Abortion: Partial Reply to KingGeorgetheLesser

KGtL wrote a diary entry earlier today about how he thinks Democrats should push for the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

I thought about it...and there are circumstances that I might agree with him. However, those circumstances don't exist. In this diary, I'll talk about that and a few other things regarding abortion.

First of all, if I thought the 'right-to-life' movement was about abortion, I might be more inclined to agree with KingGeorge. However, it's not. Sure, some of it is. There are RTL people who are purely interested in abortion. But they're a minority, and they're not the wingnut heart of the movement.

Those people aren't about abortion--they're about sex, and specifically women and sex.

You'll never completely eliminate abortion, even if you illegalize it. But you want to cut it down considerably? That's easy. Here's what you do:

1. Comprehensive sex education, starting in middle school. Yes, abstinence will be discussed, but so will everything else. We need to talk about the sex drive in teenagers, acknowledge it exists, and talk about ways of dealing with it. And this should be mandatory--no notes from Mommy and Daddy to get out of it. If you can't get your kid out of algebra, you can't get them out of this.
2. Legalize RU-486
3. over-the-counter emergency contraception
4. mandate, by law, the coverage of contraception in all insurance plans
5. prohibit, by law, wingnut pharmacists from declining to dispense prescribed contraception

The first is the most important--and I'd want everything in that course. Discussions of peer pressure, and pressure from boyfriends. Discussions of how the media 'sells' sex. Discussions of the differences and complimentary nature of sex and romance. Birth control. Homosexuality. Alternate forms of non-vaginal-penetrative sex. (I plan to tell my daughters when they get older that oral sex is dynamite, but never give it to a guy who won't reciprocate :-)).

The others need to be pushed, too, though. I have a co-worker, 18 years old, who had an 'oops' this weekend and had to get emergency contraception yesterday morning. But, because she was raised in an open home--and because she works in a pharmacy :-)--she knew what it was and how to get it.

That's how you reduce abortion. Somehow, I can't see the right-to-life wingnuts signing on to this agenda. Because it's not about abortion. It's about controlling women's sex lives.

Oh, about that last one--as I said, I work in a pharmacy. I don't work in the 'pharmacy' part of the store, but I know the pharmacists. And the ones I work with are incensed at the wingnuts that won't dispense birth control. One of them, who's a woman, is really cool (she's who my friend talked to about the day-after pill) and we were discussing it. She said, "You know what? The next time some guy comes in with a sprained ankle with a prescription for Percocet, I'm going to refuse to dispense it. You don't need Percocet for a sprained ankle. Suck it up and take Tylenol. I wonder how that one would go over?" She's right. She says that these pharmacists that refuse to dispense birth control give the profession a bad name.

Anyhow, that's my two cents. Reducing abortions is possible--but it requires gasp discussing sex, and acknowledging that people actually have sex out of wedlock. See how the anti-choice people feel about that. We already know, though, don't we? "Abstinence-only" sex ed, my ass.