Matt Drudge, in his job as ruler of the em-ess-em’s world, is pushing this statement by Nancy Pelosi as if it’s supposed to be embarrassing:
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic “stimulus” package, claiming “contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”
Pelosi, the mother of 5 children and 6 grandchildren, who once said, “Nothing in my life will ever, ever compare to being a mom,” seemed to imply babies are somehow a burden on the treasury.
The revelation came during an exchange Sunday morning on ABC’s THIS WEEK.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?
PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?
PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.
This, of course, is one of the least controversial things Nancy Pelosi has ever said. Children cost money? You don’t say! And it’s cheaper for the government to give poor people who don’t want children birth control than for the government to give poor parents who don’t want their children aid to care for the kids they can’t afford? Shocking!
I particularly love the gratuitous shot at Pelosi for daring to have had a number of children and still believe that people should have the right to chart their own reproductive destinies. Because evidently, if you have more than 1.5 children, you’re not allowed to support other people in making the choice to, say, wait a few years to have a kid until they’re more stable. That’s unpossible!
Seriously, I know there are people out there who believe that birth control is tantamount to the Killing Fields, but for the rest of us, what Pelosi said is simply a basic level of sanity: helping people not have children when they don’t want to helps them financially. If you’re struggling, having a child can push you under completely. Children are wonderful, and I’m grateful to my daughter. But that doesn’t mean they’re cheap.
If you look at historic birth rates, they go up and down with periods of economic depression, or pre-industrial periods of better and worse harvests. People attempted birth control even when the methods available weren’t too reliable.
I particularly love the gratuitous shot at Pelosi for daring to have had a number of children and still believe that people should have the right to chart their own reproductive destinies.
How does my not paying for what it costs for someone else to exercise a choice mean that I don’t believe that they have a right to make that choice?
Because evidently, if you have more than 1.5 children, you’re not allowed to support other people in making the choice to, say, wait a few years to have a kid until they’re more stable. That’s unpossible!
I doubt that anyone thinks that you are not allowed to provide financial (which is what I presume you mean) support to someone else’s reproductive choices. But what we are talking about here is objecting to you interfering with my right to choose on an individual basis whether or not I will financially support that choice.
What? It’s “unpossible” for poor people to not have kids without taking money from me to finance it?
There’s a difference between “This is a good thing to do” and “Let’s do it in a particular fashion that requires the taxpayers to pay for it.”
And no, I have no moral issues with birth control. I’ve used it myself. I just don’t see why I should have to pay for someone else’s birth control.
RonF–
No, it’s not possible to keep the poor from having children without helping them out with birth control. Just as it’s not possible to have roads without pooling our money to build them. Radical libertarianism is as practical as radical socialism — neither recognizes the reality of the world.
One can say that “poor people should have self-control,” and not have sex, but that’s no more sane than saying gay people should have self-control, and not have sex; sex is a part of human behavior, one that will not go away absent radical rewiring of our brains. We can ignore that fact, and consign a lot of poor people to have a lot of kids who grow up in poverty — kids that will be growing up in the same society as your kids and my kids, kids that will either suffer and starve, or get your money and my money to feed them (and they will get your money and my money to feed them, and Thank God). Or we can recognize that fact, and take the comparatively inexpensive step of providing easy access to contraception. I know what route costs less and takes less of your and my money — and, happily, increases personal freedom at the same time. But of course, doing that doesn’t allow us to righteously say that people should have to “pay the consequences,” never mind that in this case, the “consequence” is a child who will have to be raised by someone.
RonF-
Your argument is insane. You are objecting to spending taxpayer money on something you believe some people are capable of doing without. But our governments provide social services to poor people, and especially to poor children. You may not like that, but it is a fact. Providing birth control services to poor people who do not want it will SAVE taxpayer money from going to help the unwanted poor children. Not offering the birth control services would only be a net savings to the taxpayers if we did not offer other, much more expensive services, to the unwanted poor children. Maybe that is the world you would LIKE to live in. So argue for that. But until you have achieved that world, not wanting the government to spend taxpayer money on something that will both help people AND save taxpayer money, primarily on the grounds that you do not want the government to spend taxpayer’s on other people, is just straight-up crazy talk.
Yeah, what Fecke and Decnavda said. I may well agree with everything RonF said and STILL I’d favor providing birth control purely as a cost-saving measure.
I also agree that RonF is insane, but that’s a whole ‘nuther thread.
But WHATEVER the merits of giving contraception to poor people, I also share Drudge’s and Stephanopolos’ skepticism that this policy is related to economic stimulus. The reasons we and Pelosi have discusses for this policy would apply in good times and bad. Are we really supposed to conclude that the timing of this proposal is merely a coincidence?
I recall a labor law case in which an obviously incompetent guy was fired as he was trying to organize a union. The Nat. Labor Relations Bd concluded that the boss had a hundred good reasons to fire the guy, but that the timing and circumstances clearly demonstrated that the boss was firing the guy for a forbidden reason. I’m reaching a similar conclusion here. I conclude that Pelosi has put contraceptives into this bill because it’s one of the first bills that’s going to move now that the threat of a Bush veto is gone; the economic stimulus rationale is just a pretext.
nobody.really-
I agree this probably something that Pelosi has wanted to do for a long time. She now has a great opportunity to get it done, so she is doing it. How is that suspicious timing?
I would also like to point that I merely called RonF’s arguments, and his position in this instance, insane, not RonF himself. I admit that I originally typed that he was insane, but I changed that before I submitted the comment. The specific set of evidence I have does not allow for such a broad conclusion.
The suspicious aspect is Pelosi’s claim that this policy is motivated by the need to stimulate the economy, when I suspect that it isn’t.
This is part of a larger story. When Republicans were in charge, Democrats criticized them for permitting bills to get filled up with legislators’ unrelated pet projects, “earmarks” and “pork.” Now that the Democrats are in charge, Republicans are accusing the Democrats of hypocrisy, and are trying to rally opposition to the bill by pointing out how it has become filled with unrelated provisions. Drudge and Stephanopolos are seeking to shed some light on this conflict.
While I find arguments for subsidizing contraception reasonably strong, I find arguments linking the policy to economic stimulus pretty weak. I suspect that Pelosi wants these subsidies for reasons unrelated to economic stimulus, and is choosing to attach this policy to the stimulus bill merely as an expediant — this bill is likely to be among the first that will pass since Bush left office. But Pelosi doesn’t want to acknowledge her rationale because it would expose her to accusations of hypocrisy and aid the Republican effort in opposing the bill.
With respect to RonF’s mental state, well, I’d heard he was betting on the Arizona Cardinals. ‘Nuf said.
(Oh sure, RonF, go ahead and deny it. Like anyone’s going to take the word of an insane guy….)
RonF, you basically have three options:
1) Pay for poor people’s birth control;
2) Pay to assist poor people who have children;
3) Deny social support to people who have no money for either BC or children.
Of those, #3 is… unlikely. not impossible, but politically unlikely.
Of the remaining two, #1 is cheaper than #2, so you should probably prefer #1.
I note, however, that I and others have occasionally been castigated for supporting programs which encourage poor people to have less children, as an aspect of attempting to become non-poor. Does this mean that you’re OK with those programs?
There is a huge difference between giving people the tools to have fewer children (and equally important, to be able to plan when those children show up) and giving them the message that they ought not have children.
Bet on the Cardinals? Hell no. I may be insane, but I’m not crazy. Of course, last year I bet on the Patriots (the first pro football game I ever went to was Patriots/Bills in Fenway Park).
It’s true that from a purely financial viewpoint, providing discounted/free birth control for people who have limited resources is cheaper than paying for obstetrical bills, etc. I suppose that I should just grit my teeth and say “Given the way things are, this is the smart way to go.” But good God, people, condoms don’t cost THAT much. You’ve got to be pretty poor to not be able to afford a few condoms a week, and I doubt that this program will be limited to that level of income.
But it was this formulation that got me going:
I particularly love the gratuitous shot at Pelosi for daring to have had a number of children and still believe that people should have the right to chart their own reproductive destinies. Because evidently, if you have more than 1.5 children, you’re not allowed to support other people in making the choice to, say, wait a few years to have a kid until they’re more stable. That’s unpossible!
Again – failing to pay for the facility for or consequences of someone else’s choice is NOT equivalent to denying that someone else the right to exercise that choice. Failing to buy me a gun is not denying me the right to keep and bear arms. Failure to buy me a printing press is not denying me the right to publish what I please. Failing to pay for someone else’s birth control may or may not be a wise and/or moral choice, but it is NOT denying them the right to “chart their own reproductive destinies.” And government is not the only entity with the ability to act in the United States. Refusing to have government buy and distribute birth control to the poor is not disallowing you from supporting “other people in making the choice to, say, wait a few years to have a kid until they’re more stable.” Nothing is stopping you from giving Planned Parenthood a wad of your own hard-earned cash and asking them to disburse it for that very purpose.
What it disallows you from doing is forcing ME to provide such support (and “force” is not used here in a figurative sense). But that’s not what the posting said.
The other thing is that as pointed out above this is social programming disguised as economic stimulus. This isn’t hope and change, this is business as usual; lie to the media, lie to the voters and ram a bill through Congress that’s festooned with thousands of riders that have no actual relationship to the point of the bill at all. There’s more pork on this bill than in the meat case at Sam’s Club.
If I could get the ear of President Obama, I’d say “You want change? Here’s change. Refuse to sign any bill that has a rider on it that is not related to the core purpose, regardless of the merits of what’s in the bill that IS related to the core purpose. Make issues stand or fail in Congress on their own merits, not on whatever else people can tie to them.” That alone would kill a ton of unnecessary expenditures and would make the acts of Congress a lot more representative of what the electorate actually wants them to do.
But good God, people, condoms don’t cost THAT much. You’ve got to be pretty poor to not be able to afford a few condoms a week, and I doubt that this program will be limited to that level of income.
and
Nothing is stopping you from giving Planned Parenthood a wad of your own hard-earned cash and asking them to disburse it for that very purpose.
I’m having a hard time understanding your viewpoint, RonF. Do you feel the same way about other medical prescriptions and/or services? I’m having a hard time understanding how a birth control prescription or diaphragm is any different from any other medication or medical device.
I see contraception as medical care. Are you seeing it as a recreational expense? Or are you against any and all government assistance with medical expenses, no matter the disease and/or condition?
No, I don’t see the prevention of pregnancy in general as healthcare. It’s certainly not being presented by Speaker Pelosi as healthcare; she’s claiming it as a financial stimulus. And if you don’t want to get pregnant, there are ways of doing that without spending my money.
(sorry for the late response…..haven’t had the time to get back on the ‘net until now)
And if you don’t want to get pregnant, there are ways of doing that without spending my money.
True. Just like there are ways of treating or preventing diabetes, heart disease, etc. without spending tax dollars. Are you against all use of taxpayer dollars for medical care to individuals, or just contraception?
I’m not playing “gotcha” here. I really want to know. It blows my mind that anyone wouldn’t consider contraception as a medical issue.
(let’s set aside the issue of it being in the stimulus package, since that is a moot point. I can understand if someone argues that it would be better if contraception wasn’t addressed in the financial stimulus package as a rider, but elsewhere in legislation that was more medically related—-even though there is a longstanding tradition of attaching riders. I don’t see that as the main opposition to inclusion of family planning aid in this bill—it seemed to me that the opposition was more along the “contraception is recreation”. I don’t understand why contraception is seen as different from any other medical care.)
Why is popping “The Pill” any different from popping metformin (for diabetes) or levothyroxone (thyroid)?
Diabetes and thyroid hormone deficiencies are diseases. Pregnancy isn’t.
no, it’s technically not a disease. It’s a medical condition. Not that there’s much difference, really. (“High blood pressure! It’s a disease with a fancy name! It’s a statement of condition! It will kill you either way!”)
That said, pregnancy is dangerous no matter how you classify it. It serves as the BASIS for a whole host of diseases and other dangerous conditions–some fatal, some not.
This is incomprehensible to me. How are you defining healthcare, so that control of reproduction has nothing to do with it? Do you really think that getting pregnant or not isn’t relevant to health?
In the long run, the government will spend less money — and the economy will be better off — if everyone who’d like to delay or prevent parenthood, is able to do so. Saying it shouldn’t be that way won’t change that it is that way.
Also, all government spending has some stimulative effect. Keynes argued that paying people to bury pots of money, and paying other people to dig the money back up, would have a stimulative effect. So you’re wrong if you think that spending money on reproductive health can’t be part of a fiscal stimulus package. That money goes to pay for workers, and landlords, and labs, and supplies, etc.., all of whom then spend the money elsewhere, which helps to stimulate the economy.
Now, you could argue that the stimulus package should concentrate on items that have been shown to have the largest possible stimulus effect, and reproductive rights isn’t the most effective stimulus imaginable. But since conservatives want a stimulus package that consists 100% of tax cuts (that’s what House Republicans say they were holding out for), I don’t think conservatives have much credibility when they argue that their goal is the most effective stimulus possible.
By the way, as you should know after years of reading a feminist site, condoms and other low-cost methods aren’t the answer. Some men and boys will refuse to use them. Female-controlled birth control methods are necessary for effectiveness.
If I recall correctly, some of the largest possible stimulus effects come from food stamps.
Perhaps RonF just wants to save the money so we can spend it all on food stamps…?
http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/29/news/economy/stimulus_analysis/index.htm