Who is really Pro-Life?

I'm pro-life and I've been doing a lot of reading recently about what can be done to reduce abortions in the United States.  If you've read my previous posts you know that I don't think that Republicans are going to try to make it illegal any time soon so what are the alternative approaches to reduce abortion?

I found the first part of the answer in an unusual place.  In Germany, they have similar abortion laws to the United States and are a first world country but they have an abortion rate that is 60% lower than the US.  So what accounts for the difference?

In the US, 57% of women getting an abortion reported some form of economic distress in the last year, often the loss of a job or their home.  The US offers almost no support for pregnant women or new mothers and so the additional expenses associated with a baby can be daunting.  Germany on the other hand offers significant financial aid to mothers drastically reducing the potential impact on their financial stability.  Another piece of data that supports the financial aspect of abortions is the fact that women that are members of economically depressed minorities in the US are 3 to 5 times more likely to have an abortion.  So financial programs may be able to reduce abortions in the US as well.

Note: I see some possibility for these financial programs to be abused so it would probably make sense to have some limits on them to keep the costs reasonable and not encourage people to have children for the wrong reasons.

A less surprising find was that teenagers who received comprehensive sex education started having sex at a later age than students who had no sex education or had abstinence only education.  This is obviously going to reduce abortions amongst teenagers.  Also, it was found that reducing teenagers access to contraceptive did not lower their sexual activity levels but did increase the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

Unfortunately, in the US the Republicans are the "pro-life" party but they don't support any of these steps that would reduce the abortion rate in this country and they have shown themselves to be uninterested in outlawing abortions (please reference my previous posts).  The Democrats are pro-choice but they would support the social policies that would reduce the number of abortions

So I'm left with the conclusion that the Democrats are more likely to reduce the number of abortions in the US more than the Republicans will even if they are pro-choice.

What we really need in this country is a more compassionate pro-life party.  A party that really wants to help the poor and unfortunate in a way that Christ would approve of.  That is what I dream of for America.

Irreponsible Politics

I am a big believer in fiscal conservatism.  I try to be frugal with my spending and I think I generally succeed (my rainy day fund has about 6 months expenses in it and I have a nice sized retirement fund for someone my age).  People who don't manage their money well and are living paycheck to paycheck even when they have decent paying jobs are being irresponsible as far as I'm concerned. 

So I get very frustrated when trying to figure out who to vote for because neither party seems to really represent fiscal conservatism.  Supposedly republicans are the party of fiscal conservatism but lets look at two recent examples to see why this isn't the case.

The first is Ronald Reagan.  During his first year in office the US ran a deficit of 79 Billion.  For his 3rd thru 8th year our country consistently ran deficits of 150 billion or more.  Also we were in a recession for most of his first two years so this increase in deficit spending after we are out of the recession is even less understandable. 

The second is George W Bush.  During most of Clinton's second term the US actually ran a surplus and according to the budget office we were expected to run a 5 trillion surplus over the next 10 years.  During Bush's first year we ran a 120 Billion surplus, however in all 7 years after that we always ran a deficit of at least 150 Billion.  How is this being fiscally conservative?

Democrats aren't any better at cutting deficits.  Just look at the trillion dollar deficits that Obama has run.  The deficits were likely bigger because of the recession but I don't see how he would have reduced them with his policies either.  Democrats generally like costly government programs, and spending lots of money even if you pay for it with extra taxes is not fiscally conservative.

The only time during my life that the government was acting mostly responsible was during Bill Clinton's second term.  The Republicans controlled congress with a Democratic president and together they adopted pay as you go policies so that all new programs were paid for with either spending cuts elsewhere or tax increases.  This is the only time in recent history that we ran a surplus.

While I'd really like to blame both political parties for this mess I think that the average voter is the one really at fault.  Many voters in this country vote for whoever promises them the most benefits.  Many people vote republican because they are hoping for bigger tax cuts.  Others vote democratic because they think the government programs will be a bigger help to them.  I truly believe that it is a minority of voters who really want to hold the parties responsible for keeping down the deficit and these voters are not unified in a single party (I don't have hard statistics for this and I don't know how you would get them).

So at the end of the day the same people who live paycheck to paycheck and max out their credit cards elect politicians who max out our government's credit card because they are all more worried about today than the futures.

Some of these people who are more worried about today are in an understandable position where they are having trouble keeping their house and putting food on the table.  The others just annoy me because they are destroying our country's future by enabling these irresponsible politicians.

Why voting pro-life is a bad idea.

My goal in this post is to show you that Republicans do not really care about abortions at all.  They only care about getting the votes of people who hate abortions.

The moment that I realized that Republicans didn't care about stopping abortions occurred during George W Bush's presidency.  At one point Republicans controlled the presidency, both houses of congress and Republican presidents had appointed 6 of the 9 supreme court justices.  This is the kind of majority that pro-life people had dreamed of.  Republicans, the supposedly pro-life party, controlled all 3 branches of government.

So what major abortion legislation did they pass with all of this political muscle?  All we got were 2 rather small legislative efforts that did almost nothing to protect the unborn.

The first was Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act which bans a rare form of abortion.  Sadly this bill effected less than 1% of all abortions and most of the effected abortions were just forced to use different methods that are just as deadly to the child.  This may have prevented a small number of abortions but failed to address more than 99% of all abortions in this country.

The second was Unborn Victims of Violence Act which made killing an unborn child a crime if you were committing another violent crime at the time.  So if you assaulted a pregnant woman you could get charged for hurting her unborn child as well.  This prevented no abortions but did make it look like Republicans were trying to "protect the unborn."

So when the Republicans had the chance to pass a major law to prevent abortions the American public got nothing significant.  If the Republicans had passed a major abortion law and it had gotten killed in the courts for some reason I would find that regrettable but I would at least give them some credit for trying.  They didn't even try.

So next time you consider voting pro-life remember that the Republicans have no intention of trying to stop abortions.  Please feel free to vote for Republicans for other reasons if you want just don't deceive yourself into believing that you are protecting the unborn.  Republicans want your pro-life votes but don't do anything to deserve them. 


Please note: The author of this article is pro-life and does not think that the Republicans are the only ones lying in politics but the Democrats appear to be doing a better job supporting their pro-choice people than the job the Republicans are doing for their pro-life people.

Don't listen to politicians about the budget.

Many Americans favor balancing the governments budget so that we don't leave massive, crippling debts for our children to deal with, however there is a real misconception on what it is going to require to balance our budget.  Many politicians try to make it sound easy as long as you elect them but here are some numbers to help you understand just how difficult it would be.

First, lets compare federal income and expenses for 2011:  (all numbers are in Billions of dollars)
Income: $2,303 B
Expenses: $3,603 B

So our budget deficit is  $1,300 B

The majority of Americans would like to cut spending rather than increase taxes so lets look at what different areas cost. 

Pensions:            $776 B    ($730 B of this is social security)
Healthcare:         $858 B    ($275 B is Medicaid and $485 is Medicare)
Education:          $114 B
Defense:             $844 B
Welfare:             $352 B    
Unemployment: $121 B
Protection:          $56 B     (Federal courts and FBI)
Transportation:   $93 B     (Mostly highways and air control)
Interest:              $230 B
Foreign Aid:        $34 B
Other:                 $125 B

The programs I've heard complained about most often by people who want a balanced budget are:
1) foreign aid
2) welfare and medicaid
3) discretionary spending  (this would include Protection, Transportation, Education and Other)

However, even if we cut 100% of these programs we would only have cut spending by $1,049 B and would still be running a deficit of $251 B.  Also, this would have cut funding for a lot of programs with wide support like federal highways, the federal courts and research (not to mention all the people that will likely end up hungry and in the streets when welfare is cut).

So to balance the budget we have to make cuts to some of the programs that everyone seems to defend like social security, medicare, and defense.  These 3 programs are almost untouchable in political debates because so many people defend them but these 3 alone cost more than the government brings in each year.

So balancing the budget either requires cuts to programs you probably love and want to protect or it requires significant tax increases.  Now when a politician makes balancing the budget sound easy you will know he is full of crap.  This is a problem that is even worse in reality than people want to believe.


Note:  The numbers might not be quite so bleak if the economy was doing better, however I don't think the data will change too much even in better economic times.

data from: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com

Why does abortion make people crazy?

The recent laws passed in Kansas and Texas to try to prevent people from having abortions bother me deeply.  They seem to have skipped all the reasonable approaches to try to reduce abortions and just jumped to the extremes.

In Texas (and a few other states) they are mandating extreme and often embarrassing medical procedures before you can get an abortion.  Many of these procedures involve sticking large rods into the woman's vagina and are known to be uncomfortable in some cases.  I know that pro-life people are often willing to go to almost any extreme to prevent abortions (which they consider murder) but this is not the methods that we use in this country to mold peoples behavior.  Imagine if the government wanted to improve the gas mileage of vehicles on the road and they forced everyone who wanted to buy a truck to go through some kind of anal probing.  This would seem like a ridiculous solution to almost all American but for some reason, anything goes when abortions are involved.

We as a country almost always start with something much more benign like taxing the undesirable behavior.  This is the primary way we have addressed smoking in this country.  In the 60s and early 70s the per capita cigarette consumption in the US was over 4000 cigarettes a year.  In 2006 it was only 1600.  So by using taxes (and information concerning the dangers of smoking) we have reduced the average cigarette usage to one third of what it was 50 years ago.  So why don't states start with something much easier for the general public to swallow like taxes when we deal with abortion?

Sadly, the laws passed in Kansas have been even worse than the laws passed in Texas.  In Kansas, it is now legal for your doctor to lie to you to try to prevent you from getting an abortion.  This is going to seriously damage the doctor-patient relationship over time and cause some people to not take their doctor's advice because they are no longer trustworthy.  So this "pro-life" stance is going to result in people not getting the care they should get and likely result in more preventable deaths.  We have enough problems with healthcare in this country that we don't need to manufacture more.

Ironically there are 2 methods to help prevent unwanted pregnancies (and therefor abortions) that pro-life conservatives seem to oppose rather than embrace.

1) comprehensive sex education  (There are multiple research studies that show teenagers start having sex at a later age if they have comprehensive sex education rather than abstinence-only or no sex education.)
2) wide spread use and easy access to birth control  (what better way to prevent unwanted pregnancies?  It would also be useful if we had some form of contraceptive pills for men since men seem less likely to want children at younger ages than women.)

I firmly believe that if we as a country focused on better sex education, easier access to contraceptives and taxed abortions as undesirable that we could reduce the abortion rate by 80+% over the next 40 years.  Once abortions become rare, it would be easier to make them illegal because people would see them as less useful and necessary.

It would also help that after taking such a reasonable approach to reducing abortions that the pro-life movement would no longer be seen as crazy by many of the people in this country because right now the pro-life movement is scaring off all the moderates in this country with their actions.  It is hard to win a war of ideas when you scare away the potential new recruits.

A little research

Someone asked me why I believed that gas prices don't go down when we increase production and I found this research.

This is an article:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/03/22/ap-gas-prices-analysis/
Discussing this research data:
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/327163-gas-production-and-prices.html

Do presidents really have any power over gas prices?

One thing that I never understand is people who blame high gas prices on the president.  I'm never sure what they want the president to do.  The president in no way sets gas prices unless he institutes price controls (which would require congress's help) and price controls only result in shortages where you can't buy gas at any price.  Please reference the 1970s...

The only thing that the president can do that will even remotely affect gas prices is to open more areas of the US to drilling and this won't have any effect for the several years in takes to get the oil fields up and running.  Also, based on what I have read from leading economists, people vastly over estimate how much this would lower gas prices.  This means that the president has virtually no control of the gas prices during his term in office.

The problem is that gas prices are highly visible and almost everyone needs to buy gas so it is something that everyone likes to complain about.  However, none of this means that there is an easy way to reduce gas prices.


Note: This is not really what I wanted to write about today but I've heard too many people blame Obama for high gas prices recently when it makes no sense.  I'm not a big Obama fan but if we are going to bash him lets at least blame him for things that are actually his fault.