Midweek News Roundup: 06/01/11
Domestic News: Indiana has been told by the Obama administration that they are not allowed to defund Planned Parenthood locally. Recently, Indiana’s legislature approved a measure that allowed the state to defund Planned Parenthood, including through their state Medicaid program. CMS Administrator Don Berwick, “Medicaid programs may not exclude qualified health care providers from providing services that are funded under the program because of a provider’s scope of practice.” This includes, Planned Parenthood according to Berwick. Pro-life legislators in Maine have gotten a bill through committee that would give unborn babies the same rights as born babies under the law specifically during the act of murder. If a pregnant woman is murdered, the culprit can, if this law passes, be charged with two counts of murder. A number of pro-life bills are moving forward in Alabama. If passed, these laws will prohibit abortions after 20 weeks, define life as beginning at conception, and opt-out of federal health care reform funding that could be used towards abortions.
International News: For several years, the abortion rate in Scotland was on the rise. 2009 and 2010 saw a reduction in the number of abortions – from 2008 to 2010 it decreased by 1,000. Pro-life legislators in Russia along with Russia’s Orthodox Church are pushing for legislation to curb abortions. The bill would require a one week waiting period before an abortion, spousal consent for married women, and would prohibit state run clinics from performing free abortions. In 2009, 1.3 million abortions were performed in Russia.
Editorial: Paul Pauker of Live Action wrote an interesting editorial entitled, “The Case Against Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey.” Check the link and the full editorial.
Russia has such a high abortion rate because it legalized abortion in the 1920’s, even before the Scandinavian countries. This was also long before the Pill or even some of the barrier methods had become widely available.
When a country legalizes abortion, we tend to see a new demographic of women seeking abortions. Before legalization most women who have abortions did so because their birth control methods failed, and after legalization abortion is more likely to be used as a substitute for birth control. There has been discussion within the pro-life community on whether contraceptives are a solution, but in Russia’s case by the time these methods were available abortion had already become ingrained as a solution to unwanted pregnancy.