No US Birth Control Equals More Multiple Dad Families

The Republican War on Women will stand before the microphone, waving the latest evidence of America’s problem with stable family units as further evidence that Planned Parenthood should be defunded.

In what is perverse logic that only ideological foes of women can muster up, this mostly-male anti-women’s brigade will cite the fact that one in five of all American moms have kids who have different birth fathers.

What is the War on Women’s proposed solution to this serious American problem? Defund the main source of contraception to poor women, so that two in five of all American moms will have kids with different birth fathers.

Defuning Planned Parenthood Makes Very Bad Poverty Statistics So Much Worse

This is the Republican solution to building stronger families in America. Take away birth control and preach abstinence, just like they do in Mississippi where teen pregnancy leads the nation. Now Republicans want to roll the dice of the entire country in family planning by defunding Planned Parenthood, the major source of health services to low and middle-income women.

Could we please get serious here!

We already know that women with children from multiple fathers are more likely to be disadvantaged. “They are more likely to be under-employed, to have lower incomes, and to be less educated,” says Cassandra Dorious, who examined data from nearly 4,000 US women, interviewed more than 20 times over a 27-year period, to arrive at her 1 in 5 US moms statistic.

Dorius found that a multiple-father type of family structure was more common among minority women, with 59 percent of African-American mothers, 35 percent of Hispanic mothers and 22 percent of white mothers reporting children with more than one father. via MSNBC

For a variety of reasons, the trend among lower income women is to choose motherhood, even before marriage. I know that Republicans believe this is great for America, but in reality it spreads a social ecology of poverty and spiraling downwards education and economic success for all parties. The research is clear.

Can we also agree that with America’s economic woes, states will move to defund even more support services to poor women. At the risk of being 110% politically incorrect, many Americans believe that poor women have children as a way of getting income.

Whatever is reality, there will be less money to go around. Social services cuts are coming.

It’s a given that Republicans have zero interest in putting forth serious ideas about creating jobs in America. Do you ever hear about jobs??? No, only the Republican war on women in Washington. I challenge John Boehner to get out the blackboard and do the math here.

If he can’t do anything constructive about job creation, why does he want to increase America’s birth rate when we can’t afford it? There is no EVIDENCE that abstinence is working, if we study teen pregnancy rates.

Has anyone calculated the actual cost to American taxpayers of defunding Planned Parenthood? Because all estimates I know of are that Planned Parenthood delivers back $4 for every $1 invested in it, in the form of fewer pregnancies, healthier women who are screened for disease, rather than waiting for a fatal illness, women who can continue their educations and many more advantages from the investment in family planning.

This new analysis that one American child in five is born into a multi-father family today predicts an unsettling and frankly frightening image for our future, if the Republicans have their way in defunding Planned Parenthood.

When will economics figure into the thinking of these McCarthy-era demagogues?

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour Weeps for Unborn but Not the Living

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour goes to Iowa and says he weeps for the unborn. Why doesn’t he weep for the living? Why doesn’t he cry for the fact that Mississippi’s reported rate of food insecurity in 2009 was 17.1%, significantly higher than the national average of 14.7%.

When we turn to single parent households in Mississippi, the rates were still higher, over 20%. What is Governor Barbour’s suggestion? Education cuts so severe that Mississippi parents have formed The Parents’ Campaign and are marching all over Biloxi.

Meanwhile, in the midst of Governor Barbour’s tears for the unborn in Iowa, Mississippi leads the nation in teen pregnancy. Like most of America, Mississippi saw a total reduction in fertility rates from 76.9 live births per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2007 to 70.9 in 2009. We don’t have current statistics on teen pregnancy or single-mother births. Simply stated, Mississippi is among America’s most fertile states.

American parents are facing education cuts all over America. And what is the focus of the Republican War on Women? Taking away birth control to poor and middle-income women, so that we have more kids in the classrooms that we can’t afford to maintain today.

This is fiscal madness in the name of religion and ideology. I always thought that church and state were separate in America, but it is clear to me beyond denial for any reason that God rules America. And I weep for our future because thinking people don’t have the gut to put a stop to this madness and get the nation’s priorities in order. Anne

Most fertile states in America 2009, based on live births to women (15-44)

88.4 Utah

78.3 Alaska

77.8 South Dakota

77.6 Texas

77.4 Idaho

76.4 Nebraska

75.8 Hawaii

75.0 Wyoming

74.9 Oklahoma

74.7 Kansas

73.4 New Mexico

71.2 Nevada

70.9 Mississippi

71.5 Arizona

70.8 North Dakota

70.1 Arkansas