St-Stevie Can Perhaps Take a Lesson From T.R. Reid

Well, in  showing his true Evangelical Christian Fundy Blue colours,  St-Stevie will not only not include safe abortions in financial aid plan to help mothers in developing countries, but also refuses to cover contraception. Apparently, birth control simply doesn’t save lives, thus showing more of those religious colours coming through. I, for one, would love to know how not helping funding of any birth control helps save lives. Bev Oda pointedly left birth control off the list of aid projects the government intended to support, saying that “saving lives” was more important than family planning. In other words, in the Harpercon mantra,  family planning doesn’t save lives in any shape or form.

Fern Hill over at Dammit Janet makes the case of how not only readily accessible birth control, but accessibility to safe, clean abortions also save lives.

T.R. Reid, a columnist with the Washington Post and the author of The Healing of America,  A Global Quest For Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care also makes the case that countries that offer safe, readily accessible and free abortions actually have fewer women getting abortions. He makes this case while opponents of health care reform state side are all goin’ nuts and paranoid and all Bart Stupak-ish over abortion being more accessible.

There’s a direct connection between greater health coverage and lower abortion rates. To oppose expanded coverage in the name of restricting abortion gets things exactly backward. It’s like saying you won’t fix the broken furnace in a schoolhouse because you’re against pneumonia. Nonsense! Fixing the furnace will reduce the rate of pneumonia. In the same way, expanding health-care coverage will reduce the rate of abortion.

At least, that’s the lesson from every other rich democracy.

The latest United Nations comparative statistics, available at http://data.un.org, demonstrate the point clearly. The U.N. data measure the number of abortions for women ages 15 to 44. They show that Canada, for example, has 15.2 abortions per 1,000 women; Denmark, 14.3; Germany, 7.8; Japan, 12.3; Britain, 17.0; and the United States, 20.8. When it comes to abortion rates in the developed world, we’re No. 1.

St-Stevie would do well to read T.R. Reid’s article in the Washington Post.  He would do well to heed T.R. Reid’s advice, not only in the type of foreign aid from the G-8  to help mothers and children in developing countries, but also to think about keeping abortion legal and not Americanize what’s left of our public health care system. Because, if as St-Stevie, and buffoons like Bev Oda and Lawrence Cannon really really cared about saving and preserving lives, they would help to fund abortions and contraception in Developing countries as well as doing more to protect what’s left of our universal health care system.

Oh let’s be real. Saving lives comes a distant second after their evangelical twisted neo-con ideals for the Harpercons. Reality is, sadly, St-Stevie has followed that American mantra of  ‘greed will lead to …something?’ Yes, Stevie, at the very least, stop disguising this as life saving measures. This is about you trying to score some much needed points on the world stage as well as sticking to your fundamentalist beliefs as well as your selfishness.

Yeah, Steve, Fuck off! ‘Cause you certainly sent us that message as well as those poor women in the developing world.