Pregnant Pause - Whither family-planning funds?

[Lithos]

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A748915

Even as the state budget for health and human services is expected to constrict over the next biennium, a consequence of the tightening economy, there is at least one player that's poised to see a fairly hefty budget increase: The controversial Alternatives to Abortion program could see a $1.5 million increase in funding if the state Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees the program, has its way. The additional dollars would represent a 30% budget hike over the last biennium.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr :mad:

[sonias]

1. Throwing taxpayer money away

Absolutely the worst use of taxpayer money from a policy perspective. To the Rs however, it's greasing their base with cash. They need to get some tax dollars to the "faith-based community". Those of us in a reality based world know this as "bribes" or "quid pro quo". The politicians who dole out our collective dollars to a group that they expect to "buy" on election day.

And if you read the story you'll see we get very little in return. They can't even meet the performance goals they wrote themselves. But the guy at the top pays himself $100,000 a year.

Nonetheless, the Texas Pregnancy Care Network continues to spend roughly 40% of its entire $2.5 million annual budget on administrative costs, including a generous salary for its executive director, attorney Vincent Friedewald, whose pay rose from $93,372 in 2007 to just more than $100,000 in 2009.

Sounds like the Wall Street banker mentality and rewarding bad behavior. Where are the protesters from the right who should be holding "tea parties" to complain about irresponsibility? Sarah Wheat calls them on it too in the article. Good framing.

This "Alternatives to Abortion" program is very similar to the stupid Bush policy that President Obama reversed. The "global gag rule" where family planning clinics around the world could not be given federal money if they offered abortion services. Planned Parenthood suffers the same kind of punishment in Texas. Despite the fact that the vast majority of the services PP performs/offers to women are plain health exams.

Sonia

[Baby Snooks]

2. Is this a program that offers "placement " or forces "responsibility?"

Too many of these "faith-based" programs force "responsibility" with "guilt trips" which force the parents to marry and forces the grandparents to support them while the father "learns a trade" so he can support the mother and the child which usually dooms the mother and the father and the child to a life of relative poverty unless the grandparents are very rich in which case it doesn't matter, does it?

In a way I feel sorry for Sarah Palin's daughter because while denying it I suspect her mother's political career determined her decision.

The Catholic Church at one point had a viable program for "teenage mothers" although I believe it was discontinued because of cost and I knew about it because a friend of mine chose to have her baby and gave it to the couple she had come to know albeit anonymously. She lived in a home where she completed 11th grade and had the baby and never looked back simply because she knew the couple and knew they would give the baby a good home and a good life without the "stigma" that existed back in the 1960s and 1970s and to a degree still does today. The parents of the boy who got her pregnant were as staunchly Catholic as her parents were and were also opposed to abortion, almost the first words out of their mouths, and yet blamed my friend in the one meeting with everyone and basically called her a slut who had somehow "seduced" their innocent child. Who by that point had been "seduced" by quite a few sluts. My friend didn't really want to marry him and didn't want an abortion and so adoption was the only alternative. I asked her once if she would have given it up had she not known the adoptive parents. "No way..."

My friend's parents were so angry at the "blame game" that had she chosen an abortion they would have looked the other way. She decided to have the baby and give it up. Not them.

What always bothers me most about the "holy rollers" is the hypocrisy. Most have "money and means" and of course in the old days had the old "D&C" for miscarriage which was a miscarriage only in the sense that the doctor made sure he killed the fetus first.

The worst hypocrisy even among the "pro-choice" crowd is the insistence that public funds should not be used for abortion and then of course they turn around and complain about "welfare mothers" who usually didn't have much choice. But then in our society, women often don't.

I am both "anti-abortion" and "pro-choice" by the way. Personally opposed to abortion but also adamantly opposed to anyone making the choice but the mother. Particularly the "holy rollers" who of course are, again, hypocrites in the matter.

[sonias]

3. Legal, safe and rare

No one is pro-abortion. Women should just have the right, 100% no questions asked, to make any choice with regard to their health.

And no one wants unplanned pregnancy either. The problem in our society that you can't have two conflicting policies and be successful at your ultimate goal. If our goal is no or very few cases of abortions, then there must be a huge preventative campaign to stop unwanted pregnancies. That of course takes money and education. Neither of which the "holy rollers" you talk about would support. At least not honest sexual education that would teach contraception and promote it.

Condoms should be free and readily available at many locations especially in rural communities. Birth control clinics that provided education and contraception services would also be heavily subsidized and available to anyone.

If we really did all we could do to promote a good honest discussion about safe sex and prevention, we could minimize the need for abortions.

Sonia