4/4/12
Comment of the Week: Pro-Life But Pro-Sex Ed and Birth Control

photo via flickr

Nuance is pretty rare in the national conversation about abortion. The headlines and protests can make it seem like there is no middle ground, no shades of grey. Which is why we found reader Dave‘s comment, in response to the post “Naked News: The Right’s War on Women/Porn/Ethics,” so refreshing. Sure, we don’t agree with everything he says, but we appreciate his thoughtfulness and his refusal to toe either party line:

I am personally pro-life because I really think that it is the correct decision morally. However, all these insane laws that pro-life state governments keep passing makes me ashamed to be associated with the pro-life movement at all.

The worst of the lot is the Kansas law that allows doctors to lie to patients. Destroying the patient-doctor relationship is terrible for healthcare and if you have to lie to win, what does that say about you?

Ironically, the Christian Right that supports the pro-life movement also wants to remove sex education and in some cases opposed birth control. Both of these stances increase the number of unwanted pregnancies and therefore the number of abortions.

I honestly believe that if we had good sex education and better contraceptive use from the general public that the number of unwanted pregnancies could be decreased 90+%. In a world like this abortion would be much less common and that is a step in the right direction.



3 Comments

  1. ^ I agree. The voices we hear in any debate are the loudest ones, not the smartest ones. Unfortunately most debatable topics – gender relations, politics, religion, race relations – have TONS of noisy voices per smart voice on both sides of the argument.

  2. Amen. I think the saddest thing about the extremist takeover of the abortion debate is that it has shut down meaningful dialogue in the middle. By the middle, I mean sensible people on the prolife and prochoice sides who can agree about things like sex ed and access to contraception. These things empower women to make more informed reproductive choices and reduce the number of abortions by reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies, things that sensible people on both sides of the debate actually agree on. It’s unfortunate that sensible people are drowned out by extremists.

  3. I think there’s plenty of room for nuance in the abortion debate, but we never hear it because only the extremists are yelling loud enough to be heard.

    I’m no great fan of abortion, but that doesn’t mean I think it should be illegal. I’m no great fan of divorce, either, but sometimes it’s for the best. We’re better off working on prevention than punishing people who are just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

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