I’ve seen too many Democrats arguing “I will not vote for Clinton/Obama in the general election, because I don’t like the way Clinton/Obama supporters are acting, because I’ve come to hate Clinton/Obama, because Clinton/Obama is running a sexist/racist campaign,” etc etc.

It is not the case that one candidate is being supported by dastardly people while the other candidate’s supporters have never acted with anything but kindness and decency. If you (”you” meaning either Clinton supporters or Obama supporters) can’t see that both campaigns and their supporters have at times acted badly, then with all due respect, you’ve lost perspective.

But that’s not nearly as bad a loss of perspective as that of a Democrat or liberal who would support Clinton in the primary but not Obama in the general, or vice-versa. Many of Obama’s supporters have been sexist, and many of Clinton’s supporters have been racist. But McCain’s supporters are worse. Much more importantly, McCain’s actions in office would be worse for women of all races and for people of color of all sexes.

To pick just one example, consider the UN Population Fund, usually referred to as UNFPA, which funds reproductive health care in many countries that no one else in the world is providing the same care in. You can read more about the UNFPA on this post on my blog. It is virtually certain that either President Clinton or President Obama would restore UNFPA funding, and that President McCain would not.

Reproductive health care saves lives, especially in the developing world. A lot of people in wealthy countries have forgotten that childbirth used to be very dangerous, and still is in some places in the world. (For that matter, it’s still quite dangerous for women of color here in the USA). There are also thousands more women who will live without access to care, but who will suffer from horrible, treatable conditions like fistula, and whose lives would be improved if increased UNFPA funding means they get more health care.

My argument is that refunding UNFPA is a zillion times more important than how Clinton supporters are mistreated by Obama supporters on Kos, or vice-versa on Taylor Marsh. It’s even more important than sexist garbage spouted by Jessie Jackson Jr. in support of Obama, or racist garbage spouted by Ferraro in support of Clinton.

And UNFPA is just one example. I could make a similar argument for judicial appointments, for the EPA, for FEMA, for labor rights, and for a hundred other issues, many of which don’t get much play on blogs. On all these issues, Obama and Clinton are flawed, but McCain would be far, far worse. And given the overall racist and sexist bias of our society, the harms of a McCain presidency wouldn’t be gender-and-race neutral. I don’t see any anti-racist or feminist advantage in refusing to vote against McCain.

Clinton and Obama are both too right-wing for my preferences. Nonetheless, they’re both incredibly smart, and they’d both be better presidents than McCain. I greatly respect many supporters on both sides. I also respect some of those who can’t support any Democrat at all, like my friends in the Socialist and Green parties.

But I can’t respect any Democrat who’d support Clinton or Obama in the primaries, but not vote against McCain in the general election. To me, that’s the ultimate example of having taken ones eyes off the prize.

EDITED TO ADD:

Shorter Ampersand: Whichever candidate you’re supporting in the primary, I want you to know I’m prepared to support the other candidate and hate you bitterly and without reservation for not agreeing with me, you traitor.

(A lot of this post was rewritten from my comments on Tom Watson’s blog.

(Comments from Democrats, progressives, leftists and liberals only please.)

I’ve blogged a few times about the UNFPA — the UN Population Fund - over the years. To review: The UN Population fund doesn’t fund or provide abortions. But they do save thousands of women’s lives, and tens of thousands of newborn lives, each year by providing medical care for women in 140 of the world’s poorest countries. They’ve also been more effective at improving reproductive choice of all kinds for Chinese women, than any other western agency.

But they also provide birth control (which prevents thousands of abortions). In the eyes of the Population Research Institute (PRI), a radical “pro-life” anti-birth control group, this makes UNFPA evil. So the PRI falsely accused the UNFPA of supporting coercive abortions in China. No subsequent investigators — not even the one sent by the Bush administration’s state department, nor the one that was led by a pro-life British politician — found the PRI’s accusations credible. (More details about that in this post).

Nonetheless, based on the PRI’s false accusations, the Bush administration has withheld the US’s contribution to the UNFPA for the past five years — $34 million a year, about 13% of the UNFPA’s annual budget. The UNFPA estimates that “$34 million applied to family planning programmes could prevent some 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths annually worldwide.”

I’m posting about this now is to point out that there’s a chance that the UNFPA’s funding will be restored in 2007, thanks to the Democrats taking Congress.

In 2005, a bill sponsored by Congresswoman Carolyn Mahoney (D - NY) and others would have restored US funding to the UNFPA, but failed 233-192. (A similar measure passed the Senate). Looking though the list of “no” votes, I count 20 Republicans who lost their seats to Democrats in the November elections, and also three Democrats won open seats. In addition, six Republicans who voted in favor of UNFPA lost their seats to Democrats.

If all these new Democrats vote in favor of UNFPA in 2007, then funding for UNFPA should pass in 2007, by 225 to 203. That’s a big enough margin to survive even if there are a handful of anti-UNFPA voters among those new votes.¹

Even if a funding restoration bill passes, Bush could veto — this is an issue that pro-life groups care a lot about. But there will also be pressures on Bush, and on the Republicans, to move away from the extremism that contributed to their loss in the 2006 elections. There is, at least, reason to hope UNFPA’s US funding will be restored next year.

You read more about the Republican ban on money to help poor women and infants by reading the “Alas” UNFPA posts archive; or by reading posts at Miss Pen Name, Republic of T, Population Matters, Peace, Love, Pancakes, and others; or by browsing through the documents and links about UNFPA on Congresswoman Mahoney’s website.

1. In 2005, 95% of Democrats in the House voted in favor of restoring funding to UNFPA. (back)

Over at The Inkwell, the IWF’s blog, one of the Charlottes explains why feminists oppose Ellen Sauerbrey, Bush’s nominee for “Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration at the United Nations”:

[She] supports the Bush administration’s withholding $34 million from the U.N. Population Fund because the agency has made financial contributions to China’s policy of forced-abortions to limit family size.

The IWF has no position on abortion…but I’m going out on a limb and say that many of us would agree that forced abortion is wrong.

Charlotte misstates the issue. Everyone, liberal and conservative alike, agrees that forced abortion is wrong. And everyone agrees that it would be wrong for UNFPA (the UN Population fund) to support forced abortion. There’s no controversy there.

The controversy is over whether or not the accusations against UNFPA are true. Every Western agency that has sent investigators to China to try to verify the accusations (made by an ultra-right-wing, anti-birth-control group) has come away convinced the accusations are untrue - including a group sent by Bush’s own state department. Furthermore, virtually all the investigators came away convinced that UNFPA was doing a lot to help the women of China - not by giving them forced abortions, but by giving them more choices.

For instance, the UK investigators, headed by Edward Leigh, a pro-life MP who has frequently criticized UNFPA, wrote:

The UK MP delegation was convinced that the UNFPA programme is a force for good, in moving China away from abuses such as forced-family planning, sterilisation and abortions…. It is vitally important that the UNFPA remains actively involved in China, with continued financial support from the UK and other Western Governments.

We all want less abusive practices in China. But the one western agency which is effectively working in China to change abusive practices is UNFPA, and defunding them is a step in the wrong direction. That’s why feminists who care about helping women in China - and in hundreds of other countries where UNFPA operates, providing essential help and medical care - are right to oppose Ellen Sauerbrey’s nomination.

For a detailed discussion of how paltry the evidence against UNFPA is - and how group after group, from all over the idealogical spectrum, has found the charges against UNFPA baseless - see this earlier post.

This post was removed by request of the author.

This was forwarded from an email list. It’s now moot - the action it called for ended at noon EST - so I’m hiding most of the entry.
Read the rest of this entry »

According to this Planned Parenthood release from Friday:

I haven’t been able to find any news reports on this (frustrating, frustrating!), although I’ll try again on Monday. So I don’t know if this is a real victory, or just a symbolic victory that will be written out of the appropriations bill when the House and Senate bills are reconciled. (I suspect the latter, unfortunately, but I don’t know for sure.)

The Planned Parenthood article gives some idea of the destruction Bush’s policies have created:

Link via Tapped.

A whlle ago, Sara at Diotima asked:

I have looked at a lot of the literature out there on the UNFPA and whether or not it supported coerced abortions in China, and I’m just not sure it’s as conclusive as Ampersand does (for example, I’m not sure why you’d decide to dismiss the Population Research Institute’s report as just pushing an anti-woman agenda but accept the Catholics for Choice report as objective, unless you’ve got an agenda yourself).

At the time, I don’t think I gave Sara a very satisfactory answer, so I’m going to try again. (My timing is unfortunate, since Sara is currently on vacation, but perhaps she’ll see it when she returns).

First off, what is the issue and why does it matter? The issue is that George Bush, responding to lobbying from US pro-life groups, decided in 2002 to withhold money Congress had authorized for the UN Population Fund. The contribution, $34 million dollars, is a tiny portion of the US federal budget, but over 10% of the UN Population Fund’s budget.

Why does that matter? Well, according to the UN Population Fund, “$34 million applied to family planning programmes could prevent some 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths annually worldwide.”

From an article in Salon:

The result of Bush’s freeze has been a reduction in medical services to women worldwide. According to the UNFPA, in Bangladesh, where 67 percent of pregnant women receive no medical care, programs to train doctors to deal with pregnancy complications will be put on hold. In Vietnam, according to UNFPA field worker Tran Thi Van, a program to train 4,000 health workers in reproductive issues and to provide medical equipment and drugs to 500 remote clinics is in jeopardy. In Kenya, where the UNFPA has been working with the Catholic Church to prevent teenagers from getting AIDS, the church’s request to expand the program will probably have to be rejected. Overall, UNFPA’s funding shortfall is $52 million, because some other countries failed to meet their contribution targets due to financial constraints. The agency estimates that the lack of resources will result in 3 million unwanted pregnancies, 7,140 maternal deaths and, ironically, 1,215,000 abortions.

Nicholas Kristof suggested what some of the consequences of Bush’s funding freeze could be in an April 26 New York Times column about Aisha Idris, a young Sudanese woman with fistula, a condition in which a woman’s rectum, urethra and vagina are torn during childbirth, “leaving her incontinent and causing bodily wastes to seep through her vaginal canal and down her legs.” The UNFPA, he wrote, “supports precisely the kind of third-world maternal health care programs that can save women’s lives in childbirth and avoid medical complications like fistula. Yet the White House for now is crippling the fund by withholding the 13 percent of its budget that the United States provides.”

A bit more background: What is the UN Population Fund? The UN Population Fund, or UNFPA (I know the initials don’t match - years ago, they changed their name but not their abbreviation) is a UN agency which provides assistance to about 140 poor countries around the world - many more countries than any similar aid agency goes to. According to the UNFPA’s operating rules, the UNFPA does not encourage or fund abortion, anyplace in the world.

The funding controversy centers on UNFPA’s program in China. The UNFPA program is an attempt to move China from its infamous coercive population-reduction practices to a voluntary model, in which women are empowered to control their own reproduction through education, contraception, and good prenatal care.

Finally, it’s important to know that US funds donated to UNFPA do not fund UNFPA’s China program. Instead, US funds go to a earmarked UNFPA bank account; the money from this account is never mixed with other UNFPA accounts, and cannot be spent on any program in China.

The Case Against UNFPA

In 2002, one pro-life organization - the Population Research Institute, or PRI - claimed that the UNFPA was supporting forced abortions in China. (The PRI is an extremist group - they oppose not only abortion, but all family planning programs.)

In their sworn testimony before Congress on February 27, 2002, and in their official report of their findings in China (both of which are available here), PRI made three claims against UNPFA:

1. That coercive family planning programs, including forced abortions, are taking place in the areas of China in which UNFPA operates, despite UNFPA’s claim that coercive practices no longer exist in those areas of China. To prove this claim, PRI provided translations of anonymous interviews a PRI researcher had conducted in Sihui, China.

2. These abuses were, according to PRI, carried out by the Chinese Office of Family Planning. To prove that UNFPA is aware of and complicit in these abuses, PRI provided dramatic video and photographic evidence showing that a UNFPA employee shares office space with the Office of Family Planning. From testimony by PRI researcher Josephine Guy:
   

   …Within the Office of Family Planning, family planning officials showed us the location of the UNFPA desk. We were told that a UNFPA representative works with, in and through the Sihui Office of Family Planning. We photographed the UNFPA office desk–and you can see over here on the podium–which faces, in fact touches, a desk of the Chinese Office of Family Planning.

   As far as I know, images of this desk are the only evidence PRI has presented linking UNFPA to the alleged abuses.

3. That when the UNFPA sent a fact-finding team to investigate PRI’s charges, all interviews were conducted with Chinese officials present, preventing Chinese civilians from freely testifying about Chinese government abuses. (I’ve seen pro-lifers make this claim about all the other investigations, actually).

In response, UNFPA has said:

1. UNFPA does not promise that no abuses ever happen anywhere they operate. According to the UNFPA employee in charge of the China program, “In a population of 20 million, I cannot promise that nothing bad happens. I can promise that, certainly, we’re not involved.” (Quoted by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, September 22, 2002). They do claim that their program has led to significant improvements in the 32 counties in which they operate.

2. There is no UNFPA desk in Sihui City.
3. According to UNFPA’s investigative team leader, Nicolaas Biegman, UNFPA’s investigators “interviewed Chinese citizens at random–on the street, in family planning and mother and child health clinics, in villages–using two independent interpreters and without any Chinese government officials present.”

What other investigations have found.

1. The US Department of State’s year 1999 report on Human Rights in China - issued before PRI’s report - had this to say about UNFPA:

   Although it was still too early for an overall assessment of [the UNFPA] program, visits to selected counties by foreign diplomats indicate that progress in implementing the program has been mixed. Some counties have made appreciable progress in implementing the program, while others have made relatively little. Notably, some counties have informed the general public about the UNFPA program and have eliminated the system of strict, government-assigned birth quotas (allowing couples to choose without authorization when to have their first child); other counties have not yet done so, or have only begun to do so.

   Although not a ringing endorsement, this supports UNFPA’s claim that they are improving China’s family planning policies.

2. UNFPA’s managing board - which includes a representative of the US government - sent an investigative team headed by Dr. Nicolaas H. Biegman, former Ambassador of the Netherlands to NATO. According to Dr. Biegman’s testimony to Congress:
   

   Responses varied, but generally people believed that family planning policy in their area had been relaxed considerably in recent years and that the quality of care had improved. No one expressed any grievances or complaints or knew of any abuses in recent years. Such abuses had occurred in the past, they said, but not in the present. […]

   The desk that supposedly comprised the UNFPA office in Sihui County that was constantly referred to in the testimony before the House Committee simply does not exist. That purported UNFPA office, which formed a central part of the testimony of the Population Research Institute, is a complete and utter fabrication. UNFPA has no offices in China outside Beijing.

3. In April of 2002, a team from the British Parliament - led by Edward Leigh, a pro-life, Catholic member of the Conservative Party who has been a critic of UNFPA - sent a team to look for evidence of UNFPA supporting coercive practices in China. From their report (pdf file):
   

   The study team found no evidence of UNFPA advocating or facilitating coercive Family Planning laws. Indeed, it seemed precisely the opposite applied. The UNFPA projects, based on the IDPD Programme of Action, helped empower women by ensuring they had the fullest possible information about reproductive health and choices. […]

   The UK MP delegation was convinced that the UNFPA programme is a force for good, in moving China away from abuses such as forced-family planning, sterilisation and abortions…. It is vitally important that the UNFPA remains actively involved in China, with continued financial support from the UK and other Western Governments.

   The UK investigation included random interviews of ordinary Chinese citizens, without any Chinese officials present.

4. In May of 2002, the Bush Administration State Department sent a team to investigate UNFPA in China. (The Bush administration waited until July 22nd - when they cut off UNFPA’s funding - to release the State Department’s report.) The Bush team found “no evidence” of UNFPA participation in “coercive abortion” or any other coercive practices, and recommended that the $34 million dollars be released to the UNFPA. They did find “ample evidence… of heavy-handed abusive and coercive practices,” but specified that these abuses took place outside the 32 counties in which UNFPA operates.

   (The State Department team also recommended that “no US Government funds be allocated for population programs” in China. Some pro-lifers have claimed this is a recommendation that the US cut funding to UNFPA. This interpretation is mistaken; since by law all US contributions to UNFPA are allocated for projects outside of China, the reference is to non-UNFPA funding.)

   And what about that desk? From a Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service article published September 11, 2002:

   The State Department team, which conducted a two-week investigation in May, also was unable to find any UNFPA desk or worker in Sihui county, according to team member Theodore Tong, a professor of pharmacy, public health and toxicology at the University of Arizona.

   “We didn’t meet any UNFPA persons outside of the Beijing office,” Tong said. […]

   “We stopped off at schools; we stopped off at some factories. These were all unplanned,” he said, rejecting PRI’s assertion that the team was unable to speak freely with random Chinese.

   Keep in mind, these conclusions come from a team selected by the Bush State Department, and therefore unlikely to be biased in UNFPA’s favor.

5. In September 2002, the Knight-Ridder news service conducted its own investigation, and “found that the U.N. Population Fund has no desk or staff members in Sihui county.”
6. In September 2003, “an interfaith delegation of prominent US religious leaders, faith-based organization leaders and ethicists,” organized by Catholics for Choice, investigated the UNFPA’s practices in China. “Delegates met with citizens without any officials present and made impromptu visits to communities not on the itinerary.” From their report (pdf file).
   

   After extensive study and on-site investigation, we are convinced that UNFPA has made an invaluable contribution to women’s reproductive health and rights in China. We find that UNFPA’s work is of fundamental value in affirming the highest religious and ethical values of the delegation members’ preservation of human life and the promotion of the human rights of every individual. We are equally convinced that the charges against UNFPA made by its opponents, including PRI, are without foundation.

Which brings us back to Sara’s question:

Why should sensible people find the PRI report less credible than the other reports?

The reports from China are seriously divergent - so divergent that it’s hard to avoid suspecting somebody is lying. It is necessary, therefore, to assess the credibility of the reports.

There are several reasons to conclude that the PRI report is less credible.

• First of all - and perhaps least importantly - when assessing credibility, it’s reasonable to look at the character of the persons or organizations making claims. In the case of the PRI, I am disturbed by a well-documented history of anti-Semitism by the PRI’s founder, Paul Marx. (See Anti-Defamation League press releases from October 30, 1998 and March 10, 1995; Zero Population Growth’s press release of February 11, 1997; Philadelphia Inquirer, July 27, 2002).

  Marx writes essays with titles like “Pro-Abortion Jews and the New Holocaust.” His writings attempt to show that abortion is a Jewish conspiracy: According to Marx, “Notice how many Jews led the infamous 1971 abortion-planning meeting in Los Angeles which I exposed…note the large number of abortionists (consult the Yellow Pages) and pro-abortion medical professors who are Jewish.”

  Of course, just because the PRI was founded by an anti-Semite (who hired the current PRI president) doesn’t prove that the PRI is wrong. One can be a raving lunatic bigot (or the hand-picked successor of a raving lunatic bigot) without being wrong about everything. Nonetheless, for those of us who find anti-Semites less credible than non-anti-Semites, it’s a point to consider.

• Elements of the PRI story cannot be true. PRI has repeatedly claimed that other investigations conducted their interviews in the presence of Chinese government officials. This, according to PRI, explains why other investigators failed to find the rampant abuse the PRI’s investigator found.

  Here’s the problem: The PRI has no way of knowing how interviews were conducted by the other investigations.

  1. The PRI can’t have gotten their information from the statements and reports of the other investigators, because those reports and statements clearly indicate that interviews were conducted without Chinese officials present.

  2. The PRI couldn’t have checked with the interview subjects, because to protect them, interview subjects are not identified (the PRI’s report followed the same procedure).
  3. PRI can’t have gotten its information from the Chinese goverment, since the Chinese government wouldn’t know about interviews kept secret from the Chinese government. (Nor would the Chinese government have any reason to help the PRI).

  So the PRI claims to have knowlege that it cannot possibly have; this is, it seems to me, a blow against their credibility.

• There’s the simple matter of replication. Despite five separate attempts, no one has been able to verify even a single claim made by the PRI about UNFPA’s program in China. In fact, every claim PRI has made has been contradicted by the other investigations.
• The PRI sent one investigator[*]; between them, the other five investigations sent a total of 19. To believe the PRI is correct, one would have to accept that the other 19 investigators are engaged in a massive conspiracy. That seems unlikely.

  [*]Although the PRI investigator, Josephine Guy, often spoke of her team in the plural, she is the only person to sign her name to the PRI report. The PRI team consisted of Ms. Guy, a hired photographer, and two hired translators. As far as I know, PRI has not released the names of Ms. Guy’s three employees, and they have not testified in support of her account.

This is a question I’d really like some of the intelligent pro-lifers out there to address. How can any reasonable person, weighing all of the evidence, continue to support the PRI’s account?

And to anyone who still favors the PRI account: What evidence would it take to convince you that the PRI’s account is probably not true?

[This is the “non-Catholic version” of the post below this one; it’s the same post, but I’ve taken out the arguments about Catholicism, so that folks who are uninterested in that debate, might read the arguments for why John Kerry would reduce abortion more than George Bush will.]

[This is why being a blogger is so cool. I mean, a real writer would never be able to do unprofessional $#!+@ like this.]

I assume that the primary goal of a sincere pro-lifer is not to punish the guilty, but to reduce abortion as much as possible. So I therefore assume that pro-lifers support pro-life policies - and pro-life politicians like George Bush - because they think pro-life policies will reduce abortion. But there are legitimate reasons to doubt that’s true.

First, how likely is it that abortion will ever be banned in the USA? Reagan couldn’t do it. Bush Sr. couldn’t do it. So far, Bush hasn’t been able to. Face it: the country is divided on abortion. The most pro-lifers could possibly accomplish is throwing abortion to state-by-state restrictions; but some states will never ban abortion, so all that will do is force women to cross state lines.

Even if legal abortion could be entirely banned, it’s unclear that this would actually reduce the real number of abortions by a significant degree. Before the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade ruling, American women had somewhere between 200,000 and 1.2 million abortions a year in the U.S.. Although measuring something as hidden as illegal abortions is always difficult, the best pre-Roe scholarly assessment came to a figure of about a million abortions a year (”…prior to the adoption of more moderate abortion laws in 1967, there were 1 million abortions annually nationwide, of which 8000 were legal….” From Christopher Tietze “Abortion on request: its consequences for population trends and public health,” Seminars in Psychiatry 1970;2:375-381, quoted in JAMA December 9, 1992).

Another option is to look at what happens to birth rates; an significant increase in abortions should lead to a declining birth rate. So if Roe caused a big increase in abortions, the birthrate in the US would have dropped post-Roe. So what actually happened?

      Year  Births   Birthrate

      1973  3,136,965   14.9
      1974  3,159,958   14.9
      1975  3,144,198   14.8
      1976  3,167,788   14.8
      1977  3,326,632   15.4
      1978  3,333,279   15.3
      1979  3,494,398   15.9
      1980  3,612,258   15.9

Similarly, what happened when Poland banned abortions in the 1990s? If pro-life policies reduce abortion significantly, there would have been a spike in Poland’s birthrate. But Poland’s birth rate remained steady. (See Reproductive Health Matters (Volume 10, Issue 19 , May 2002): “The restrictive abortion law in Poland has not increased the number of births.”)

Pro-life laws may prevent a few abortions; but they don’t prevent enough to be measured statistically, or to have a noticeable effect on birthrates. That may seem counterintuitive, but it actually makes sense. Why? Because most women don’t have abortions lightly. They have abortions because they are feeling very determined, or perhaps very desperate, and the anti-abortion laws don’t seem just to them. When something is desperately wanted by consumers - and when that something is fairly easy to supply - outlawing it won’t make it actually unavailable. Just look at the market for pot; and the proportion of casual pot smokers is far higher than the proportion of casual abortion patients.

Here’s another statistic to consider: Which countries have the least abortion? Belgium has an abortion rate of 6.8 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44. The Netherlands, 6.5. Germany, 7.8. Compare that to the USA’s rate of 22. Even better, compare it to countries where abortion is illegal: Egypt, 23; Brazil, 40; Chile, 50; Peru, 56.

According to the World Health Organization:

If pro-life laws are the best way of reducing abortion, then why are the world’s lowest abortion rates found in pro-choice countries like Germany and the Netherlands, while some of the world’s highest abortion rates are in countries that outlaw abortion?

Statistically, there’s no evidence that outlawing abortion lowers abortion rates; and quite a lot of reason to think that it doesn’t.

* * *

There’s no evidence that any pro-life law will reduce abortion by any significant degree in the United States.

What will reduce abortion? If the examples of the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium - countries that have incredibly low abortion rates - are any example, we should consider reducing abortion by reducing the demand, rather than reducing the supply. As Ono Ekeh recently wrote in National Catholic Weekly:

Given that traditional pro-lifers cannot, as far as I know, point to a single country in which pro-life policies have resulted in a low abortion rate comparible to the Netherlands, it’s time for those who seriously oppose abortion to consider the demand-side approach to abortion reduction.

* * *

Finally, regarding the current presidential race, the matter of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) should be considered. George Bush chose to defund the UNFPA, removing the $34 million US contribution, due to accusations that the UNFPA supports coerced abortion in China. Many people believe these accusations were not true (both a Bush State Department team, and a British inspection team including a well-known pro-life critic of UNFPA, found that the accusations were not true).

UNFPA does not provide support for abortions or abortion-related activities anywhere in the world. In fact, they prevent abortion, by providing family planning services and birth control in developing countries all over the world. They also help prevent AIDS, provide medical care which makes pregnancy and childbirth safer for mothers and babies, and work to prevent and treat obstetric fistulas. (Follow this link for more posts about UNFPA).

According to UNFPA, “UNFPA estimates that $34 million applied to family planning programmes could prevent some 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths annually worldwide.”

It’s certain that John Kerry, if elected president, would refund UNFPA - which in turn could prevent hundreds of thousands of avoidable abortions.

There’s very little chance that George Bush could succeed in banning abortion. Even if he does, there’s virtually no evidence that Bush’s pro-life policies will reduce abortion. It is, however, certain that having John Kerry in office will prevent thousands of abortions; not in some theoretical far-off time, but immediately, next year.

If you’re sincerely in favor of reducing abortion, as much as possible, as quickly as possible - then you should probably be voting for John Kerry. Objectively, a Kerry presidency will prevent more abortions. Shouldn’t that be the bottom line, if you’re pro-life?

[This is the “Catholic version” of this post; it contextualizes my thoughts about abortion into the question of if Catholics can support pro-choice policies. The post above this one is the “non-Catholic version” of the same argument, for those who aren’t interested in the religious questions.]

[This is why being a blogger is so cool. I mean, a real writer would never be able to do unprofessional $#!+@ like this.]

Over on the Dallas News blog, Rod Dreher responds to an op-ed by his colleague Bill McKenzie (unfortunately, the Dallas News blog software doesn’t seem to include permalinks to particular entries). Here’s the best bit:

Okay, let me try to answer that. I’m not a Catholic - and, given my admitted ignorance of Catholism compared to most Catholics, it’s likely I’m making a fool of myself. But I think it’s possible to argue that, even given acceptance of Catholic doctrine, a Catholic can also be pro-choice or vote in clear conscience for a pro-choice politician.

Please note that I’m not defending John Kerry’s motives in particular; I don’t know what’s going on in Mr. Kerry’s heart, and neither do the folks who have been criticizing him. It’s not possible for me to know if Kerry is a sincere Catholic or not. All I’m saying is that it’s perfectly possible for a sincere Catholic to hold pro-choice views.

First, let me state a few points, which I hope that Mr. Dreher is willing to agree to for the sake of argument:

1) All Catholics, if they accept the teachings of the Catholic Church, must be anti-abortion. By “anti-abortion,” I mean that they must work to make abortion as rare as humanly possible. For a politician, this means supporting legislation which she believes will make abortion as rare as the government can make it.

For the purpose of this discussion, I’m going to be using “Catholic” as shorthand for “Catholics who accept the teachings of the Catholic Church and are therefore anti-abortion.” No offense is intended towards Catholics who don’t accept those teachings.

2) “Pro-life,” for the purpose of this argument, refers to the position that abortion should be illegal except where the mother’s life is in danger. (I realize that many Catholics argue that “pro-life” refers to a larger tapestry of policies; I respect that, but it’s not what I’m discussing at this moment).

3) “Pro-choice” refers to the position that abortion should be legal in almost all circumstances.

4) It is possible to be a Catholic and yet disagree on what exact policy is the best policy for achieving a particular outcome. To quote from the US Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on War and Peace:

* * *

So if all Catholics must be against abortion, doesn’t it follow that all Catholics must be pro-life?
Read the rest of this entry »

From IPS News Serivce:

There’s more….

(This is the fourth post in an ongoing exchange; first Sara at Diotima posted this commentary regarding a Gloria Steinem interview, followed by my response, followed by Sara’s response. Phew.)

Sara was bothered by the “nastiness” of my previous post. I apologize. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that she doesn’t care about the deaths of women in the third world. In fact, it’s just the opposite - it’s because I know Sara is not callous, that I was shocked by her apparent use of abortions in the USA to rebut Steinem’s concern for women in other countries.

Sara wrote:

I was genuinely taken aback by this linkage - so much that I suggested in my earlier post that it might have just been something Sara said in anger, and not a reflection of her real position.

Sara has now clarified this statement, writing that “my juxtaposition of the number of innocents killed since Roe with Ms. Steinem’s claim was a clumsy attempt to remind people that pro-lifers really do believe in the personhood of the fetus.” Fair enough - thank you for clarifying that. (However, in my own defense, I think it’s understandable that I didn’t infer Sara’s intent from her original wording).

* * *

There is also some discussion of the UN Population Fund, which Bush defunded due to allegations that the UNPFA supports coercive abortion in China.

First of all, Sara believes I questioned whether she, personally, is really interested in halting abortion. However, she’s mistaken. I did question the “pro-life leadership’s commitment to opposing abortion,” in a sentence about “pro-life organizations.” When I wrote that, I was specifically thinking “I’d better make it clear I’m talking about the leaders of the big organizations here, and not Sara.” However, it’s obvious I didn’t make the distinction clear enough; I apologize for that.

Nonetheless, I stand by my criticism of the pro-life leadership; as I’ve written in the past (in a different context), they often seem more interested in scoring partisan points than in pursing substantive policies which would reduce abortion. (Once again, let me clarify that this criticism is made of pro-life leadership, not of Sara.)

Speaking of substantive argument, Sara argues in favor of defunding UNFPA, writing:

Sara implies that the dispute over UNFPA is a dispute between pro-life research and pro-choice research. In fact, Bush’s own fact-finding mission found that PRI’s report was wrong. So did the right-wing MP Edward Leigh, who before visiting China was UNFPA’s strongest opponent in British government. (There’s more detail in this post). Leigh’s study “found no evidence of UNFPA advocating or facilitating coercive FP [Family Planning] laws. Indeed, it seemed precisely the opposite applied. The UNFPA projects, based on the IDPD Programme of Action, helped empower women by ensuring that they had the fullest possible information about reproductive health and choices.”

Keep in mind, that’s a statement a pro-lifer signed on to. This is not a dispute between pro-life and pro-choice researchers; even pro-life researchers who have examined UNFPA’s program in China have come away convinced that PRI is dead wrong, and recommending that UNFPA be fully funded.

And that, Sara, is one reason I find the Catholics for Choice report credible - because it matches what the British team and the Bush team found. (Also, pro-choice organizations have no particular reason to support UNFPA other than a belief that UNFPA saves women’s lives - remember, UNFPA is against abortion, and doesn’t provide abortions or fund any abortions). Both pro-lifers and Bush’s State Department (and, yes, some pro-choice ministers and ethicists) have examined and refuted PRI’s accusations. When pro-life and pro-choice researchers agree, doesn’t it seem probable that they’re telling the truth?

In any case, I can’t imagine what - “unless you have an agenda yourself” - would lead you to dismiss the British MP and US State Department reports.

That UNFPA has any involvement with China’s “One Child Policy” - other than working to end it - is a vicious lie, one that even pro-life researchers have disproved. Of course, feminists are concerned about women in China - which is why feminists don’t want to defund the only Western organization that is successfully opposing coercive practices there.

By spreading the lie, pro-life leaders like President Bush and “Feminists for Life” are greatly hurting the interests of women in China. UNFPA has done more to fight coercive reproductive policies in China than any other organization - period. And - because the UNFPA does not support abortion, and in fact reduces the need for abortion - the net effect of the pro-life leadership’s defunding of UNFPA is to increase abortion worldwide. How does that help anyone?

Sara points out that the $34 million taken away from UNFPA went to the US Child Survival and Health Programs Fund, a US government program. That’s no substitute. The US government money is deeply politicized, so it will go exclusively to programs that are “politically correct” even to the most fanatical pro-life organizations. For instance, none of that money will go to helping the women in China President Bush pretends to feel concern for.

Furthermore, the US program is simply less extensive and provides assistance to fewer women. Overall, the US program funds programs in about 65 countries, compared to the over 140 countries UNFPA is providing assistance to.

Finally, the program Sara refers to was created in 2002; it doesn’t have the experience or the proven effectiveness of UNFPA. Moving $34 million dollars to where the money will help fewer people less effectively isn’t really a wonderful approach to policy.

* * *

Sara writes “I was under the impression that Bush was actually spending a bunch of new money to help fight AIDS in Africa.” Yes, that’s the impression Bush gave - however, after taking the credit, Bush played games with the money, making it difficult to know if there even was a net gain in funding.

* * *

There are many other issues to address, but I’ve got to run. More later.

I read Gloria Steinem’s interview in Buzzflash when it came out, but didn’t think it was especially fascinating; I didn’t even link to it from “Alas.” Then I read this entry at Diotima, in which Sara - one of my favorite conservative bloggers - is reduced to what can only be called sputtering incoherence by the task of responding to Steinem’s interview.

I’m not going to rebut every instance in which Sara’s points are illogical or based on a failure to comprehend Steinem’s arguments. But for example, consider this quote from Steinem, about right-wing religious activists:

Sara responds by saying that she learned from this that…

The Anglican line is an easy put-down, but it ignores the meaning of Steinem’s quote. Steinem’s quote explained in what sense modern religious conservatives are like 17th century Anglicans; both groups “cite unproveable arguments — arguments that take place in heaven and life after death — as reasons why we should obey them now.”

Steinem’s statement is a simplification, but also fundamentally correct. Conservative intellectuals like Sara aren’t what’s driving the Republicans to oppose same-sex marriage (actually, Sara favors same-sex marriage) and reproductive rights. In those areas, the 800-pound gorilla in the Republican party is the religious right. And those folks use unprovable arguments all the time, just as Ms. Steinem said.

Yesterday, Rhode Island Representative Victor Moffitt (R) justified his anti-gay-marriage bill by saying “The sanctity of marriage needs to be defined, protected. I am a Catholic. I view marriage as a sacrament.” How can one argue with that? Mr. Moffitt has a right to his beliefs, and to vote based on his beliefs. Nonetheless, he’s clearly attempting to use the law to force all Rhode Islanders to obey his religious beliefs; and that’s typical behavior from religious conservatives in America today, on issues ranging from same-sex marriage to reproductive rights to “Terri’s law.”

If Sara actually believes that folks like Representative Moffitt are a scare tactic made up by feminists - or if she believes that they are not a powerful force in the Republican party - then I’d say that Sara exhibits less understanding of the modern conservative movement than Ms. Steinem does.

Here’s another Steinem quote with Sara’s response:

Clearly Sara’s wacked-out tone here is tongue-in-cheek, but her logic is just as wacky.

First, Sara implies that it’s insane to think that a Bush re-election might lead to criminalization of abortion. Why? It’s certainly possible (I’d say likely) that both O’Connor and Stevens will retire from the Supreme Court in the four-year period following the 2004 election, and if so Bush might intend to choose anti-Roe justices to fill those seats. The result of this would almost certainly be criminalization of abortion in much of the USA.

This is not an obscure scenario; the Buzzflash interviewer brings it up during Steinem’s interview. Nor is it so implausible that only an insane person could worry about it.

And yes, feminists won on Title IX. But there is a continuous movement among conservatives to water-down or overturn Title IX; it’s quite reasonable for Steinem to think that Title IX and other feminist victories will be “endangered” by continuing Republican dominance in politics.

Finally, I am puzzled - and appalled - by this bit of total illogic from Sara: “We’re going to injure and kill millions of women? What about the millions of unborn babies we’ve killed right here in the past 31 years?”

Is Sara honestly saying that because she finds abortion morally wrong, injuring and killing millions of women is somehow unimportant or justifiable?

When Steinem referred to the withdrawal of funding for family planning and AIDS prevention, I took that as a reference to the way pro-lifers and the Bush administration blocked $34 million earmarked for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA for short - yes, I know the initials don’t match up, complain to the UN). $34 million is almost 15% of UNFPA’s total funding.

A few facts about UNFPA: UNFPA does not provide support for abortions or abortion-related activities anywhere in the world. In fact, they prevent abortion, by providing family planning services and birth control in developing countries all over the world. They also help prevent AIDS, provide medical care which makes pregnancy and childbirth safer for mothers and babies, and work to prevent and treat obstetric fistulas. (More on what UNFPA does here).

According to UNFPA, “UNFPA estimates that $34 million applied to family planning programmes could prevent some 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths annually worldwide.” That’s only deaths - the total would presumably be much higher if non-fatal conditions such as fistulas were included.

Why was UNPFA defunded? Because some US pro-lifers accused UNPFA of supporting coercive abortions in China. Several independent fact-finding missions - including one from the Bush administration - have refuted this claim. (A more recent group of US religious scholars and ethicists, organized by Catholics for Choice, came to the same conclusion - pdf file).

I understand that to pro-lifers, there is little or no difference between the death of an 8-week embryo and the death of an adult woman. However, how can concern for unborn children possibly justify defunding an agency that doesn’t provide abortions, helps women and reduces the need for abortion?

Sara seems to feel that while abortion is legal in the US, it’s somehow ridiculous for Steinem to object to pro-life attacks on health care for women in the third world. Sara’s position (if it is indeed her position, and not just a momentary flash of anger) is unsupportable and immoral; the deaths of unborn fetuses in the US do not justify deaths and injuries to women in the third world.

Illogical as Sara’s statement is, it’s also typical of the pro-life movement in the United States. To the best of my knowledge, not a single pro-life organization in the US - not even the pro-life “feminists” - objected to the defunding of UNFPA. This calls into question the pro-life leadership’s commitment to opposing abortion - apparently an agency that reduces abortion through non-coercive needs, like UNFPA, is seen as the enemy by pro-life organizations.

Actually, pro-lifers who don’t think Bush’s election (not, as Sara correctly points out, “re-election”) will lead to overturning Roe would be well advised to vote for the Democrat instead. By reauthorizing funding for UNFPA (which had been cut off under Reagan), Bill Clinton probably prevented more abortions than President Bush ever has.

* * *

More generally, I think part of Sara’s difficulty with Steinem is due to the cultural difference between the IWF and feminism. Gloria Steinem is a type of leader that the IWF has never had. Steinem isn’t an academic or a think-tanker; she’s a popular leader and organizer. That’s a kind of leadership that’s completely foreign to the IWF culture, because they’ve never had any popular support.

Sara thinks that Steinem should embarrass feminists because she says something silly in an interview (and I admit, Steinem’s quasi-Marxist interpretation of the pro-life movement was cringeworthy). But that completely misses the point - Steinem’s accomplishments and contribution to feminism has primarily been as an organizer, not as a theorist. As an organizer, Steinem contributed to a huge advancement of feminism, equality and justice in the USA; on balance, a mistaken statement about pro-lifers in an obscure interview is insignificant.

[Edited on 2-16-04 to correct typos, grammer and to make it slightly less snippy.]

• First and foremost, go read Nathan Newman on the Minimum Wage: Why the Minimum Wage Beats EITC, the Popularity of Raising the Minimum Wage to $8 an Hour, How the Minimum Wage Increases Employment, Who Pays for the Minimum Wage?, Why Job Losses from the Minimum Wage Don’t Matter, and Politics of the Minimum Wage. Nathan’s one of the best bloggers in the lefty half of blogtopia; reading all these posts will take only a few minutes, and leave you feeling well-armed and ready for your next lunchtable debate about minimum wage laws.

• In an earlier post, I wondered if George Bush has to consciously restrain himself from sneering and spitting every time he’s introduced to a soldier. Reading this snippet from Greg Palast made me wonder that again: the Bush administration is changing the laws for who is considered a “professional” for purposes of calculating eligibility for overtime. One change: if you learned your job skill in the military, you’re now a “professional.” In practice, what that means is that thousands of veterans will suddenly no longer be paid overtime, no matter how many hours their bosses make them work. Way to support the troops, Republicans!
• Whiskey Bar has a good - albeit depressing - series of links and posts about the growing oppression of women in Iraq. Here’s one quote, from Iraqi blogger Riverbend:
  Females can no longer leave their homes alone. Each time I go out, E. and either a father, uncle or cousin has to accompany me. It feels like we?ve gone back 50 years ever since the beginning of the occupation …

  We are seeing an increase of fundamentalism in Iraq which is terrifying.

• Speaking of Riverbend, she’s (or rather her “girl blog from Iraq,” Baghdad Burning) is the newest addition to my blogroll. Go read her blog; she’s a wonderful writer and paints a vivid picture of life in occupied Iraq. For a sample of how good she is, go read Road Trip.
• And speaking of women’s rights in Iraq, check out this interesting Boston Globe article about Iraqi women’s rights activists. (Via Diotima).
• An article on “The Dubious Rewards of Consumption” yields this quote (via Rebecca’s Pocket):
  For decades Lewis Lapham, born into an oil fortune, has been asking people how much money they would need to be happy. “No matter what their income,” he reports, “a depressing number of Americans believe that if only they had twice as much, they would inherit the estate of happiness promised them in the Declaration of Independence. The man who receives $15,000 a year is sure that he could relieve his sorrow if he had only $30,000 a year; the man with $1 million a year knows that all would be well if he had $2 million a year….Nobody,” he concludes, “ever has enough.”
• Mac Diva does a wonderful job attacking neo-Confederate arguments: check out this post defending Lincoln, and then scroll up to this post arguing that the Civil War was too about slavery.
• I love people who resign in protest, don’t you? Seriously - somehow I’ve always found that sort of thing heroic. Anyhow, Susanna at Cut on the Bias has a story of a small-town restaurant reviewer who wouldn’t compromise journalistic ethics. Cool.
• The definitive posts on Bustamante and MEChA have been written. Check out this post on Orcinus, which is valuable not just for the discussion of the at-hand issue but for the discussion of racism generally. And then check out this post, by Ted Barlow at Crooked Timber. Excellent, excellent work, folks. (Via Long Story; Short Pier). But you might also want to read this Volokh Conspiracy post, which begs to differ.
• A couple of months ago, I did a post about my drawing process. Now that post seems embarrassingly primitive, because Jenn Manley Lee has posted a description of her drawing process, which is frankly scary. Jenn’s one of the best cartoonists on the web, and this post makes it clear that a ton of very hard work goes into making her stuff look so good.
• Body and Soul discusses the latest pro-life efforts to make sure that no one who is working in China to reform China’s forced abortion policy will ever receive funding. I’ve blogged about this before, too: the fact is that UNFPA, the organization that some pro-lifers target, has actually reduced forced abortion in China - something that the hypocrites who attack UNFPA have not done. Apparently the idea of Chinese women having choice so infuriates some pro-lifers, they’d rather see them suffer from forced abortions. I’d really like to know how reasonable pro-life bloggers justify these pro-life attacks on UNFPA’s funding. Any comments, Eve? Or Sara?
• I suspect that only a former (or current) comic book geek would enjoy this biography of Ant-Man (probably the lamest superhero ever, although I think Skateman comes a close second) as much as I did. But I enjoyed it a hell of a lot (I never realized just how many new costumes - not to mention nervous breakdowns - the poor guy had over the years). (Via Eve Tushnet).
• Kieran Healy of Crooked Timber writes a terrific post regarding the economics of children and sex. He also discusses what I call the “Father Knows Best” economy - workplaces that assume that employees have a wife at home who will take care of all the necessary family tasks. Even if they don’t discriminate directly against women, workplaces that make this assumption are implicitly designing their jobs around outdated and sexist assumptions. Reforming the “Father Knows Best” workplace - so that all jobs assume that all workers have family responsibilities that must be accommodated - may be the single most important economic issue in the USA, from a feminist point of view.
• The discussion of the study of rape at Air Force Academy continues at Feministe, with many useful (and distressing) links about rape on campus.
• Do you desperately need a cigarette lighter, but all you have on-hand is some disposable silverware and some paper clips? Check out this page of prisoners’ inventions. (Via Boing Boing.)
• An interesting post by an opponent of affirmative action, over at All Facts and Opinions. There’s also a longish post by me in the comments.
• Eugene Volokh has an excellent post comparing anti-gay laws to hypothetical anti-Hindu laws; why is it that (some folks versions of) Christianity requires the former, but not the latter? It’s a mystery.
• Mark Klieman has a good post discussing the economic realities that whoever eventually emerges as governor of California will have to address (even if they’re now desperately avoiding doing just that). And while you’re at Mark’s site, also check out this post on prosecutors who resist DNA evidence showing that innocent people have been imprisoned.
• Playwright Brian Flemming, best known for the musical Bat Boy, has written a new one-act comedy called Fair & Balanced. There are sample pages available to read. Importantly, one of the play’s four characters is named “Ampersand”; it is therefore my opinion that this is the greatest work to hit the American stage since Death of a Salesman had its premiere. (Via Boing Boing.)

* Excellent posts on the appalling UNFPA situation over at the Appalachia Alumni Association blog here and here, including info on how to donate to UNFPA.

From an AAA post:

* There is one bit of good reproductive rights news: Senator Barbara Boxer successfully proposed an amendment to State Department funding which overturned the global gag rule last week. Senator Boxer succeeded in getting six pro-life Senators to vote for her amendment, providing the margin of victory, by emphasizing that the global gag rule is a free speech issue.

Unfortunately, the global gag rule remains operative unless the House of Representatives also votes to overturn it, which I don’t think is likely.

The so-called “pro” lifers and Republicans in congress have succeeded in defunding the UN Population Fund (also called UNFPA). This move will, without any doubt, lead to more women and infants dying; how is favoring the deaths of women and infants pro-life?

The Republicans claim they’re doing this to help women in China, but in fact UNFPA has done more to help women in China than any other western agency I know of - more on this below.

For a clear view of the appalling lies and ignorance that substitute for thought among influential pro-lifers, it’s hard to beat National Review Online. Here’s just a few of the errors Kathryn Jean Lopez makes:

Error number 1. Lopez doesn’t know the difference between a “country” and a “county.”

In a report issued earlier this year, the State Department found that forced abortion and sterilization policies exist in 32 countries where the UNFPA has operations.

Actually, what State Department reports examine are UPFPA’s operations in the 32 counties in China UPFPA runs programs in. This wasn’t just a typo on Lopez’s part; she goes on to complain about UPFPA’s alleged history of cooperating with “tyrannical regimes,” plural.

It’s impossible that anyone who actually read the State Department report, rather than just skimming the first few paragraphs, could make this error.

What’s worse, even if we correct Lopez’s awesomely ignorant mistake, she’s still dead wrong. Which brings us to point two:

Error number 2. Forced abortion and sterilization policies exist in the 32 Chinese counties where the UNFPA has operations.

This is the opposite of the truth. According to the Bush Administration’s own fact-finding team - which not only talked to officials, but spoke to “ordinary Chinese in spontaneous/no-notice encounters” - they found no evidence of coercion in the counties in which UNFPA operates, since UNFPA set up its program. They did find “ample evidence” of coercion - but they’re careful to specify that this is referring to “abusive and coercive practices outside the 32 counties” UNFPA operates in.

Of course, that’s the Bush administration’s version of events, which is spun to avoid making UNPFA look good. They carefully skip over the most important fact about UNFPA’s participation in China - which is that UNFPA negotiated with China to end China’s coercive policies in those 32 counties. If it wasn’t for UNFPA, thousands of Chinese women who have been released from China’s horrible population-control policies would still be suffering under those policies. (UNFPA’s goal is to demonstrate to China that non-coercive policies that empower women work better than China’s past policies do. And it’s working: according to a British fact-finding report, China is considering implementing UNFPA-type programs in another 800 counties).

The Bush administration report carefully avoids talking about the good UNFPA is doing for China. For a less biased view, read the “China Mission Report” (warning: PDF file) co-written by three British members of Parliament - including the right-wing MP Edward Leigh, who before visiting China was UNFPA’s strongest opponent in British government.