The just-negotiated Senate health care bill contains a big new pot of money to make it easier for pregnant teens to raise a child:
The federal government would provide $25 million a year for a “pregnancy assistance fund.” The money could be used for “maternity and baby clothing, baby food, baby furniture and similar items.”
The fund is supposed to encourage more teens to bring their children to term, rather than have an abortion. I am not convinced that increasing the number of children raised by teen mothers represents a win for society. But if pro-lifers want to make sure that every pregnant teen gives birth to a child–a moral position that I understand if not share–they would be far better off trying to revalorize adoption as a solution to pregnancies for which the mother is wholly unprepared. (Of course this “pregnancy assistance fund” may be purely a Democratic ploy to expand both government and dependency, with no support among the Lifers. But the goal of persuading teens to give birth is unquestionably a Lifer one.) Public policy should not be enabling teen motherhood, it should be doing everything it can to discourage it, starting with turning off the money spigot that subsidizes it. Teen motherhood should be made more, not less, onerous, since the evidence is indisputable that being raised by a single mother (regardless of her age) is a high-risk proposition both for the child and for society. As Barack Obama himself noted in 2008, “children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison.”
Obviously, this “pregnancy assistance fund” is hardly the first taxpayer subsidy to single-parenthood; garden-variety welfare, despite the 1996 welfare reform bill, still pumps massive sums into single-parenthood, treating it as a sort of unforeseeable act of nature deserving of social safety-net protection.
Teen mothers don’t need more taxpayer-funded “maternity clothing and baby furniture.” They need to learn that having a child at their age is an irresponsible act for which they are emotionally unfit, however much saying so flies in the face of feminist “strong women” propaganda. Adoption has virtually disappeared in the inner city as a response to teen pregnancy, gone into the same black hole as stigma. Pro-lifers would do the country a service by bringing it back.
I don’t see anything in the story to indicate that the fund you’re criticizing was a concession wrung out of the Dems by the pro-life community; it’s true that Harry Reid is historically pro-life, but he’s severely compromised that position in his rise to Senate leadership, so it’s hardly a core principle with him. The party in power exists to think of ever more ways to make people dependent on federal assistance, and I’m sure they’re happy to capitalize on one such provision that they can wave in front of pro-lifers (including the pro-life Dems in the House, whose support will be needed to get the healthcare bill across the finish line). But throughout the course of this debate those committed to the sanctity of human life have been vocal in seeking to maintain the Hyde Amendment’s prohibition of public funds to support abortion rather than pushing for policies like this.
$25 million doesn’t seem like much. 1.7 million out of wedlock births in 2007, that’d come out to be $1.50 in aid for each.
Wait, it’s feminist propaganda that fosters teen pregnancy? Silly me, I thought it might have something to do with the fundies who oppose comprehensive sex education. Or the pro-lifers who think their religious views ought to trump everything else. But, of course! It must be the pro-choice feminists, who think women should control their own reproductive decisions.
But, it’s good to see that even though you may not share their religion, or their pro-life views, you still think we ought to be doing more to punish those dirty sluts.
@Justin_Anderson
Actually, the fact that there’s absolutely no social stigma attached any longer to out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and the fact that you can get welfare benefits for being a single mother, probably have more to do with the rise in teen pregnancies than anything else. Back in the bad old days (which were pretty bad in many respects) when there wasn’t any sex education, and there wasn’t any welfare, and a girl automatically became a leprous pariah tramp if she was unmarried and enceinte, there were a hell of a lot fewer pregnancies among unmarried teenaged girls, black or white.
I do agree that the fundies are a pain in the ass. But sex education does nothing to prevent pregnancies.
Back when there was no sex ed, births to unwed moms were a tiny fraction of all births. Since the all time high teen birth rate in 1957, overall teen births have fallen by 50%, births to married teens have fallen 90% while births to unmarried teens have increased 250%. Those of us paying high taxes would welcome unmarried women actually taking control and limiting their reproduction!
Anyway, I haven’t heard that pro-life folks were asking for extra money for teen moms. They just didn’t want to pay for abortions. This compromise may exist in Ben Nelson’s mind and in Democrat talking points, but generally pro-life lobbyists wouldn’t go for such a compromise. Sounds more like forcing your kid to get vaccinated and then giving him a treat for being “brave”. Truth is the kid never really assented, so it wasn’t really a reward for cooperating. I doubt Nebraska pro-life folks will be fooled, however, Nebraskans in general may be placated by the feds picking up 100% of the Medicare tab for Nebraska. Wish my state could get that deal. Medicare increases under the plan will devastate our state.
“Adoption has virtually disappeared in the inner city as a response to teen pregnancy, gone into the same black hole as stigma. Pro-lifers would do the country a service by bringing it back.”
Some states have allowed people to buy Choose Life license plates. In our state an adoption charity proposed one with the funds going to adoption services, but the Democrats killed it. Pro-lifers do promote adoption, so I am not sure why Heather thinks they don’t. If I were a pregnant loser, it would be hard to choose adoption because I would have to face and admit that I was an incompetent loser in front of everyone I knew as well as those I met through the process. Abortion is attractive to a woman because no one has to know that she was too stupid to use birth control or too incompetent to use it right, plus she avoids the whole pregnancy process and its physical and emotional issues.
@Susan
Not to question your tenuous grasp on reality or anything, but do you have any documention to support any of your claims?
Heather Mac Donald claims:
OK, I’ll be the first to ask, I guess. Could you cite some of this “indisputable” evidence? Let’s note, preemptively, that “single-parent children are X times more likely to…” is weak evidence at the very best.
I don’t know why someone would reduce it to an either/or proposition. I think educating kids to use protection is a good plan (though sex ed might go well beyond that and well into unacceptable territory when done by some pierced lesbian from PP who thinks 14 year olds ought to know about all sex practices known to man) but I also don’t see why the taxpayer should finance the livelihood of those who are too dumb to use protection, too idealistic to get an abortion or even crazy enough to strive to be teenage moms.
I think it should always be discouraged simply because it’s not a good thing for society really, but if people can pay for it out of pocket, fair enough. The moment you look at bills footed by the rest though it’s a big problem and Congress shouldn’t throw more of the people’s money at idiots (they seem to be doing a lot of that these days).
@RickRussellTX
You got me, dude. I invented the 70 percent black illegitimacy rate out of whole cloth.
ADC/AFDC began in 1935 and was replaced by TANF in 1996.
There aren’t enough intact black and Latina families to adopt all of the babies born to underclass teen mothers out there. White babies, of course, command a huge premium in the adoption market. Yes, there are some white families that will adopt black kids out there, but I don’t see that practice becoming hugely widespread.
The answer, as much as the religious righters hate it, is to make comprehensive sex ed, contraception (especially depo provera and the implants), and early abortion easily available to teens.
Comprehensive sex ed does reduce teen pregnancy. And so what if some pierced lesbian from PP instructs kids on various sexual practices? Teens tend to think that intercourse is “it” as far as sexual acts go. If some PP sex-ed counselor can talk some sense into teens, especially teen girls, by telling them that there are alternatives– that intercourse really isn’t the be all end all of sexual experience and doesn’t even give most women orgasms besides causing pregnancy and disease, then that is a tremendously good thing. Teens need to hear about the virtues of non-babymaking and non-disease-passing sexual practices like mutual masturbation, petting through clothes, even regular old automasturbation/onanism.
@PuffsPlus
There ought to be a dividing line between a high school sex ed class and a Betty Dodson workshop. Kids are kids and I imagine many kids and most parents don’t find that stuff appropriate for a school environment. I mean if we can’t agree on that, I presume we wouldn’t agree on many things in politics or life.
Mike H:
I’m not arguing in favor of how-to workshops, but rather in favor of the comprehensive sex-ed materials that Planned Parenthood prints. Or the “About Your Sexuality” sex-ed curriculum that the Unitarian Universalist Church uses. Hardly Betty Dodson territory.
Oh sorry, the UU curriculum is now called “Our Whole Lives”.
Pingback: Right Without Religion- Just as Scary « Heterodox Thoughts
@PuffsPlus
I am not privy to the detailed content of these materials (I think you need to purchase them), however experience and instinct let me view both PP and the Unitarians in a rather skeptical light. Neither group seems to be particularly sober or neutrally minded on quite a few contentious issues here i.e. both are in practice left-liberal organizations. In both cases I think their views on sexuality might well be outside of the American mainstream as it tends to be the case with the more committed parts of the “progressive” movement in our day and age.
I mean you go to the UUA site on this and it points out their curriculum is based on the guidelines by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US. That sounds mighty official but it’s a really just a private advocacy group. Their website features an awesome thing called RightWing Watch (with the tag line “they are up to no good”), well gee I don’t know, might hint at a certain ideological slant. And what a shock, of course if you look at their sex ed guidelines you find aside from correct and basic info on human anatomy and sexuality also the expected LGBT gender studies stuff and info veering into the “sex help book bought by middle-aged couples” territory. And that’s just the stuff actually written down, in practice a radical type might go well beyond those things.
It’s highly normative ironically even if the norms imposed aren’t those of Middle America but those of Berkeley. There’s a lot of useful information in sex ed but as per usual the concerned parties go too far and use it as an outlet for their personal ideologies. It’s fine as knowledge transfer to cut down on disease and social ill-effects but it’s used as a tool to advance a specific worldview which a great number of people find odious. And that’s not okay in a public school financed by the taxpayer.
This reminds me somewhat of attempts in the Arizona legislature to repeal the portion of the law denying additional benefits to people who bore additional children when they’d been receiving welfare payments for more than a year. The repeal measure made it through the Legislature, and was vetoed by the governor, at least twice. It was enthusiastically supported by pro-any-and-every-social-program Democrats, but it wouldn’t have made it through the Legislature without considerable support from family-values Republicans determined to eliminate anything in the law that might seem like an incentive for abortion.