it rolls. Whatever hits the liberal politician's mind that will garner the most votes and create the most outrage seems to be theÂ cause du jour.

Of course let's remember that this entire free contraceptives argument was started when Nancy Pelosi created the false outrage that women's rights media darling Sandra Fluke wasn't allowed to speak at a hearing on contraceptives by stubborn and stodgy old men running Congress. Unfortunately the media ran with that story because it cause such outrage and created another terrible women's rights issue that would sell papers and magazines. However, the truth of the matter was that the free contraceptives battle started out to be a religious rights issue that had nothing at all to do with women's rights.

And if you didn't know it, Sandra Fluke was never invited to speak before any congressional committee because the issue being discussed was religious rights where clergy and people of faith were invited to speak on the issue before Congress, not people like Sandra Fluke. Even though Nancy Pelosi tried to create a scandal, Sandra Fluke was not invited because she was not qualified to speak on religious issues nor was she a member of the clergy. Not just anyone gets to speak before Congress.

But to the issue that pro-lifers should support free contraceptives because it reduces abortions, I say baloney! This is just a method to get the media to push the anti-Christian agenda and a way for more government freebies. The same women holding signs and demanding the government stay out of their bedroom and keep their hand off their uterus, are also the same women and women's organizations demanding the government force religious institutions and employers to pay for free contraception.

But does free contraception reduce the number of abortions and shouldn't pro-lifers be for that? The answer is yes to the first and no to the second point. Putting women in jail and or requiring them to wear chastity belts would also reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, consequently reducing the number of abortions, but we wouldn't say that was okay because it is wrong. And free contraceptives are also wrong. Free contraceptives given or made available to underage and high school aged girls along with the Planned Parenthood agenda actually encourages promiscuity, plus many women using birth control are still getting pregnant and still having abortions that were supposed to be prevented by that birth control according to Abort73.com:

Birth control has created the illusion that you can enter into sexual relationships without consequences. Its use is "virtually universal" among sexually-active women, and yet there are still more than one million abortions every year in the United States â€“ and that's been true every year since 1977. If the promises of birth control are the very thing that's convincing more unmarrieds to be more sexually active, and if 12% of the women using birth control still wind up pregnant, it's no wonder that contraceptives have proved so ineffectual at curbing our national abortion epidemic.

Free birth control is not now and will never be the answer to reducing abortions because it alreadyÂ has a track record of 35 years of failure.

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