Note: I got some information on in this letter from a previous Kos diarist, but I have not been able to find his entry to link to, if anyone is aware of it, please let me know!
***Keep in mind this is meant to send to Pro-Lifers***
I imagine that this entry will be controversial and perhaps even considered insubordination by Pro-Choice voters. However, I firmly believe that as long as abortion is an issue Republicans win. It is the only thing that fires up their base and there are millions of people that vote on this issue alone regardless of everything else.
Personally, i live in a community that is seventy-five percent Pro-Life (my estimate). My family is pro-life, my in-laws and extended family. Ninety percent (or more) of my church is Pro-life and I only have a handful of friends who are Pro-Choice. I shake my head in disbelief nearly every day as I see everyone I care about hurting tremendously economically, yet they stand firm in voting against their interests because of abortion. I feel as if I am living out "What's the Matter with Kansas", yet i live in Pennsylvania!
Almost every one of these people that I talk to love Obama, think he would be a better leader, and hate McCain, yet, because of abortion they are leaning towards McCain anyway. So, over the past few weeks, I have crafted an e-mail to send out to these friends pleading with them to reconsider.
I know Dems argue that there are more Pro-Choice people in the country; however, when it comes to election day we lose time and again with the only victory since Carter coming with Ross Perot drawing a lot of Republican votes. There are millions of voters that should be Dems, but we lose because we do not neutralize this issue.
I stand firm that we cannot win unless we neutralize this issue and this e-mail was an attempt to do this. I have sent it out to a about a hundred people and have had a number of people say they will support Barack now, dozens of positive responses, and only a couple of negative responses. Here it is:
My Plea to Voters Who Support Republicans Because of Abortion
Growing up, I was a Pro-Life Republican for the first 24 of my 29 years. I actually was registered in the “Pro-Life” party. Then, in 2003 when we invaded Iraq, I became very disenchanted with Republicans and with many churches that fully supported the Republican party. Soon after, I had multiple friends that died in Iraq and after looking into how the war was enacted I knew that I could not support the Republican Party anymore. I became disenchanted with the party that I grew up believing was the only option. The only problem: I was firmly Pro-Life, so I could not vote for a Democrat either. The 2004 election was a very difficult decision for me because of this double bind. I was so strongly against the war that I decided I definitely had to vote against Bush and convinced myself that I was not voting for Kerry, just against the architect of the war.
Over the past 4 years, I have done intensive research into abortion, legislation and how the issue has been handled in other countries around the world. What I have found through this research has convinced me that the term Pro-Life is a misnomer in politics mostly used by politicians to get votes and that the majority of high level Pro-Life politicians do little, if anything, to actually stop abortions. In fact, their policies actually have directly increased the amount of abortions in the country. For example, every single year since Roe vs. Wade that a Republican has been in office abortions have drastically increased. Every year a Democrat has been in office abortions have drastically decreased. There has not been a single year in 35 years where this has not been true. I will explain how and why this occurs in the rest of this article, but first a few things to think about when considering if top Republican politicians really want to stop abortion:
1.) Republicans have held the presidency for 20 out of the last 28 years. The president names Supreme Court Justices, so they have the most impact in overturning Roe vs. Wade.
2.) 7 of the 9 Current Supreme Court Justices have been appointed by Pro-Life presidents, so Republicans have the clear majority, yet have not overturned it. They easily could have overturned it by appointing 5 Judges that would stop it, yet they have not.
3.) Republicans had control of all three Branches of government from 2000-2006, during which they pushed through a ton of unpopular legislation (giving 10’s of Billion of dollars of our tax money to Exxon Mobil as one example), yet almost never addressed anything even approaching stopping or reducing abortions.
There are many other reasons that I believe that a majority of Republican politicians, but the most important is that they do not have a plan to deal with the problems that would occur if Roe was overturned. If they were serious, they would need to have some detailed plans in order to overcome the disasters that would follow, such as:
A.) Backing up courts in all fifty states for at least 1 year and in many states many years because abortion becomes a state-by-state issue if Roe is overturned. The courts will be even more full after they begin arresting doctors and mothers.
B.) It would cause large amounts of doctors to relocate and since the far majority of doctors are pro-choice, states that ban abortion would have severe health care problems.
C.) Our orphanages and Foster homes are currently severely overcrowded, so we would need to build a huge infrastructure to house the tens to hundreds of thousands of babies that would be abandoned
D.) We would need to find out how the states that outlaw abortions are going to police it, and since in most states police forces are already stretched thin, how we are going to get the extra forces to deal with this.
E.) Since we already have the highest incarceration rates of any civilized country (over 2 million people in jail) how we will expand our jails even further to arrest mothers and / or doctors.
F.) How to deal with miscarriages. If someone falls down stairs, gets punched in the stomach, etc. how will we determine if it was purposefully done or an accident?
G.) How to deal with underground abortions. In countries that have outlawed abortions, nearly 76 percent of them occur anyways, how will we crack down on this?
H.) Once we determine how and who to incarcerate, we will need to determine a cut-off: Does the morning after pill constitute abortion? Does Birth control? Will both of them be outlawed as well?
I.) And many, many other problems.
I think that the best proof that most Republican politicians are not serious about this issue is the fact that none of them that I am aware of (and I have searched quite a bit) outline how they would deal with any of the above problems. In other words, they do not have a plan to stop abortions and what would happen afterwards, they just say the words “Pro-Life” to get votes. Of course there are probably exceptions to this – people that are really serious – but they are so few that it will not be done in our lifetimes.
Given all that I have written above, I think that the answer is instead of trying to outlaw abortions, fighting about it for the next 35 years while abortions continue to increase, and not getting anything done – Why can’t 90 percent of us come together to reduce abortions? That could mean that over the next ten years we could reduce abortions by millions! Where if we just continue to fight over it approximately 15 million abortions will occur in this country over the next decade. If we work together, then this number could be reduced drastically.
So, why do I think that the Democratic Party is the best right now for reducing abortions? For the following reasons:
There are Seven major factors (There are more, but these are the major ones) that have been proven to affect a women’s decision to have an abortion:
1.) Access to Quality Health Care (and children’s healthcare) – Studies have shown that women that have access to quality health care have fewer abortions.
2.) Level of Education – Studies have consistently proven that the more educated a person is, the less likely to have an abortion
3.) Economic opportunity. If a woman has good health care, a good education and economic opportunity, she is much less likely to have an abortion.
4.) War – In times of war, women are much more likely to have abortions. Times are uncertain, financial problems increase, and millions of their spouses are away for years, raising abortion rates.
5.) Poverty in General – Every single year (since Roe vs. Wade) that poverty has increased abortions have increased. Every single year that poverty has decreased abortions have decreased. Countries with low poverty rates have the lowest abortion rates by far.
6.) Access to adoption – The more effective of a system of adoption that there is, the more likely that a woman is to consider this option. Unfortunately, our current adoption system is a mess.
7.) Teen Pregnancy - Nearly half of abortions are from teenage mothers. If we provide teenagers with comprehensive education, we should be able to drastically reduce this number.
Republican politicians often use abortion as a wedge to get people to vote for them while they block nearly every piece of health care, education, adoption, and economic legislation that would actually reduce the number of abortions in the U.S.
Often Republican politicians use these wedge issues such as abortion, which they have no proven record for doing anything about in order to distract from the real issues affecting people on a daily basis and actually increase abortions. For example: The McCain campaign has been fear mongering that Obama will raise everyones taxes, while the independent Tax Policy Center has confirmed that Obama's tax plan offers greater tax relief to the middle class than McCain's plan. In fact, everyone making less than $112,000 a year gets a bigger tax break under Obama than McCain. This is clear and blatant deceit on the part of the McCain campaign.
Don't be fooled, if you really care about stopping abortion, ask yourself the following questions:
Has George W. Bush (Pro-Life) done anything to stop abortions over the past eight years, while at the same time starting an unnecessary war, ruining our economy, and giving billions of our tax dollars to companies like Exxon who are already making record profits?
The answer – he has done nothing on the issue that most people put him in office for and abortions have drastically increased under his leadership.
When the (Pro-Life) Republicans had control of all three branches of Government from 2000-2006, did they do anything to stop abortions?
The answer – Absolutely nothing. They passed one bill on the issue, which had broad – support from Democrats as well and only affected about 400 cases a year, while abortions increased during that same time by tens of thousands. Also, the bill would have received unanimous support except that the Republicans refused to provide an exception for the life of the mother – which really think about this – if your family had to chose between the baby and the mother, shouldn’t that be your family’s decision?
Pro-Life Republicans appointed 7 of the 9 Supreme Court Justices, have they done anything to stop abortions?
The answer – Nothing.
Do any of the Republicans have a plan to deal with the problems that would occur from overturning Roe vs. Wade?
None. I have searched literally over 100 web-sites from Pro-Life Politicians and have not found one that deals with any of the problems that would occur.
So, how do we end the Abortion crisis in the United States?
Deal with the Six Issues that I listed Earlier in this e-mail (Adoption, Poverty, Health Care, War, Education, Economic Opportunity, and one I didn’t list above – Women’s support Programs)
How do I know this will work? Because it has worked in other places all around the world. Here are the statistics to prove the best ways at reducing abortion:
* Countries with the highest abortion rates like Angola, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Liberia, Egypt and Guatemala also have illegal abortion, meaning more babies die in countries where abortion is illegal.
*
The Netherlands has the lowest abortion rate in the world even though contraception and abortion there are legal and free. The teenage pregnancy rate in the Netherlands is 9 times lower than in the U.S.
* Countries with the lowest abortion rates; Sweden, Iceland, Singapore, Finland, Japan, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Canada all have legal abortion.
* What makes these countries so much better on abortion than the US is they all have free access to high quality health care (including for children), a lower poverty rate, women’s programs, more access to adoption, parental leave from jobs, better quality education and comprehensive sex education taught throughout puberty.
So, ultimately, we all need to think and pray about the following:
If you still feel that outlawing abortions is the best option, consider the fact that it has not been able to be accomplished in 35 years and abortions keep increasing in the meantime. Also, that countries that outlaw abortions, still have enormous problems with abortions.
The main question is: How can we actually get something done? The only way is by working together. And the one thing that 90 percent of us can agree on is that abortions should be reduced – so let us work on this together! Then, after abortions become drastically decreased we can have a less heated and more productive conversation about how to deal with this issue.
Update: Please Digg if you would like to spread the word!
Mostly, ask yourself: Is my family better off than it was eight years ago? Is the country better off than eight years ago? Is it worth risking the empty promises of Republicans for another eight years?