Give women the tools to prevent unintended pregnancy and they will. The problem is, a lot of women aren’t getting those tools.
A new statistical analysis, published this month, shows that poor and uneducated women have fallen farther behind their more affluent peers in their ability to control fertility and plan childbearing.
The nation’s overall rate of unintended pregnancies held steady from the mid-1990s through 2001, the most recent year such data is available. But that stability masked huge disparities between demographic groups, according to the new analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group affiliated with Planned Parenthood.
Teenagers, college graduates and women in the middle or upper class dramatically reduced unintended pregnancy and abortion rates. Among poor women, though, the unplanned pregnancy rate jumped nearly 30%.
As a result, poor women are now four times more likely to face an unintended pregnancy than those who are better off. They’re also three times more likely to get an abortion.
It’s not brain surgery: Give all women education and birth control. Give them a variety of options in their lives — reproductive and otherwise. Instead, the fetus-fetishists among us would prefer to deny women contraceptives and sexual health information, despite the fact that such denials only increase the rate of unintended pregnancy, and by extension the abortion rate. But, we promise, it’s because we love babies!
The article is a good one, because it goes beyond the simple political talking points and recognizes that lowering the unintended pregnancy rate requires a multi-pronged approach. Obviously affordable and accessible birth control is part of the equation, but giving women and girls a sense of self-worth — giving them a reason to live for themselves — is also crucial.
Laura Gaydos came to a similar conclusion after holding recent focus groups with low-income women of all ages and races in cities across Georgia. A health researcher at Emory University in Atlanta, Gaydos said many of the women she interviewed simply didn’t see the urgency in going out of their way to prevent pregnancy. “There’s never going to be a perfect time to get pregnant,” she heard again and again. And: “Might as well let what happens, happen.”
Even when low-income women take the initiative to pick up birth control, they are often ambivalent about using it — or too disorganized to remember. Nearly half of all women who get abortions say they used birth control at some point during the month they conceived. In some cases it failed. In many others, they just didn’t use it correctly or consistently.
If you haven’t read the book Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, I’d highly recommend it. I read it my senior year of college in a reporting class, and it shifted my perspective on the family planning debates. Basically, LeBlanc spends years living in the Bronx, observing the inter-relationships of several individuals and families there. Her documentation extends for ten years, from the late 980s until fairly recently. From Publisher’s Weekly:
Politicians rail about welfare queens, crack babies and deadbeat dads, but what do they know about the real struggle it takes to survive being poor? Journalist LeBlanc spent some 10 years researching and interviewing one extended family-mother Lourdes, daughter Jessica, daughter-in-law Coco and all their boyfriends, children and in-laws-from the Bronx to Troy, N.Y., in and out of public housing, emergency rooms, prisons and courtrooms. LeBlanc’s close listening produced this extraordinary book, a rare look at the world from the subjects’ point of view. Readers learn that prison is just an extension of the neighborhood, a place most men enter and a rare few leave. They learn the realities of welfare: the myriad of misdemeanors that trigger reduction or termination of benefits, only compounding a desperate situation. They see teenaged drug dealers with incredible organizational and financial skills, 13-year-old girls having babies to keep their boyfriends interested, older women reminiscing about the “heavenly time” they spent in a public hospital’s psychiatric ward and incarcerated men who find life’s first peace and quiet in solitary confinement. More than anything, LeBlanc shows how demanding poverty is. Her prose is plain and unsentimental, blessedly jargon-free, and includidng street talk only when one of her subjects wants to “conversate.” This fine work deserves attention from policy makers and general readers alike.
Poverty is complicated, and growing up in poverty with few options isn’t an experience that too many policy-makers have had to weather. Why have I stayed un-pregnant until the ripe old age of 22? Well, largely because I have a deep desire not to be pregnant. I have that desire because I’ve always been presented with a lot of opportunities in my life, and I’ve wanted to take advantage of as many of them as possible. I’ve been able to take advantage of many of them because I was able to remain un-pregnant first by choosing not to have sex, and later by accessing affordable birth control. It’s been a series of rational choices.
And as Ampersand pointed out a while back, girls and women living in poverty within particular cultures are also rational decision-makers.
I think the pathology model is mistaken. Poverty is a cause of high teen pregnancy rates, rather than vice-versa. And poor black teens aren’t pathological; they’re rational actors, who make the best choice they can given the opportunities they have. When high rates of some population – in this case, poor girls and especially poor Blacks – get pregnant, then chances are getting pregnant is a good choice for their circumstances. If we want less pregnancy among poor black teens, then we need to reorder society so that poor black teens face a better set of circumstances.
Birth control is only one part of that.
The LA Times article also points out that this isn’t a “teenage” problem — the majority of unintended pregnancies happen to women over the age of 20. And yet the majority of government and non-profit programs are aimed at teens.
In part, that’s because such programs tend to get tangled in ideological disputes. Though liberals urge more classes and cheaper birth control, some conservatives warn that expanded access will only encourage reckless behavior.
This spring in Missouri, for instance, state Rep. Susan Phillips shot down a proposal to subsidize birth control for low-income women. That would be like subsidizing promiscuity, she argued.
Phillips, a Republican, explained by e-mail: “It is my hope that reducing access to contraception for recreational users and those not prepared to parent will give them time to consider the consequences” of having sex.
That “sex has consequences” message is pushed on teens through TV shows, magazines, movies and schools; some experts say it’s time to extend that campaign to adults as well.
“People don’t worry about problems they don’t know exist,” said Sarah Brown, director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
So what do conservatives urge for adult women? Sure, the abstinence message plays well when they talk about preventing teenagers from being sexually active. But what about when we’re talking about people in their 20s, 30s and 40s? What do we tell them? The “Remain abstinent until marriage” line doesn’t have quite as much pull with a 30-year-old as it does with a 13-year-old; and it isn’t going to mean anything to the married person who doesn’t want any more kids, or kids at all.
The conservative message has been entirely reactionary and regressive on this topic (but then, what else is new?). Instead of giving people options, or presenting a solution, they simply offer, “Don’t have sex.” Liberals are a little better in their promotion of birth control and safer sex practices, but even that doesn’t get to the heart of a lot of the issues behind the unintended pregnancy rate. We need universal healthcare. We need every child in this country to have a seat in an effective, fairly-funded classroom, under the direction of a teacher who is appreciated, adequately compensated, and not over-loaded and over-worked. We need to support families of all different types and structures. We need to dispel the Horatio Alger myth of the American Dream, which is a cruel joke for kids growing up in so many places in this country — and we need to replace that myth by taking a serious look at our social institutions and heirarchies which keep the rich richer and the poor poorer, reinstating privilege while patting ourselves on the backs for our “hard work.”
And we need to do something about it.
Similar Posts:
- Women of Color More Likely to Have Unintended Pregnancies by Jill May 12, 2006
- How Texas Got Itself The Highest Teen Birthrate In The Country by Jill April 2, 2006
- Confessions of Choice by Jill June 29, 2006
- Stupid Abstinence-Only Site of the Day by Jill December 19, 2005
- Pricier contraceptives for college women by Jill March 23, 2007
Damn them edumacated librul wimmins. Don’t they know they’re defyin’ Gawd’s Will?
A disturbing corollary is the idea that intellectuals are slowly being bred out. There’s a scary thought as well.
I’ve seen this meme everywhere lately and it makes no sense. Talk to any handful of liberals and at least half of them will have grown up in conservative circumstances and decided to live in opposition to the values they were raised with “Grew up Catholic, parents were Republican, grandfather was racist…” all those circumstances can and do produce liberals.
Jill,
Why didn’t you highlight the below section of the story? Or provide your thoughts on it? I’d be interested in your thoughts.
California spends $124 on family planning for every woman in need, more than any other state except South Carolina and Alabama. The state’s Family PACT program offers teens and low-income couples easy access to free or affordable birth control. Yet California has one of the highest abortion rates in the country — the same rate as Nevada, which spends only $32 per woman in need, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Nebraska presents the opposite scenario. The Guttmacher Institute ranks it worst in the nation at helping poor women avoid unintended pregnancies. Yet Nebraska has one of the country’s lowest abortion rates.
What, by creating those consequences? That’s in essence what he’s doing—denying people contraception and otherwise causing them to not use it will make it about fifty times more likely that they suffer an unwanted pregnancy. Because apparently people don’t “deserve” to have sex unless they want baybeees. It’s an insulting and sickening exercise in control—Jackass A (that’s Philips) and his Jackass Cohorts deliberately create a danger so that they coerce people to behave a certain way in exchange for avoiding it. What was it terrorists do again?
Somebody ought to tell the moderate pro-lifers that the fringe feathers on their wing are destroying their credibility. Because I have just realized that the “pro-abortion” label they call us to demonize us may be in some cases both accurate and acceptable: people who are happy to repel (and destroy) uterine parasites sicced on people deliberately by the government, who use abortion as a means of preserving freedom that’s deliberately under attack on a personal level, are higher on the moral ladder, not lower, than the people who have so little concern for the LIFE they claim to so value that they use the unborn as pawns, deliberately putting millions of them at risk of being created where they aren’t wanted and are likely to be aborted, for punishing women for fucking without wanting babies. It is, of course, pro-abortion in the sense that universal healthcare is pro-life—not what they mean at all—but I think I’ll stop taking it as an insult. When they do things like this, what the hell do they expect?
I mean, really, if they have so little concern for their precious unborn, who are they to complain when we, and the women burdened with them, don’t have more?
Person A leaves something he knows Person B hates at Person B’s house, and Person B, upon finding it, throws it away. Whose fault is that? Duh. Person A should know better. You simply don’t put something valuable in someone else’s possession to annoy them, and expect them to keep it.
I refute their Dred Scott analogy, and raise them one Quartering of Soldiers in Peacetime Without Consent from the Bill of Rights. This is no “everybody pitch in to help children that already exist” thing, it’s “let’s arrange for the creation of unwanted children specifically so people will be burdened with them.” Like troops in peacetime, there is no point other than harassment. Thank Gods for abortion.
I’ve seen this meme everywhere lately and it makes no sense. Talk to any handful of liberals and at least half of them will have grown up in conservative circumstances and decided to live in opposition to the values they were raised with “Grew up Catholic, parents were Republican, grandfather was racist…” all those circumstances can and do produce liberals.
I grew up in a decidely conservative household. However, I didn’t become a liberal as a means of rebellion (no matter what my parents think!); I find that to be a trivialization of my beliefs and who I am. Which is not to say my upbringing didn’t have a profound affect on who I am.
Jivin’ J, Jill has explained this issue before.
Poor choice of words. I wasn’t trying to suggest rebellion, just living opposite of how you were raised, in counter to Freeman’s suggestion that if liberals don’t reproduce, there won’t be any. Personally, it wasn’t a rebellion for me. In fact, it was very hard to do what I believed was right while carrying all the baggage about what I was taught was right.
Great post, Jill.
I also just want to add that Kyra’s rant was the best I’ve heard in a long time. Love you, kyra!!!
Kristen,
I remember her erronously thinking California’s and New York’s high abortion rates had to do with out-of-state individuals traveling to those states for abortions – but when I pointed specifically to New York’s high abortion rate for residents (not including out-of-staters) of New York, I don’t recall getting a reply.
If I’m not mistaken the person in charge from the mid-1990s though 2001 was none other than William Jefferson Clinton. Can we really blame the conservatives for this? Was access to contaception restricted during this period? Am I missing something?
The president has very little to do with spending in these sorts of programs. The article targets mostly State Reps in more conservative locales.
Jivin J, those number don’t mean a damn thing unless we also include the rates of unwanted births.
*takes slow, sweeping bow* Thanks pmoney. Wasn’t sure if I’d adequately translated the glowing light bulb in my head into words. Conservatives boggle the mind.
What is not mentioned in your ‘stat’ is the number of women who decided or had to carry their pregnancy to term. The relationship to the availability of abortion also is not a factor considered in this ‘stat’ you provide.
Also, what is not mentioned here, but which I have seen repeatedly among low income and poor women is guilt. The right wing campaign since Reagan to demonize women who have abortions or even use some forms of contraception has made its mark. Many women see an abortion the route of extreme scorn among their social group and could potentially label them as ‘selfish’ or whores and sluts. Combined with seeing no other role for themselves than as mothers and girlfriends/wives, why be a slut/whore or called selfish?
Unlike the common middle class perception of lower income and poor peoples, most of them hold very socially conservative views. That they don’t act on all of them consistently (such as sex or childbirth after marriage only) has more to do with their willingness to accept the disruptions inherent in poverty to living the ideal life and the choices one often must make than a lack of ‘morals’ or values. For example: Man is in jail, can’t marry, need support, shack up soon with another man.
Also, lower class society tends toward more patriarchal (see religion as I said above) oriented and thus, men see making babies and many of them a mark of status among their peers.
A social system I see only created and aided and abetted by the Republican party and their theocratic friends.
Knifeghost,
They don’t mean a damn thing? Huh? Haven’t I been told over and over again by pro-choice organizations and bloggers that the real key to lowering the number of abortions is to promote and provide money for contraceptives?
Yet here’s a situation where the leading state with regards to contraception has a high abortion rate while a not-so leading state with regards to contraception has a low abortion rate.
Jivin: So then couldn’t one also infer that when women have the full choice of reproductive care available to them, abortion will at times be an option? Since it is apparent all over the country that when there is access there will be abortions, doesn’t the demand for this account for its importance? Or is what women want really unimportant?
Also, I see you ignored my post earlier about how the your information fails to make a proper comparison, since everyone knows that abortions nearly everywhere except in large metropolitan areas are difficult to attain.
Never mind also that more conservative states have even been fighting and i’m sure with some success, to shut down planned parenthood clinics that provide contraception and women’s health services at low cost?