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Originally Posted by lurkette
What I would like to see is more emphasis on pregnancy prevention - education, access to birth control, etc. - and therefore fewer abortions. I don't think the Republicans can have it both ways - insisting on flawed "abstinence only" sex "education" that results in more pregnancies than other comprehensive education programs, and then turn around and demand that nobody can have an abortion. If they want to stick their head in the ideological sand and pretend that it'll work to just wish people wouldn't have unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancies because it's bad bad bad, fine; but at some point they are going to have to accept the reality of the situation and look for what works to accomplish their end goal - reducing the number of abortions - in the Real World (where you have to worry about silly little things like people's rights) and not in Jesus LaLa Land.
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politically speaking, it doesn't do the right much good to push sex education and pregnancy prevention. i read an article (print, not web) that claimed the number of abortions rose starting about 2 years after bush took office and started his abstinence only education policies. now, there could be two reasons for that that i can think of...
1) economy went down the crapper... people who lost jobs or were making less money/unsure of their employment future chose to put off having the child in the uncertian financial times. rather than having a child they could not afford to raise they had the abortion.
2) lack of good sex ed -> higher teen pregnancy -> more abortions.
so if it was #2, it's the prefect scenario for the right. they've got higher abortion numbers to further push their abstinence only education and they can rail against abortion citing the higher numbers and the need to get make abortions illegal. both of these are things that the rights religous base highly support. it seems pretty win-win for them politically.
if the abstinence only education is causing the higher abortion rates, it's almost like an internal viscious circle.
/what do y'all think?