Will Libido Be The Defining Issue of 2014 Elections?

March 11, 2014

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, EINNews.com

Okay, let’s have a show of hands out there.

How many of you believe that women would no longer have abortions if Roe v Wade was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?

I’m waiting.

Well, it appears that we’ve found an area of agreement on the contentious abortion issue. No one REALLY believes that making abortion illegal would end abortion as we know it.

The issue isn’t, and never has been, whether women will have abortions. They will. They always have. Before Roe v Wade there were estimated 1.2 million abortions performed annually in the U.S., just about the same number as now.

But there’s a big difference between then and now. Then, most of those abortions were performed by who-knows-whom, who-knows where. In her book “When Abortion Was A Crime,” Leslie Reagan, professor of history and law at the University of Illinois, cites a study done in 1931 showing illegal abortion procedures were responsible for 14% of maternal deaths.

The abortion issue isn't about abolishing the procedure, it's about health and safety for women and young girls.

The vast majority of Americans understand this. In Gallup polls going back 20 years the percentage of those who would make abortion illegal again has hovered around 20%. Sometimes as low as 15%.

Despite overwhelming support for a women’s right to choose an abortion, and despite U.S. Supreme Court decisions upholding that right, 22 states enacted stiff obstacles in 2013. There are now only 10 states where women and girls can exercise their right to choose with reasonable options among providers and without having to run an obstacle course of restrictions.

And let’s explore the “girls” part of this a bit further. An estimated 46% of all girls between the ages of 15 and 19 have had sex at least once, according to authoritative Guttmacher Institute studies. There’s a 90% chance that a girl will get pregnant without unprotected sex. An estimated 82% of teen pregnancies are unplanned.

As the anti-choice movement racks up more success in narrowing abortion choice, we are seeing more of their advocates expanding the political landscape to include contraception.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won some headlines the other day by suggesting that the only kind of women who wanted birth control from “Uncle Sugar” were those who couldn’t “control their libidos.” Do you hear echoes here of the not-so-long-ago Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Flake confrontation?

Pausing for a moment to point out the obvious, that male libidos, controlled and uncontrolled, also have something to do with sex, what makes contraception a real and immediate issue is the campaign against it as part of the Affordable Care Act. The ACA requires employers to fully cover the cost of contraceptive devices in ACA-approved health plans. Some are suing to opt out of that requirement on religious grounds.

The U.S. Supreme Court will deliver its judgment by June, but for now Republicans have jumped all over this issue, claiming that the Obama administration is running roughshod over our sacred rights of religious liberty. The “war-on-religion” argument plays well with the GOP’s social conservative base, and provides cover for GOP state legislators who are tightening access to contraception as they close down family planning centers.

Texas’ draconian new restrictions on abortion centers will drive all by 6 out of service this year. That’s 6 centers for 26 million people, down from more than 50 just a few years ago. Not only do girls and women in those service areas lose local access to abortion assistance, they also lose a whole range of family planning services, including reliable health information, professional advice, condoms and other birth prevention devices.

All of this is justified, as Texas Gov. Rick Perry said when he signed the bill that guaranteed family planning carnage, “to support life and for those who support the health of Texas women.” If that was the intention, the Texas law was a curious vehicle to try to achieve it. It would be akin to closing hospitals to keep people from becoming sick.

Sarah Palin suggested in her speech to the C-PAC the other day that the best birth control method might be for women to “keep their knees together.” Clearly she agrees with Huckabee on that libido thing. That might be good for an applause line among the political faithful, but GOP candidates campaigning for votes in the real world should take a head count of the field troops they are leading. Compared with the size of the electorate it’s a tiny group, and it doesn’t seem to be growing.

In virtually all public opinion surveys, 90% or more of the American public favors contraception. I would not want to be a candidate arguing against numbers like that, or trying to defend contraception restrictions, especially to women with active libidos.

There is, of course, something Americans can do about all of this. They can vote out of office those who are intent on taking us back to the days when abortion was synonymous with high maternal mortality, when family size grew far beyond what partners had in mind and when sexual experimentation among the young insured shotgun weddings.

Those were not the good old days. Nevertheless, without serious pushback from the other 90%. that’s where a small minority of activists who want to revisit them are taking us.

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Among responses to my March 3 column about the rise of progressive political parties, was this from reader Michael Trudeau. "I read your recent article with interest and was pleased to see your suggestion that perhaps American progressives could benefit from something other than the Democrat-Republican two-party system. However, as you can imagine, I was surprised that such an article mentioned Working Families (a Democrat-fusion party) but neglected to mention the largest independent progressive party in the United States: the Green Party. You might be interested to know that the Green Party of the United States currently holds 152 offices nationwide—including 5 mayoralties and 15 city council seats—and in the past has held up to 230 offices. Was the omission of the Green Party deliberate? If so, may I ask why? Or was its omission an oversight?"

Oversight, Michael. Oversight. And I'm happy to publish your note to fill in that important gap.

(Joe Rothstein can be contacted at [email protected])