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"Abortion On Demand"...

...is a laughable and pathetic platitude that comes from the mouths of right-wing politicians all too often these days. (To paraphrase the late great Bill Hicks, every word that comes out of their mouths is now like a turd falling into my drink.) It's clear in the minds of many Republicans that unless we eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood and the like, we should expect abortion franchises to pop up at every corner, akin to the near-viral proliferation of Rite-Aid and check cashing joints, to satisfy this overwhelming 24/7 demand for abortion that does not and will never exist.

Thankfully, my only experience with abortion has been researching it for my classes, and while it's certainly the least favorite section of my Human Sexuality class, I would never dream of excising such compelling and important material. (And I'm pleased that the most recent text I chose for the class took the abortion discussion out of the contraception chapter -- abortion as contraception is an incorrect conceptualization, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of "contraception" IMHO -- placing it instead in the discussion of pregnancy.)

While a slim majority of the country is now in the "pro-life" side of the debate (or, if you inflame the rhetoric and distort the language, "anti-choice"), one would hope that an overwhelming majority of Americans understands how hard it is to find someone who's "pro-abortion" in the way that the utterance "abortion on demand" connotes. But more and more, I'm not sure that that understanding exists. This article reports on the changing face of abortion providers, and there were two stats from the article that leaped out at me:

  • 87% of U.S. counties have no known abortion provider
  • 2% of ob-gyns perform 50% of all abortions in the U.S.

For the vast majority of recipients of either medical or surgical abortion, the choice for elective abortion isn't much of a choice, with the potential mother neither emotionally nor financially ready for a child at that point in her life. (A child born in 2009 will cost $282,000 from birth until the age of eighteen.) And I defy you, good reader, to find a single woman that has personal pleasure as the primary motivation for abortion.

History shows us that women motivated to terminate pregnancy will do so regardless of whether or not the law is on her side. A few years ago, Hillary Clinton (who has my vote for 2016) laid out her ideas on abortion (analyzed here) that have echoed many of my own thoughts on the subject: that the ultimate number of abortions that should be performed is zero, and that education and opportunity for women is a major tool in getting there. That's what should be on demand, and we should demand it loud and clear for women everywhere.

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