More unplanned pregnancies, more abortions sought, more calls to so-called crisis pregnancy centers, more demand for birth control but less money to spend on it. That's the story in today's Chicago Tribune. It's not popular to say it, but goddammit, we know very well that reproductive health is an economic issue--and too frequently an economic injustice issue. Maybe someday we'll start acting like it.
Whether you actively want to have kids or are desperately trying to avoid them, I've got to believe the nauseating economic decline and its attendant job instability has being throwing a wrench in a lot of plans. Sometimes several wrenches. One woman who spoke to Trib reporter Deborah L. Shelton said that "she and her husband had made the painful choice to end her pregnancy because they could not afford a third child. But the family's insurance doesn't cover abortions, and not until her 14th week could they pull together money to pay." That's some pro-natalist culture we've got there, huh? You can choose between, on the one hand, ending a pregnancy you might actually want but can't afford, or on the other, an abortion you believe strongly that you need but alsocan't afford. What an enviable position.
Saddest to me were the stats from the National Network of Abortion Funds, a network that refers women who need help paying for an abortion to a local affiliate that might be able to help. NNAF has seen precipitous jumps in requests for referrals over the last few months, and an astonishing 75% of all the calls they fielded in November and December 2008 were for women who were at least four months pregnant. In the second trimester, abortions tend to be more costly, more complicated, and more difficult to procure, as providers stop providing abortions as the weeks progress. "No woman purposely waits until her second trimester to have an abortion procedure," said Gaylon Alcatraz, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund. "They are trying to raise money, get resources, get things together."
NNAF, Planned Parenthood, and crisis pregnancy centers are seeing different faces of the same phenomenon. Women and families have fewer resources available to them, less job stability and reliable health benefits, and thus are more apprehensive about carrying through a pregnancy. At the same time, that scarcity of resources is precisely what's making it harder for them to avoid or end the very pregnancies they can't afford.
Oy. The rhetoric of the culture of life.
3.10.2009
The Economy and Your Family (Planning)
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4 comments:
I think it's time for the IUD to make a comeback. People I know still think of an IUD as being that terrible horseshoe crab-shaped Dalkon Sheild that caused all those deaths a couple decades ago. Granted, IUDs are a bit of an investment, but I would think that health insurance companies would be more likely to pay for that than abortion services (unless the only birth control they cover is "prayer").
Amen, Mary. I have a Paragard IUD and it's the best b.c. EVER for me, and I am always going on about it and how much I love it. No hormones, no monthly expenses, good for ten years, it's just so awesome. My insurance (BC/BS) paid for most of it - as well they should, considering they cover Viagra. However, no one I know has ever had a doctor recommend IUD. They ALL want to give you the Pill or the Shot or the Ring or the Patch, which all involve hormones and substantial regular expenses. A lot of ob/gyns around here will also tell young women they can't have an IUD unless they've already had a child, which is patently untrue. Mirena is for post-partum women; Paragard is for anyone.
I wish people would GET IT that women's rights are human rights, and that reproductive health and freedom affect EVERYONE, not just women.
i heart my own mirena IUD (and i've never had a child, but maybe diff doctors have diff ideas?) - and my insurance did cover it. woo!
as for the "culture of life," my brother and i were reminiscing the other night about growing up in a town where this was a huge issue and how, in high school, my parents let him take time off of school to work as an escort at the women's health clinic. his job was to walk women from their cars through the line of protesters safely. mind you, this clinic was the only specific women's health clinic in town - they did your mammogram, they did your pap, they also performed abortions and gave reproductive counseling, but every woman going in there was getting attacked by the protesters, sometimes even having their license plates recorded by bystanders, "for their records." ugh. this led to my brother's declaration that, "you know, i've never actually been in a real fight. i mean, i got tackled by a priest a couple of times, but i got him on the ground pretty fast." heh.
ldub: best comment ever.
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