Regarding the “family planning” provision, Stephanopoulous said: “Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?” And Pelosi responded:
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.
Presumably Pelosi means that government-subsidized contraception will result in fewer babies, and fewer babies will mean a reduction in the costs of healthcare and education. But that line of thinking is based on the premise that the status quo should be maintained — that the state should continue subsidizing healthcare, education, etc., of low-income women. It also ignores the fact that Americans who view artificial birth control as morally wrong based on their religious beliefs should not be forced through their tax dollars to pay for this artificial birth control for others. And it ignores the fact that the very same argument could be made in support of taxpayer-funded abortions. After all, unlike contraceptives, abortion is a sure way of preventing the birth of babies who would otherwise supposedly burden the State.
Pelosi, however, is parroting the party line that condoms, birth control pills, IUDs, the patch and the diaphragm are economic development — a line we’ve seen used to promote contraception and abortion in developing countries by many international agencies that profit from both, and the UN.
Ranking Republican House leader John Boehner responded to Pelosi’s statement saying, “Regardless of where anyone stands on taxpayer funding for contraceptives and the abortion industry, there is no doubt that this once little-known provision in the congressional Democrats’ spending plan has nothing to do with stimulating the economy and creating more American jobs.”
James Pethokoukis, from U.S. News & World Report, noted, “This is wrong on so many levels, one of which is looking at children born to the ‘wrong people’ as economic burdens rather [than] gifts, the music makers, the dreamers of dreams. She sees them as a cost instead of blessed benefits. Wow.”
Europeans have already figured out that it takes humans to support the economy — and the obscene size of governments today. So, low fertility rates are being addressed by the EU.
In order to reverse the consequences of widespread contraception, France is paying moms full-time wages to stop work and have more babies — socialistic yes, but they are desperate to stop the birth dearth. Other countries are offering quite lucrative bonuses and policies to increase family size — Sweden, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, and Japan are a few.
The demographics of the United States show that it too, is top-heavy with aging baby boomers; owing to the growth in the practice of contraception, there are no longer enough live births to maintain a replacement death-to-birth ratio. Elderly dependents now outnumber young producers, both a cultural and economic disaster waiting to happen.
While the provision has recently been axed by Pelosi from the stimulus package, now labeled the Pelosi-Reid-Obama Debt Plan by some, Pelosi’s contraceptive/abortive agenda isn’t likely to change.
But it’s the moral implications are what is most upsetting. The proposition of such a policy should not even be considered in the halls of Congress.
— Photo: AP Images
