Preaching to the Choir

With a little less than half of the U.S. self-identifying as Pro-Choice, it's easy for us to stick together.  When you're young, hip, sexy, and buying quinoa from Trader Joe's, it's even easier.  Sex and Choice are natural conversation points at parties.  Supporting Planned Parenthood is taken as a given.  Some of us may even blog for an intended audience already in agreement.  For people like us, there are rallying points like this great video:

Wesleyan University - "I Have Sex"

And this more cloying one:

Second City - For Those With Vaginas

But preaching to the choir only goes so far to effect actual change.  Eventually, we actually need to mobilize our fervent energy and bring our concerns and our message to the other side, to those who don't already agree with us, to those who are uncomfortable with our position.  Accordingly, today I performed my most futile of civic duties:  I wrote a letter to my Senator, ultra pro-life Saxby Chambliss (R - GA Douchebag).  Note how I pretended that "budget cuts" are really the issue at hand:

"Dear Senator Chambliss,

I am writing to express my concerns about measures currently under consideration regarding reproductive health.  In the ongoing Congressional debates on FY2011 budget cuts, you have voted to defund both the United Nations Population Fund and Planned Parenthood.  I ask that you reconsider your stance on these issues, and lend your support to these vital organizations.  I am one of your constituents, and a citizen concerned both with the nation’s growing deficit, as well as with the impact of unintended pregnancies both at home and worldwide.  I believe not only that these two causes are related, but that they are intricately and inextricably linked.

First, I urge you to vote in support of providing funding to the United Nations Population Fund.  This organization does not fund abortions, but rather provides desperately-needed access to family planning resources and education to millions of young women and men around the world.   In addition, the UNFPA also provides medical care to pregnant women in an effort to decrease the enormous number of maternal deaths and injuries that occur each day.  These measures, which allow women in the developing world to determine the size and spacing of their families, have proven their positive impact.  Nations with fewer unintended pregnancies, smaller family size, and fewer maternal deaths are more stable socially, economically, and politically.  Such improvements would spell positive changes for our global community.

Second, I ask that you support federal funding for Planned Parenthood, an organization which provides family planning and health services to millions of Americans.  The mission of Planned Parenthood is to prevent unwanted pregnancy, allowing women and girls to complete their educations and further their careers, and saving millions of dollars each year in Medicaid and Welfare costs.

I understand the severity of the nation’s current financial situation, but I firmly believe that cutting funding from family planning programs is not the way to save money.  I am sure that you have heard the saying that every dollar spent on family planning measures saves four down the road.  Thus, in this time of economic crisis, it would behoove us as citizens of Georgia, the United States, and the world to invest in women’s future and in fiscally-sound family planning measures.

Thank you."

Naturally, my letter is going to end up being ignored.  Actually, it's not even going to be ignored by Saxby Chambliss; it's going to be ignored by Saxby Chambliss' secretary's intern.  But I'm glad that I finally voiced my dissident opinion to someone who is supposed to be representing me.  And maybe a hundred such letters would be harder to ignore.

Happily, Planned Parenthood is safe for now, but the failure of H.R. 1 bought only about three weeks of time.  The threat of budget cuts is not going anywhere.  So I'm going to go all PSA on ya'll and beg you 1) To donate to Planned Parenthood, and 2) to write to your Senators and Representatives.  Feel free to copy and paste my letter, emend it, or ignore it and write your own.  If you give a shit about this cause, please tell someone.  And don't let me be that someone.  Make it someone who doesn't already know.

Globally Pro-Choice

Last week, I was walking across Georgetown's campus when I was stopped by an acquaintance and asked if I would give a minute for "Global Health Day."  Behind her, a large banner proclaimed "Half the world lives on less than $3 a day... that is what we spend on a cup of coffee."  After filling me in on several additional depressing statistics regarding starvation, malaria, and infant mortality, this well-meaning girl asked if I would help global health awareness by writing down something that I believed everyone in the world deserved.  Without pausing, I wrote "access to birth control."

My response was met at first with a smirk, then with irritation, as she suggested that I write something else. "Please take this seriously," she pleaded, implying that my answer had deliberately mocked the plight of millions of starving children worldwide.  It was as if I had suggested sending vibrating cock rings and flavored lube to the war-torn Congo.

http://www.foogle.biz/starving_world/starving.htm

Poverty and global health are issues that we love to talk about.  Starving children in China/Africa/Southeast Asia are eternally the subjects of guilt-tripping rhetoric.  Droves of celebrities and well-meaning high schoolers descend on developing nations each year, all seeking to "combat hunger" and "fight AIDS" in fairly non-specific ways.  Images of barefoot toddlers crying in the muddy streets of Delhi and Lima rouse us to donate to a myriad of international charities.  Yet in all of this discussion of child poverty, there is no mention of the children themselves being a compounding factor.

The correlation between high fertility rates, poverty, and low life expectancy is well established.  According to the UN TFR Ranking (2009), the top twenty nations in terms of fertility rate per woman include Niger, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan; each of these countries has a fertility rate more than three times that of the U.S. and Western Europe.  The UN TFR has also provided this helpful visualization of average fertility rates worldwide:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_rate

Anyone who has taken a class in logic knows that correlation does not imply causation.  With a little imagination, though, it's not difficult to picture how a rapidly growing population coupled with a finite number of resources keeps literacy rates low and poverty rates high, fuels political unrest, and greatly facilitates the spread of disease.  And that's not even touching the impact on the women who are actually bearing these children.

http://www.glpinc.org/Web_pages/Illiteracy_Globally.html

Unfortunately, the international community is unlikely to embrace worldwide family planning measures any time soon.  For one thing, one of the world's most powerful men, Benedict XVI, would not approve.  A large number of charities aimed at alleviating poverty are religiously affiliated, and these groups prefer to combat world hunger by collecting canned food, building new churches, and praying.  Contraception, of course, is not in the Catholic or Evangelical vocabulary.  This view has played no small role in the House's recent defunding of the United Nations Population Fund.

It's not just the right wing that's to blame, however.  Even liberal and pro-choice groups shirk from advocating contraceptive use abroad, less they be accused of promoting eugenics or forcing Western practices and culture upon the developing world.  Additionally, the realm of international charity seeks to project itself as bipartisan, eschewing controversial issues such as contraception.  Food, water, health, and education are all hot topics of conversation, but one of the best long-term solutions remains, for now, grossly overlooked.

At the end of the day, it's touching and inspiring to see a a picture of volunteers building a school abroad or serving food to little brown children.  It's very difficult to evoke the same feelings with a picture of a couple using a condom.