Worst argument against marriage equality EVER

I think we should file this under the “You can’t make this up” category (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON — Marriage should be limited to unions of a man and a woman because they alone can “produce unplanned and unintended offspring,” opponents of gay marriage have told the Supreme Court.

By contrast, when same-sex couples decide to have children, “substantial advance planning is required,” said Paul D. Clement, a lawyer for House Republicans.

This unusual defense of traditional marriage was set out last week in a pair of opening legal briefs in the two gay marriage cases to be decided by the Supreme Court this spring.

This argument from shotgun wedding pretty much shows how opponents of marriage have no real arguments. That’s why they’ve come up with an argument that actually comes up with a reason to support same–sex marriage. Also juxtapose how many of those who oppose marriage equality also attack Planned Parenthood and seek to restrict access to abortion and contraception.

The apparently disturbing thing about this argument is that it has been used before and apparently accepted by some US court.

Via Lawyers, Guns, and Money.

Study about contraception and abortion shows nothing new

A new peer–reviewed study* published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology has shown that free birth control substantially reduces the abortion rate. This is of course nothing new to rational people. The driver of the abortion rate is the unintended pregnancy rate, and with nearly half of American pregnancies being unintended, this study provides more evidence of the best way to reduce it.

When cost was not a factor, women generally chose the most effective contraception methods available, known as Long–Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC). Examples of those include IUDs and implants. This resulted in a substantial reduction in the abortion rate in the study group. Providing free birth control to all women could prevent 62–78% of all abortions each year.

It’s not like we needed more evidence that anti–choicers would, if they really were concerned with reducing the abortion rate (by more than half), would push for more birth control access and use. I mean, if you truly believed abortion was killing someone, how could paying for birth control possibly be too high a cost or more than halving the rate be too ineffective? But know I anti–choicers won’t.

* The study can be downloaded and read as a PDF here. It’s title is “Preventing Unintended Pregnancies by Providing No-Cost Contraception.

Edited to remove a superfluous link.

Pro-lifers aren’t

I first saw this video from the Guttmacher Institute at ThinkProgress. It shows how each year, around 47,000 women die from unsafe abortions.

Transcript here.

If all those anti–choicers truly cared about reducing the abortion rate and saving lives, they’d be pushing birth control endlessly. But since they don’t, it’s obvious that the abortion debate isn’t really about abortion. Rather, it’s about controlling women and punishing them for having sex.

Reactionary

A certain American reactionary suggests or implies that, according to him, women have no right to contraception.

This is probably the best reason to vote for Obama in the 2012 US Presidential election. Although he has been disastrous in other respects, when it comes to his Supreme Court nominees Obama has been fantastic. If the Republican nominee wins more reactionaries will be appointed, and they will be sure to roll back the rights of women and others.

Birth control saves lives

According to a study in The Lancet, widespread availability of contraception in developing countries could prevent an additional 104,000 maternal deaths yearly. Furthermore, in places where contraception is already available, 272,040 maternal deaths were prevented. (More specifically, perhaps as few as 127,937 or as many as 407,134 maternal deaths were prevented.)

You see that? Birth control saves lives. No one in their right mind could possibly be opposed to saving 200,000 lives each year. This therefore means that those so–called pro–lifers will be all in favour of more widespread contraception availability in developing countries, right? (Crickets chirping….)

Spouse of the random stuff

In no particular order:

• Melissa on how the experience of Canadian versus American prenatal care helped change her views on universal health care.
• No surprise here. Some religious groups are attacking Melinda Gates’ campaign to raise awareness of contraception in the developing world. They call it a “blatant attack on morality.” As opposed to, you know, something really immoral, like oppressing women by denying birth control to them.
• A Guttmacher Institute report indicates that this year will likely have as many new restrictions on abortion as the previous year, and possibly more (via). However, there is also good news; for example, fewer states are attempting to cut funding for family planning services.
• Four ways the internet could go down.
• The American (heteronormative patriarchial) Family Association has announced a boycott of Google due to the latter’s LGBT rights campaign, Legalize Love (via). It will “test the meat of our convictions.” Then they’d better have really tough convictions, as they’re running out of companies that aren’t anti–LGBT.
• Canada has a new non–profit organization and advocacy group, Bad Science Watch, that will promote evidence–based policies and provide information to protect consumers from junk science (via). Let’s hope they’re successful.
• (Added in an update) What government does for you.

Birth control reduced the abortion rate

A report (via some blog whose link I’ve lost) indicates that the pregnancy rate among American women in their 20s has dropped by almost a fifth compared to eighteen years ago. The reason? Better birth control and contraception access. This is of course yet more confirmation of a blatantly obvious truth.

Of course, anti–choicers will continue their opposition to contraception because the abortion debate isn’t really about abortion.