The Texas Fillibuster

Last night, Texas Sentaor Wendy Davis spent 11 hours in a fillibuster, designed to prevent a bill from passing that would impose heavy restrictions on the practice of abortion in the stae of Texas. The basic premise of the bill stated that, if it passed, in order for a medical location to perform an abortion, the doctors performing said abortion must have priveleges at a hospital that is no more than 30 miles distant from the clinic where the abortion is being performed. Because Texas has such a large rural communit, should bill have passed, only 5 of the 41 existing clinics would have remained open, thus greatly limiting women's access to abortion services. You can imagine the excitement of the pro-abortion crowd when the vote finally took place, a little too late, preventing the bill from passing.

My initial reaction to this is, why are you so bound and determined to make sure that people have easy access to abortions? First of all, the bill would not have shut down abortions, just made it more necessary to plan ahead and make sure you can be there for the procedure at a convenient time. I was talking with a friend about this (who is on the other side of the issue) and her response was that given that low income women are the ones who generally wind up with unwanted pregnancies, needing to make a trip anywhere to get it done will greatly affect their income because they'll have to take time off work, etc. While this may true, and while it is definitely true that there are a lot of rural communities with hospital access no closer than 1-2 hours away, the last time I checked, they were open 7 days a week. All that means, is that you go on your day off. In addition to that, simply keeping hte baby to term is actually cheaper than trying to pay for an abortion.

The other response I was given was that women who are forced to carry a baby to term and then choose to give it up for adoption tend to suffer from mental illness as a result. While this may be true, it is also true that the woman who got pregnant chose to have sex. Even if she was practicing contraception, it is not fullproof 100% of the time. If the reason for the abortion is because the parents (single or married) cannot afford another mouth to feed, then the mental health risks from the child being "unwanted" is really a moot point. It's not like the mother in this case does not love her child, she simply can't afford to take care of it. That's a completely different situation. However, if it is true that carrying the child results in mental health problems, we should also do research to find out why mental illness results from such a pregnancy. If you know you aren't keeping it, then carrying it for 9 months doesn't seem like it should be the end of the world, unless of course the mental health problems come as a result of becoming attached to the life growing inside of you and then giving it up later. Which would make sense, but abortion leads to mental health issues as well. (In fact, according to this study mental illness as a result of abortion is higher than that which results from carrying a baby to term, and then giving it up. What a shock!)

Now, naturally, this conversation led to sex education and access to contraceptives. Since Texas has one of the largest teen pregnancy rates, it would stand to reason that their "abstinence only" education isn't working. And in our society, that's probably true. It is also true that most students are not receiving information about the results of sex beyond pregnancy, such as STD's. Is this information they should have access to? Absolutely. But not in the way that most sex education teaches it. Instead of presenting contraception as the be all and end all of preventing unwanted consequences from having sex. I know from the sex ed unit I had in high school the abstinence was something that was thrown out as an option at the very end, but largely in such a way that it was obvious the curriculum expected teens to have sex, and that astinence was something they were required to mention, but nothing more.

Which raises another question. In the state of Texas, the age of consent is 17. That means, that if you are under the age of 17, whether you agreed to it or not, it is illegal to have sex. The question then, is why are we pushing to make sure that condoms and contraceptives are available to 11 year olds? (see the news story here about Plan B age limits) The fact remains that our society has determined that it is acceptable for teenagers to be sexually active, regardless of what the law says. Because of this abortion centers are deemed necessary. Abortion is viewed as a form of emergency contraception, and as such tells you that no matter what your actions are, there will be no consequences.

Those who are fighting for better sex education and more access to contraceptives mention over and over again the decision making aspect that is brought into such education, emphasizing the fact that you can't make a responsible decision if you don't have all the facts. But maybe,if kids weren't being told that their actions don't have to have consequences so long as they use a reliable form of contraception, there wouldn't be such an influx of teen parents. Maybe instead, they would weigh the consequences, knowing all the facts about pregnancy and STD's, and knowing that regardless of what they do to prevent it, having sex carries with it a high risk of unwanted consequences. Maybe if our society hadn't provided so many opportunities for a way out after the fact, people would stop and think. And maybe, just maybe, if they stopped to think before they did something, then the necessity for such things as abortion would begin to decline, and all of this would be an irelevant conversation. But I don' see that happening any time soon :P