Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Life Links 5/4/11

At National Review, Kevin Burke writes about Aerosmith lead-singer and American Idol judge Steven Tyler's experience with abortion which was cited in the band's autobiography.
When Miss Holcomb and Tyler conceived a child, his longtime friend Ray Tabano convinced Tyler that abortion was the only solution. In the Aerosmith “autobiography,” Walk This Way (in which recollections by all the band members, and their friends and lovers, were assembled by the author Stephen Davis), Tabano says: “So they had the abortion, and it really messed Steven up because it was a boy. He . . . saw the whole thing and it [messed] him up big time.”

Tyler also reflects on his abortion experience in the autobiography. “It was a big crisis. It’s a major thing when you’re growing something with a woman, but they convinced us that it would never work out and would ruin our lives. . . . You go to the doctor and they put the needle in her belly and they squeeze the stuff in and you watch. And it comes out dead. I was pretty devastated. In my mind, I’m going, Jesus, what have I done?”


Here's a new video from the Guttmacher Institute on Abortion in the U.S.


As typical from the Guttmacher Institute, the video pushes the idea that more access to contraception will decrease abortions despite their own research showing the majority of women who have abortions were using some form of contraceptive in the last month, large percentages of women using contraceptives did so inconsistently, and that only a low percentage (12% of non-contraceptives users) of women who had abortions cited their lack of access to contraceptives as their reason for not using them. Other reasons for non-use of contraceptives were cited by much higher percentages of women. 33% cited "the perception that a woman was at low risk of becoming pregnant." 32% cited "concerns about contraceptive methods" and 27% cited "they had had unexpected sex."

Why is access to contraceptives always the top concern for the Guttmacher Institute when it's clear from their own research that a lack of access to contraceptives comprises a much smaller portion of women who end up aborting than women who use contraceptives inconsistently, think they're not going to get pregnant, don't like various contraceptives, and have unexpected sex?

A guest blogger at Feministe takes the old, worn-out path to defend Planned Parenthood funding - just forget about the unborn.
My general rule is that my opinions and politics should always be on the side of choice (unless you’re trying to bring a gun to class), but apparently most people do not abide by that, which would be fine if those same people weren’t trying to take away rights that I believe are necessary and fair and essential to my freedom. My beliefs aren’t effecting anyone else’s life, won’t restrict anyone from doing anything, and won’t force anyone into doing something that they don’t want to do. It would be nice if other people had enough respect for their fellow humans to adhere to the same principle.
Except that legal abortion effects the lives of unborn children, restricts them from developing and doesn't respect them.

1 comment:

  1. Nancy Howell Lee's research indicated that the single biggest factor influencing if a woman resorted to abortion was her perception that it was normative in her peer group. This ad is a bald faced and unashamed effort by AGI to TOTALLY normalize abortion and increase PP's customer pool.

    They should be ashamed of themselves. But then, if you're okay with killing babies, you're okay with killing babies as a revenue source.

    ReplyDelete