This morning, my local NPR affiliate ran a program on cuts to funding of Planned Parenthood in the state of Texas. Like many states blessed with conservative majorities in the state legislature, Texas passed a law cutting funding for Planned Parenthood. As I was listening to this news item, I was remembering the recent Republican Presidential debate, in which Texas governor and presidential aspirant Rick Perry proudly pointed out that he had personally presided over 234 executions in his state during his term as governor, to the cheers of the conservative audience.
It seems intuitively obvious to me that there is a link between the level of health care and family planning services available for women and state executions. I see this link as follows:
Cuts in Planned Parenthood funding → greater unplanned pregnancies → more teen and unplanned births → more families in poverty → more crime → more death penalties → more executions → greater state expenditures for assistance to children in poverty, police work, prisons, and the criminal justice system.
In this article, I will try and detail how this link works. A lot of this is geeky facts and statistics which I enjoy reading, but if you do not, you can skip right to the conclusions. I would also be interested in hearing from any reader who can help me fill in with some supporting data on my hypothetical association between family size and poverty, unintended pregnancies and poverty, poverty and crime rates, and poverty and state executions. Thanks for reading.
Texas cuts funding to Planned Parenthood
The Texas legislature passed SB7 in June, 2001, cutting funding to state Planned Parenthood clinics. The law was designed to revoke taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood in the state of Texas. The bill cuts $34 million in funding allocated for Planned Parenthood over the next two years. The bill also blocks state tax funds from being used for elective abortions in state hospital districts. A third provision of the bill give the state power to regulate (there's that word again) autologous stem cell banks. The funding cuts to Planned Parenthood went into effect this Sept 1.
(http://www.theaccent.org/...)
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...)
(http://www.npr.org/...)
(http://www.thebatt.com/...)
Planned Parenthood
According to Planned Parenthood's website, the organization performed nearly 1 million cervical cancer screenings, more than 800,000 breast exams and 4 million sexually transmitted disease tests and treatments. According to the site, abortions constitute only 3 percent of the organization's combined services, and the organization performed approximately 330,000 abortions last year. Planned Parenthood claims that one in five American women use their services at least once during their lives.
(http://www.plannedparenthood.org/)
(http://www.plannedparenthood.org/...)
Texas Family Planning
A survey in Texas showed that only 48% of all the state's residents have private health insurance, and more that 25% of the state's residents have no health care insurance whatsoever.
(http://www.npr.org/...)
Part of the mission of Planned Parenthood is providing health care services to women who have no other access to healthcare. In Texas, Planned Parenthood provides basic health care and family planning services to roughly half of the 120,000 low-income Texas women who obtain their healthcare through the state's Woman's Health Programs
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...)
Planned Parenthood runs 71 clinics in the state of Texas. They all receive state funding. They provide basic health care, preventative care, cancer screening, and birth control to low-income Texas women who have no other health provider. The state estimate that cuts to funding for Planned Parenthood will result in 300,000 women losing access to family planning services, and an increase in 20,000 additional unplanned births. Texas already spends roughly $1.3 billion every year on teen pregnancy.
(http://www.npr.org/...)
Poverty and Pregnancy
Since about 1994, about 5% of American women have an unintended pregnancy during a calendar year, so the rate at which unintended pregnancies occur in the US has been steady over the past decade and a half. However, for women in poverty, the rate of unintended pregnancies has been increasing. In 1994, for women aged 15-44 with incomes below the federal poverty level, 88 per 1000 women experienced an unintended pregnancy. In 2001, the unintended pregnancy rate for women in poverty rose to 102 per 1,000. A the same time, the rate of unintended pregnancies among women aged 15-44 earning 200% of the poverty level went from 34 per 1,000 in 1994 to 28 per 1,000 in 2001. The study showed that poor women have higher rates of unintended pregnancies even when the factors of race, class, marital status, and age are held constant. The same study cited statistics that showed 43% of unintended pregnancies result in abortion
Finer LB, Zolna MR. Unintended pregnancies in the United States: Incidence and disparities. Contraception. 2011; published online Aug., 2011 (http://www.guttmacher.org/...)
In another study of the costs of unintended pregnancies, Texas was identified as paying for 74% of the costs of births resulting from unintended pregnancies, spending $1.2 billion of tax-payers' money in 2006 to pay for the costs of unintended pregnancies. The authors of the study wrote: "In Texas, 1 in 2 births are paid for by Medicaid at an average of $9,000 per birth. Compare that with a full well-woman exam including pap smear, breast exam, STI testing and a full year of contraception for under $200." The authors go on to say: “At a time when policymakers everywhere are looking for ways to cut costs under Medicaid, these findings point clearly to a way to achieve that goal by expanding access to health care, not cutting it....Investing in publicly funded family planning to help women avoid unintended pregnancy has a proven track record: In the absence of the services provided at publicly funded family planning centers, the costs of unintended pregnancy would be 60% higher than they are today.”
(Sonfeld A, Kost K, Gold RB, Finer LB. The public cost of births resulting from unintended pregnancies. Per Sex Reproduc Health. 2011; 43(2):94-102)
Executions in Texas
Texas has more executions that any other state. Almost every year, Texas executes more prisoners than any other state. In 2010, 17 inmates were put to death in Texas, more than twice as many as its nearest competitor (Ohio executed 8 inmates in 2010). Texas leads the nation in executing 474 prisoners since the federal reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, surpassing the next most deadly state Virginia with 109 executions in this same period. Rick Perry has personally presided over roughly half of that total number of executions (234 executions to date) during his term as governor of Texas.
(http://www.antideathpenalty.org/...)
Poverty and Executions
Poor persons are more likely to be found guilty of a crime than a similarly charge wealthy person. This is in part due to the fact that poorer persons are less likely to be able to post bail, and are more likely to be defended by a public defender. A defendant that is unable to post bail will be unable to substantially assist in their own defense. Public defenders typically have larger case loads and are salaried employees and therefore have little incentive to spend large amounts of time on research, motions, and trial preparations.
(Johnson JL, Johnson CF. Poverty and the death penalty. J. Economic.Issues. 2001; 35(2):517-523)
(Chiricos TD, Jackson PD, Waldo GP. Inequality in the imposition of a criminal label. Social Problems. 1992; 19:553-572)
Legal scholars point to economic factors that disproportionately result in death penalties imposed on poorer defendants. An important factor is the amount of money available to mount a defense: poor people in a capital case are more likely to make use of a public defender, who receives less compensation and has fewer resources to mount a defense. Public defenders in some counties in Texas are allowed $800 in total compensation for a capital case.. The supreme court in the state of Louisiana recently ruled that the excessive case loads and lack of financial resources available to public defenders amounted to a failure on the part of the state of Louisiana to “provide the effective assistance of counsel the constitution requires
(Johnson JL, Johnson CF. Poverty and the death penalty. J. Economic.Issues. 2001; 35(2):517-523)
(State vs. Peart, 621 So. 2d 780, 784 (La. 1993))
Prosecutors are more likely to seek the death penalty in cases involving an indigent defendant than a wealthier defendant
(Johnson JL, Johnson CF. Poverty and the death penalty. J. Economic.Issues. 2001; 35(2):517-523)
It is generally well accepted that the race of the defendant plays a causative role in the decision to seek a death penalty. It is also well accepted that in America, blacks and hispanics are in general less wealthy than whites. Poor people accused of crimes are accorded an unequal second-class status.
(Baldus D, Pulaski C, Woodworth GG. Equal justice and the death penalty: A legal and empirical analysis. Boston, Northeastern University Press, 1990.)
(The United States General Accounting Office. Death penalty sentencing: Research indicates pattern of racial disparities. GAO/GDD-90-57, 26 Feb., 1990; reprinted 1997 )
So What Have We Learned?
Texas has passed legislation that will defund Planned Parenthood in that state. The burden of these cuts in services will fall mostly on low-income women. A likely outcome in the loss of these services are greater numbers of unintended pregnancies, greater numbers of abortions, and greater numbers of children raised in poverty. Because poor people are more likely to be convicted of crime and more likely to receive a death penalty in a capital case compared to more well-off defendant, we are likely to see more incarceration and more executions in Texas.
So the intended actions of “pro-life” activists are likely to be MORE abortions, and MORE executions. Of course, “pro-life” activists are only concerned with the life and well-being of humans before they are born. Reducing poverty, misery, crime, and deaths for individuals after they are born is not part of their mission. If that was not bad enough, these measures cannot be justified on the basis of cost-cutting and balancing budget deficits. We have seen how cuts to Planned Parenthood in Texas and elsewhere are likely to INCREASE state expenditures on Medicaid, police work, and prisons..