The anti-choice movement, like much of the far right these days, has a way of casting their opponents as vicious interlopers with a dark and inhuman vision for America. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins's commentary on the Medicaid family planning expansion provision is a fine example. He leads his reader to something, in his view, frightening but necessary: "a rare, but candid glimpse into the mind of a liberal." And this is what we find there:
Children are viewed as things to be avoided or aborted, so they don't consume our limited resources, rather than blessings to conceive and care for as the bridge to the future.
The argument between the pro-choice and anti-choice movements is not about family size - it's not about whether large families are better for our economy than small families, as Perkins claims. Whether or not you agree with that dubious assumption - more children equal more workers, he argues - the freedom to have a large family will always be protected, regardless of who controls Congress. The real question here is: Who wants family planning resources, politicians or low-income American women? Perkins claims that it's the former, and his implication is really quite stunning: that by making contraception and abortion available to women, the government is taking away Americans' right to have children. Besides the claim, above, that liberals are anti-children, Perkins crafts a cute turn of phrase in his conclusion:
What America's families need is not reform that will require their first born (or from Ms. Pelosi's perspective, prevent their first born), but real economic reform that will secure not only their own future, but their children's.
By now, Pelosi and her cohorts are practically kidnappers. So does Perkins' claim have any validity? Does government support of family planning pressure women to do things they don't want to do with their fertility? Would the stimulus money have brainwashed us until we were a childless nation?
An intimate portrait of one culturally conservative, low-income community in America seems to suggest otherwise. A month ago, The New York Times reported that Dominican women and teenagers in the Washington Heights neighborhood in Manhattan, feeling that they cannot go to a local clinic for social or legal reasons, obtain misoprostol, an ulcer drug, illegally from neighborhood pharmacies. The drug sometimes, but not always, brings on an abortion and can cause the uterus to rupture.
"Researchers studying the phenomenon cite several factors that lead Dominican and other immigrant women to experiment with abortifacients: mistrust of the health-care system, fear of surgery, worry about deportation, concern about clinic protesters, cost and shame," reported the Times.
Off-label use of prescription drugs is not the only way these women "experiment"; the surveys cited "found reports of women mixing malted beverages with aspirin, salt or nutmeg; throwing themselves down stairs or having people punch them in the stomach; and drinking teas of avocado leaf, pine wood, oak bark and mamon fruit peel."
Women do not have abortions because the opportunity is there - they have them regardless. While Tony Perkins rails against liberal child-haters, women desperate for abortions are literally throwing themselves down the stairs. In Perkins' ideal America, we could look forward to even more of this.
But the Times' report reminds us of something else: money is not the only thing that family-planning organizations need in order to help women. They also need to think about how they're reaching out to women who, for various reasons, don't consider these organizations an option when seeking abortion, and don't always seek them out before this point.
In the meantime, Mr. Perkins and the Family Research Council: in denying women the rights they clearly want, regardless of culture, faith, or income level, you are the political bullies, you are the dangerous special-interest group.
