Yoga training class, making its way through the list of five yamas, precepts for ethical behavior, dwelt for a time on the concept of bramacarya, responsible behavior in the realm of sexuality. A multi-dimensional concept, stretching from the most interior realms of the individual to the broadest of implications for societies.
At the same time we were considering the topic via class discussions and homework writings, the nation as a whole was grappling with political struggles re federal funding of the non-profit organization Planned Parenthood.
Two separate issues? I've decided not.
Laying out the pieces of the puzzle
1 The primary role of Planned Parenthood is to provide access to reproductive health care services.
The overwhelming majority of Planned Parenthood's services involve screening for and treating sexually transmitted diseases and infections, as well as providing contraception ... [M]any of Planned Parenthood's patients are ... lower-income. As of 2012, 79 percent of people receiving services from Planned Parenthood lived at 150 percent of the federal poverty level or lower (that comes out to around $18,500 for a single adult), according to a March Government Accountability Office report. (Political News from NPR, 8/5/15)
2 Some object to the fact that Planned Parenthood's services include abortion.
3 percent of the services it provided last year were abortion-related. (Political News from NPR, 8/5/15)
3 In opposing abortion, some are opposing family planning and birth control services as well.
Re Charmaine Yoest, President and CEO of Americans United for Life: "For all her emphasis on women’s health, her end goal isn’t to make abortion safer. She wants to make the procedure illegal. She leaves no room for exceptions in the case of rape or incest or to preserve the health of the mother. She believes that embryos have legal rights and opposes birth control, like the IUD, that she thinks 'has life-ending properties.'
"Nor does Yoest advocate for reducing abortion by increasing access to birth control. When I asked what she thought about a study, published in October, which found a 60 to 80 percent drop in the abortion rate, compared with the national average, among women in St. Louis who received free birth control for three years, she said, 'I don’t want to frustrate you, but I’m not going to go there.' She referred me to a critique of the study’s methodology in National Review. 'It’s really a red herring that the abortion lobby likes to bring up by conflating abortion and birth control,' she said when pressed on PBS last year. 'Because that would be, frankly, carrying water for the other side to allow them to redefine the issue in that way.' (New York Times, 11/4/12)
4 But doesn't offering birth control cut the numbers of abortions? Yes. This common-sense notion is supported by statistical study.
"Free birth control led to greatly lower rates of abortions and births to teenagers, a large study concludes, offering strong evidence for how a bitterly contested Obama administration policy could benefit women’s health. The two-year project tracked more than 9,000 women in St. Louis, many of them poor or uninsured, who were given their choice of a range of free contraceptives. These women experienced far fewer unintended pregnancies as a result, reported Dr. Jeffrey Peipert of Washington University in St. Louis in a study published Thursday.
"There were 6.3 births per 1,000 teenagers in the study, compared with a national rate of 34 births per 1,000 teens in 2010. There also were substantially lower rates of abortion, when compared with women in the metro area and nationally: 4.4 to 7.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the study, compared with 13.4 to 17 abortions per 1,000 women in the St. Louis region, Dr. Peipert calculated. The national rate is almost 20 abortions per 1,000 women. Women’s health specialists said the study foreshadows the potential impact of the new health care law, in which millions of women are beginning to get contraceptives without a co-payment." (New York Times, 10/4/12)
5 So what is at the heart of opposing family planning services offered at Planned Parenthood? I can only conclude that some of us, possibly religious persons especially, really want to monitor sexual behavior of others of us, because disagreement about what constitutes responsible behavior apparently makes some of us very nervous.
Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber of Denver, Colorado, has some pointed words on the subject. "I don't monitor people's behavior, let's put it that way. So much of Christianity has become about monitoring behavior, and so far it has just failed to work as a strategy for making people better. For instance, we're in the middle of this Ashley Madison scandal with all of these clergy, so on some level Christianity became about monitoring people's behavior, like a sin-management program, and that almost always fails and often backfires. I would actually argue that conservative Christianity's obsession with controlling sexuality — I mean absolute obsession with it — has in fact created more unhealthy sexual behavior than it has ever prevented. I really believe that." (Washington Post 11/3/13)
6 Planned Parenthood offers services to all, married and unmarried. When people access the services at Planned Parenthood, it becomes impossible to control their sexual behavior.
Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins told conservative activists last week that the real goal is to “take out Planned Parenthood.”
In a speech to Eagle Council 2015, the annual conference held by Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, Hawkins ... claimed that Planned Parenthood only supports sexual education and birth control in order to convince young women to have premarital sex, causing them to go to Planned Parenthood to spend money on STD tests and treatment and, eventually, abortions.
“She’s going to start this cycle of bad decisions,” she said.
(Right Wing Watch, 9/15/15)
7 In order to undercut Planned Parenthood, therefore, some in Congress want to cut all federal funding for the organization.
Planned Parenthood received ... $528 million [in federal funding] last year, according to Planned Parenthood's latest annual report. That totals more than 40 percent of Planned Parenthood's total $1.3 billion in revenue for the year, which suggests that the organization would be in some heavy financial trouble without that public funding.
Title X does not allow federal funds to be used for abortions. Medicaid, however, does allow [state] government money to be spent on them — in very restricted cases. (Political News from NPR, 8/5/15)
8 And some are so adamant that they would shut down the federal government if they do not get their way.
The House passed two abortion-related bills Friday, including one that would strip federal health-care funding from Planned Parenthood for one year, but it remains unclear whether the votes would appease conservatives who have threatened a government shutdown over the organization. (Washington Post, 9/18/15)
9 How much did the government shutdown cost last time?
The government shutdown [of 2013] has taken at least $24 billion out of the United States economy, [according to] the financial ratings agency Standard & Poor's. (Huffington Post, 10/16/13)
Putting the above nine puzzle pieces together, we arrive at the title of this post: Sex can be scary -- $24 billion scary. We'll stay tuned . . .
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