In his inaugural address, Barack Obama said, “We will restore science to its rightful place.” Yet just a few weeks later the Stimulus Package was stripped of provisions to expand affordable family planning, “a betrayal of millions of low-income women” as Planned Parenthood termed it. Republicans successfully jettisoned the provisions on the claim that family planning would do little to stimulate the economy, though they provided no statistical or economical rationale for this, proving only that prejudice and the culture wars still take precedent over the evidence of statistical science.
Just a few weeks later and now a detailed study from the Guttmacher Institute is out clearly showing the economic and social benefits of family planning:
Publicly funded family planning prevents nearly 2 million unintended pregnancies and more than 800,000 abortions in the United States each year, saving billions of dollars, according to new research intended to counter conservative objections to expanding the program
…
Report co-author Rachel Benson Gold called the family planning program “smart government at its best,” asserting that every dollar spent on it saves taxpayers $4 in costs associated with unintended births to mothers eligible for Medicaid-funded natal care.
For a Republican block that is so focused on saving Americans their tax dollars, family planning seems to cohere extremely well with their notions of economic stimulus after all. Let’s hope that the Democrats don’t bow out so easily on their next fight: they claim that they will soon work toward a large increase in funding for Title X, the main federal family planning program.
Let’s also hope that such two-faced rhetoric as that of Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, who termed the attempt to include family planning in the stimulus package a “shameful population control program that targeted low-income families,” disappears from the debate. Providing access to family planning and contraception does not add up to coercion. Taking away this access for those who cannot otherwise afford it does.
Comments
Paul Raeburn — February 24, 2009
Kristen,
I agree completely about the importance of family planning, and I, too, was distressed when it was taken out of the stimulus package.
I would, however, point out that Guttmacher's figures on government savings do not suggest that family planning would stimulate job creation in the short term.
For one thing, one might guess that any effect of increasing use of family planning now would not have effects for nine months. (An oversimplification, I know, but I think there is a nugget of truth there.)
And a second thing: One might perversely argue that more unintended pregnancies would actually generate more jobs. More births means more jobs for nurses, doctors, and other health-care personnel; more jobs for diaper-makers, and for toy makers.
Again, I'm being a little silly here. The serious point is that taxpayer savings does not translate into economic stimulus. The argument has been quite the opposite: that taxpayer spending creates jobs.
I think it's reasonable to argue that family planning funds did not belong in the stimulus bill. But we all know that is not why conservatives demanded that they be removed.
Paul Raeburn
Fathers and Families blog.
gwp_admin — February 24, 2009
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your comment and for pointing out that the Guttmacher report itself didn't argue that family planning would stimulate job creation; it wasn't my intent to imply this, but only to note the economic good sense of family planning and use it as a springboard for larger issues.
Indeed, perhaps my overall frustration is that in my view, which clearly was not that of the Republicans nor many Democrats, there was no reason not to add in initiatives with long-range economic effects into the bill as well. Access to family planning would provide for greater economic stability for many impoverished families, who of course were already impoverished before the downturn. Perhaps perversely more pregnancies would provide for more jobs, yet at the end of nine months many mothers and families would still have an unexpected extra family member to support. I am very admittedly no economist, nor legislator, but there was no reason for this initiative to not go into the bill, except for Republicans' continued insistence on privileging religious beliefs over the social and economic reality of everyday lives.
Paul Raeburn — February 24, 2009
I couldn't agree more!