…And Abortions for Some?
UPDATE:
Well, those backward thinking, cult living, and overall whacky conservatives did it. They went ahead and overturned Roe V. Wade. And the democrats are so senseless they won’t even be able to pass another civil rights act with language protecting abortion, despite having control over the executive and legislative branch. So, the stats in this piece will likely get worse really fucking quick. So, if you need an abortion here’s how to obtain them:
https://www.abortionfinder.org/
https://www.shoutyourabortion.com
https://www.plancpills.org/guide-how-to-get-abortion-pills
I used to make a lot of jokes about the south. Being from the south, I especially felt haughty and elite by making the same poor taste jokes those damn liberal Yankees would make while living in Manhattan. It wasn’t productive then, and it sure as hell isn’t productive now.
With the overturning of Roe, it behooves you you look at those who would be the most affected by the inane Supreme Court ruling.* For instance, teen pregnancy rates per one thousand females aged 15 to 19 are highest in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana, with the numbers coming in at over 20 per thousand in that demographic. You’ll note that these are southern states,** but more germane is that they are red states. If anything, the actual Mason-Dixon line is a historical relic given the way the landscape of the country has changed in the postbellum period, but the ideological line persists considering a lot of the geographically southern places along with a handful of geographically northern states still act and legislate as if they’re live in the antebellum United States.***
Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi all have high poverty rates (15.6, 16, 16, 18.8, and 19.5 percent, respectively) to go along with the high percentage of teenage pregnancies. If you look at the rate of those in poverty below the age of 18, those percentages significantly increase in those five states.
Of these five states, would you care to guess which ones have decent sex education parameters? Alabama’s not among them since there’s not even a state law requiring they teach it in the first place.
Arkansas doesn’t have a requirement either, and unlike Alabama, they don’t have to talk about AIDS anywhere in the curriculum.
Kentucky is marginally better; sex education is a requirement. Yay. Never mind that they have to incorporate the bias towards abstinence, and the education doesn’t have to be medically accurate. But, yay.****
Louisiana doesn’t require sex education, but they do require health education that covers STIs and risky sexual behavior. Anywhere offering sex education, of course, has to emphasize abstinence, it doesn’t have to be comprehensive, and it doesn’t have to be medically accurate. Put that in your gumbo and eat it.
In a surprising turn of events, Mississippi does require sex education. However, it doesn’t need to be comprehensive; they have to stress abstinence, it doesn’t have to be medically accurate, and the school has to mention the anti-sodomy laws in the state law books. For the unaware, the legal definition of sodomy includes butt fucking, dick sucking, pussy eating, and animal fucking. So even if you’re heterosexual, a woman can’t use a strap-on dildo and legally fuck her husband in the ass.
So five states with high rates of poverty and teen pregnancy also manage to have a lot of Republican lawmakers and subpar sex education. I’m astonished at this staggering correlation that nobody in their right mind could’ve seen coming. Excuse me while I pick up my jaw from the floor before my dog tries to run away with it.
But what about the blue states?
In contrast, Vermont, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts have lower rates of teenage pregnancies per thousand women clocking in at under ten. The demographic is the same as above, females aged 15–19.
Not only that, but those same states have poverty rates of 10.1, 11.5, 13.1, 9.1, and 9.5, respectively. If you recall the five southern states I mentioned, these numbers are much lower than those states, as is the increase in those numbers of children in poverty (although of these five, New York has a pretty significant increase when looking at those demographics).
In addition to that, let’s look at how sex education differs. In New Jersey, sex education is a requirement, though it doesn’t need to be comprehensive. It also has to stress abstinence. One marked difference between New Jersey and the southern states I listed is that New Jersey has to include information on orientation, gender identity, and consent, and it has to be medically accurate.
In Oregon, it’s a requirement. Sex education also has to be medically accurate and it has to include information on orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and consent. Not only that, it must be comprehensive.
New York is a bit more complex; there’s no requirement for sex education to be taught beyond instruction regarding HIV/AIDS, and if it’s taught it doesn’t need to be comprehensive or talk about about gender identity or sexual orientation or gender expression. Beyond that, each district can choose whether or not to provide any additional information. Since 2011, New York City schools are required to teach sex education:
To address discrepancies within New York City (NYC) schools, the Sexuality Ed Alliance of New York City (SEANYC) formed over a decade ago to advocate for improved sex education curriculum in schools. A a result of their work, NYC schools have been required to teach sex education since 2011. While sexual health curriculum, required within the comprehensive health education course, is required to be medically accurate, age appropriate, and skills based, advocates from SEANYC and the Sex Ed Now New York Coalition note that sex education is often only taught for one semester.
Buffalo and Rochester also require comprehensive sex education. Those three cities comprise nearly half of the entire state population which is around 20 million people. For New York, it could be better but because NYC is so massively populated, that their district requirements are not bad.
In Massachusetts it’s not required, it has to explain the benefit of abstinence, and it doesn’t have to be comprehensive. Curriculum also doesn’t have to talk about consent, gender identity, gender expression, or orientation.
In Vermont, it’s required. It’s not required to be comprehensive, it has to talk about abstinence, and doesn’t have to include anything on orientation or gender identity or consent. But the curriculum does require instruction on sexual violence. They also don’t have a requirement for it to be medically accurate.
While the blue states aren’t monolithic in their requirements for sex education, the marked difference between these five stages and the five southern states lies in the access to resources. As an example, Mississippi has one Planned Parenthood center, Louisiana has two, Alabama has two, Arkansas has one, and Kentucky has two. Populations for these states are, in the millions, 2.9, 4.6, 5.0, 3.0, and 4.5.
In Oregon, there are 10 Planned Parenthood centers, Vermont has 11, New York has 50, Massachusetts has four, and New Jersey has 20. Populations in order, in millions are 4.2, .643, 20.2, 7.0, and 9.2 million.
Despite unpopular belief, Planned Parenthood is an excellent resource for sex education for everyone. Yes, they also do abortions.
Speaking of abortions, what are the rates of abortion in these ten states? Let’s see. Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kentucky–per 1000 women age 15–44 — are 6.3, 5.1, 5.5, 8.8, and 4.3, respectively.
In New York, Oregon, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, they are: 20.3, 10.5, 10.4, 13.3, and 13.2. Same demographics. The New Jersey footnote here states “[d]ata from hospitals and licensed ambulatory care facilities only; because reporting is not mandatory for private physicians and women’s centers, a complete count of abortions performed in New Jersey could not be obtained.”
These data also include abortions within a state obtained by people out of state. Now, this next part is my opinion. Those states with the larger abortion rates have access to it, for one thing. Look at the comparison of Planned Parenthood clinics and populations. Those stats are for legal abortions. It would stand to reason that if given the means, people would travel to a place with better access to care would go to those places in lieu of a full term pregnancy yielding them a child they don’t want, couldn’t afford, and might ravage their entire body. In the United States, we also have the highest maternal mortality rate clocking in at 26.4 deaths per 100,000 live births. (That part is a fact).
I’m also not surprised that in those red states with low abortion and paltry sex education that the poverty rates are so goddamn high. It’s almost as if poverty begets poverty.
Does education matter? (Yes)
Where do these states rank in terms of education? According to this source, where you can find their methodology and criteria, Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi rank 45th, 46th, 47th, 48th, and 49th. That’s from best to worst, mind you. Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, New York, and Oregon rank first, fifth, sixth, 13th, and 14th. Now, sure, they have a methodology and even some expert interviews, but even among those expert interviews they talk about how it’s difficult to qualify what constitutes a good education.
Ideologically, one person’s idea of a good education might be different from another person’s idea of a good education. Some would argue that a quality education would teach you life skills, like paying taxes, or whatever the memes drone on about. (I can’t speak to everyone, but I did learn about how interest works and how to write checks when I was in elementary school). Others would say college prep and cognitive development matters the most. I think there might be bipartisan agreement that hammering the importance of standardized testing likely isn’t the best use of anyone’s time or money. All that notwithstanding, here we can see a correlation between decent sex education, general education, poverty rates, and abortion rates. The more educated states have generally better sex education, more access to abortions, more abortions in general, and less poverty. The least educated states have less access to abortions, fewer abortions, and higher poverty rates.
The Philosophy
When, then, does life begin? Is a fetus alive? Sure. Is it a person? Probably not, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is. The fundamental difference between those of us reading this and a fetus is that I don’t run the risk of ravaging someone else’s body by my mere existence and I’m not, in the literal sense, any longer attached to a host. That being said, if a fetus is life, so what? It’s still not autonomous by a long shot. You might even say “by that logic, an infant isn’t autonomous, either.” And you’d be right, partially. But this doesn’t preclude the idea that there are degrees of autonomy. Sure, a toddler might want to play in traffic. They have the limited capacity to think it might be a good idea. The parent(s), however, having more autonomy and an ability for understanding consequences can override the child and not let it out to play in traffic. But yeah, let the carrier choose the solution. And don’t inhibit access to those solutions. Especially since places like Planned Parenthood do far more than abortion procedures.
Last, you might be thinking about state’s rights. Sure, geographically some states should have different legislation than others because one state’s resources are different from another state’s. That makes sense. But then, there’s the power of rhetoric. Rhetoric is using words for persuasion, and it uses a (hopefully) deft mix of logic and emotional hooks. More ideal, the logic will be as sound as possible and the emotional themes will be a lovely receipt on top of that. Depending on the circumstances, one might need more emphasis than the other and that distinction depends on the audience. Everyone uses rhetoric. Politicians do. The artist formerly known as Saul of Tarsus (currently known as St. Paul the apostle) used rhetoric to help bring the teachings of Jesus out of sectarian Jewish obscurity and spread it among the gentiles. Martin and Malcolm used rhetoric to appeal to their followers in the civil rights fight in the 60s.
Specific communities of people also have their own rhetoric that they know about. This could range from reclaiming words, like the followers of Jesus did to the term “Nazoreans” which was a pejorative outside the community, or the way in which the LGBTQ community reclaimed “queer” from a once pejorative connotation. It also includes coded language. In discourse in the US, it’s frowned upon to use racist and homophobic epithets to refer to people among those communities. When addressing someone then, to circumvent the overt bigotry, you could fool a lot of people with a big wink and nod to the virulent racists of your constituency by referring to black men as “thugs” and predominantly black parts of town as “urban.” The denotations of these words are innocuous; a thug is a criminal. But language evolves such that certain words gain a different connotation over time and for certain people. So, for example, if a politician wanted to let their constituents know they’re “safe” they might say they’ll take a stand against “urban thugs.” To that point, the authors of “Thug Kitchen” seemed like black people reclaiming the word “thug” until the revelation that they were a couple of white vegan hipsters (< — coded language, right there, since the term conjures up effete white people who like to appropriate things) came to light as they appropriated AAVE for their vegan cookbooks.
The same goes for “state’s rights.” Yes, the civil war was a battle for state’s rights. The state’s rights to engage in slavery, of course. In almost every instance I can think of, the rights of the states come at the expense of other people as opposed to the benefit of the people. The state’s rights to legislate abortion is an argument that comes up in a lot of those red states, including the five named repeatedly here. So, if you’re in those states, and you support it, that is a win for you. In New York and Washington state, abortion is protected by law under the guise of state’s rights as well, which is one instance where the proponents of state’s rights “lose” even though it necessarily doesn’t affect their own state. But they’ve already fucked their own people, so it’s a moot point. These distracting arguments also are misaligned with the will of the citizenry, since a scant 19% of people think it should be completely illegal.
So I’d like to invite you to think long and hard about who you support, why you support them, and what you support about them. Sure, you have the right to be a single issue voter. In my opinion, you also have the responsibility to be better than that. Is it hard? Yes. Does it require significant amounts of reading, understanding, digesting, and thinking? Yes, it does. But it’s worth doing as a citizen and for our posterity. It even says it in the constitution. “In order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility…” and all that stuff. Knowing ourselves that perfection doesn’t exist, the framers of the constitution even knew it wasn’t a one and done deal. Ergo, amendments exist. Sure, abortion wasn’t listed in the constitution nor are any other medical procedures. Then again, neither was booze, and they made a whole amendment to prohibit it and then an entire amendment to retract that precious prohibitive amendment (amendments 18 and 21).
Just some things to think about while nine old people with an archaic conservative majority deliberate over roughly half our nation’s autonomy.
*Yes, I know it’s a draft opinion and is subject to change; that subject to change isn’t a guarantee of change nor does it reflect positively that a group of nine old fucks get to decide this sort of thing. Pretend I included every other caveat that I needed to in this footnote because I know some “pro life” fuck stick will make a weak argument about something else that doesn’t logically fit the criteria for a valid argument as it pertains to abortion, specifically.
**If you ask a Floridian if Florida is The South™ you’ll get different answers depending on where and who you speak to. If you ask someone in the panhandle, they might say “yes.” Ask someone in Miami, they may say it’s not the south. But geographically it’s the south, and it is a red state, if it isn’t culturally and symbolically The South™
***The north and south sucked, but some northern states sucked decidedly less than others and some sucked way more. If you’ve ever wondered why Missouri is technically above the Mason -Dixon line but fought for the south, see the preceding sentence.
****When I worked at KFC at age 16, I discovered that dehydrated and ground fetus flakes are what give that original recipe chicken the flavor we know and love.†
†That whole footnote is an attempt at humor, and entirely untrue. If I had to guess, the flavoring of original recipe chicken is a mod of salt and MSG. When cooking the chicken we literally dumped a big fucking packet of salt into the flour along with the other herbs and spices.
