Pelosi Goes Back to the Progressive Movement’s Roots
If you wait long enough, progressive politics will, more often than not, come back to its roots.
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.
Ah, yes. Undesireables as “consequences”. Stacy McCain translates that concept into German, where it might look more familiar.
I can’t act like I’ve not heard this before, and quite recently. After all, our President campaigned on the notion of children as punishment. It’s like Margaret Sanger has come back to life and is running the Democratic Party. Actually, given how much power Planned Parenthood and NARAL have on the party, she might as well be.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Why Won’t Nancy Let Them Vote? Even She Doesn’t Seem to Know.
- Nancy, Where Does Natural Gas Come From?
- Bush’s Economy and Pelosi’s Bad Choice
Category: Our New Democratic Overlords, The Economy and Your Money, The Social Issues
My dear, contraception does reduce costs. I personally know that to be true. I was grateful for Planned Parenthood's contraception services as a college student. I continue to be grateful to Planned Parenthood and other funded women's health agencies for their continuing work with younger women including my three adult stepdaughters and my own biodaughter.
As for me, I like to say that "I'm menopausal, but nostalgic for Choice."
Always your loving and loyal opposition,
GraceD
It doesn't reduce costs, though. Someone has to be around to pay for the humongous government programs. We're taking more and more from people who at some point will simply stop producing or will go elsewhere and then where will our social programs be? Contraception, wisely applied, is a good thing. Our government has never wisely appled it.
Planned Parenthood turns my stomach because of its founding principles. Margaret Sanger was a repulsive person who honestly believed that the poor, "feeble", and minorities should not reproduce. And look at who PP targets even today?
Hmmm…did Ms. Pelosi say she was Catholic? Any dichotomy with her policy views vs. her church's theology? Ms. Pelosi practices overt duplicity!
GraceD "personally know that to be true. I was grateful for Planned Parenthood’s contraception services as a college student."
Why, if one can afford college, do they require that others pay for their birth control? It can't be money…I know money is usually tight for people in college, but birth control is simply not that expensive. I am not believing that someone who can afford college, is living hand-to-mouth without any other luxuries that could potentially be sacrificed in order to buy the contraceptives you need…. So why is it the responsibility of tax payers to fund contraceptives or women's health care? So young people can still afford to eat out or go to clubs? Afford extra cell phone minutes or special ring tones? Download more iTunes for their iPod? So they can still buy alcoholic beverages or other party drugs or so they can pay for their week-long, spring break trips? I mean seriously, college, of all places is by no means some poverty-stricken tenement compound.
Why is it that college and/or liberal women so often claim to be independent in mind & body, claim to be under the authority of no one, yet can't seem to take care of themselves without help from the government and other people's money?
Cheesestick, please. Kindly watch your generalizations about me. Anyway, I'm not the iPod generation, rather, I'm an 8 track tape deck geezer.
;D
Huh…after reading your other posts, I didn't think you would dodge the challenge…
I did not make a generalization about you. The second part of what you said demonstrates your belief that these government funded service for the iPod generation is still a very good thing; here is what you said:
"I continue to be grateful to Planned Parenthood and other funded women’s health agencies for their continuing work with younger women including my three adult stepdaughters and my own biodaughter."
All I'm asking is why do you feel it is the responsibility of tax payers to pay for health services & contraceptives for the younger generation, such as your 3 adult children? Especially among those who appear to have the means to pay for it themselves?
It's a good question Cheesy, and I suspect that part of the answer comes back to the subject of "choice". I've known Grace and while and we've had plenty of conversations. A woman's autonomy is important to her and I suspect that she sees public funding of Planned Parenthood to be a public good because it fosters that autonomy. She knows I disagree with that very strongly, but I can't deny that for her and a lot of women like her, it matters a great deal.
Not that I'm throwing up an alibi or anything. I know that Grace isn't a "go to the mattresses" kind of liberal like msot blog commenters are. But for conservatives like you and I, there's room to sway opinions. Grace is willing to listen if we can give her something to listen to. I think the Planned Parenthood founding principle of providing birth control to minorities and poor people and disabled people to keep them from reproducing and being a strain on the resources of those sound in mind and body is still very much in operation today. How we get that across to folks like my friend Grace in a way that makes them consider the option seriously is a question I've yet to figure out.
>>A woman’s autonomy is important to her >>
How can that be true if she's dependent on the government for a handout? How is that autonomous?
I'd even sanction contraceptive handouts as long as it was mandatory for women who had one child on welfare. If the woman had a second child, welfare ends. If the child starves to death … well, how is that different from abortion? just a bit late, that's all. Or…how about we give out contraceptives, but if the woman has a child while on a contraceptive program, the child is removed from her care and given to adoptive parents who are financially able to care for it.
Or how about we just remove all children from the care of welfare recipients and give them to financially responsible adoptive parents? Adoptions final, and no return possible.
Wouldn't that also solve the dependency on the government problem?
And Grace…are you saying that you were unwilling to pay for contraceptives for your daughter or your son's girlfriends parents were unwilling to assist them? Why wasn't it _your_ responsibility (or theirs)? You were the parent…are you an irresponsible parent?
I still don't understand why liberal women believe turning their health & "family planning" over to PP or the government makes them more independent….it does exactly the opposite, it makes many dependent. And, Grace, while I don't automatically ascribe the motives of people like Pelosi to someone like yourself, I still feel like you should think about why people like her are so determined to enslave women… especially poor & minority women?
Because this whole illusion that is being sold about how women's access to free and quality "health care & family planning" is a civil right and so on….this has roots in the very recent past where liberal policies allowed doctors & health care people, abortionists and other busy-bodies to determine who among us was too "feeble-minded" to be allowed to reproduce and thus, legally use coercive tactics in order to be able to sterilize these people; and in some cases, be able to sterilize people against their will. Finally, in the late 70's, legislation was passed against sterilization abuse as it was determined to be a civil rights violation.
The people that believed so strongly in limiting the numbers of minority & lower class babies, for both economic & distorted environmental concerns, did not simply go away when the legislation was passed. They reformulated their approach….and market it as "sexual health rights", and "family planning" (which is ridiculous since they really only help people plan to NOT have a family) and "women's right to choose". They convince people like you that people like me are the enemy….wanting to deny you your "rights" but these "rights" of which they speak, were created out of whole cloth. These "rights" were invented to provide cover for people who abandoned their responsibilities. (The feeble-minded if you will….) And by pushing these government programs to alleviate the consequences for the greater society pushes such women right back into the "loving" arms of the very same people who would have forced sterilization on them in the first place. People like Pelosi who see poor & minority babies as a burden on the environment as opposed to being a blessing, which I'm sure is how she views her own many healthy, wealthy and white children & grandchildren.
(Sorry, this was so long…)