I know that I am preaching to the proverbial choir when I say that the people who call themselves “pro life” are rarely anthing of the sort. Certainly these are people who seem to push policies that support lots of abortion, and as an ideal would like these abortions to be as expensive and dangerous as possible. Like this:
“Under President Bush, the decade-long trend of declining abortion rates appears to have reversed. Given the trends of the 1990s, 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 than would have been expected before this change of direction.”
Politically Connect Pro-life? Look at the fruits
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=041013
Therefore I am thrilled and very very happy to point you to an actual Pro Life bill.
Notice that this bill does nothing to reduce access to abortion. It does nothing to limit access to contrception. It is not anti-life.
Note that I learned of this bill from BitchPhD. All Hail The Bitch.
This week, pro-life lawmakers introduced the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Pregnant and Parenting Students Act of 2005.
http://www.lifenews.com/nat1787.html
Ten million dollars for child care in universities. Hooray!!! Having a child in high school blocks single parents from attending college. Why? Because we as a nation have failed miserably to support parents anywhere. Esp young parents. Of course, Ten Billion would be closer to the mark, or even the hundreds of millions for the bridge to nowhere. But hey this is a wonderful start.
Here is the goal:
“To establish a pilot program to provide grants to encourage eligible institutions of higher education to establish and operate pregnant and parenting student services offices for pregnant students, parenting students, prospective parenting students who are anticipating a birth or adoption, and students who are placing or have placed a child for adoption”
The colleges can spend it on family housing!!! Child care! Baby formula! Maternity clothes! All the things that a humane and decent country would do for a young woman who is pregnant and wants to CHOOSE to be a parent and a student at the same time. A meaningful offer to support a woman who wants to make a choice, as opposed to a punative desire to strip women of choices.
Of course, 10M is small change. But it is a start, and an important start.
I am no fan of Dole but wouldn’t it be nice if we could take this grand-standing and force a voice vote? Let’s really count the people who support life.
A graduate school with a day care.
I have to go somewhere now and faint out of happiness.
Reality. Can. Be. Made. Better.
Considering that almost half of abortions are due to economic hardships (whether that means the woman has serveral kids already and insufficient income to support one more, or she is young, single and unable to afford a baby or would have to give up her chance at a real education and thus a much better quality of life later on, or whatever…) — offering something to actually alleviate the economic hardship would go a long way to allowing women who might otherwise not choose abortion to be able to make that choice.
would work for women who get pregnant by a husband while in college; it’s not just limited to single women. I’ve known several women who’ve gotten pregnant mid-term; one was a study partner back when I took an after-work accounting class through a local community college. Funds could possibly be used for tutoring services for when the student is too ill to get to class during their pregnancy. This could make a difference between the student being able to finish college or having to drop out midway, never to return.
I’d like to read the bill closely, to make sure there are no “poison pen” clauses in there, but it sounds good up front at least — this really falls into the “pro-choice” category by not making students choose between their education and their pregnancy.
what do you want to bet that “pregnant and parenting student services offices” provide no support and no referrals to pregnant students who are considering abortion?
i’m glad they are providing services to young women who want to continue their pregnancies. but if they don’t also offer support (financial and otherwise) and referrals for college students who want to terminate pregnancies then they are in fact discouraging if not blocking genuine choice.
because even if this measure hadn’t been proposed by a Republican, it still is to be federally funded. That means that no one involved with it can so much as breathe the “A” word.
This is from the text of S 1966:
It’s a pilot program for financing CPCs on campus, and probably was cobbled together quickly to steal the thunder of DFL’s 95-10 Initiative. And if I had to choose between the two, I’d take this one. It’s much less potentially harmful overall than the pernicious plan cooked up by the “Democrats” for Life.
At least students who want to continue their pregnancies will get some material support, instead of the empty promises that are all they receive now from church-sponsored CPCs. And maybe the baby furniture will be new, instead of the shabby hand-me-down items that crowd the closets of CPCs like the one our clinic has next door.
But there will be no room at the inn for young women who are what the anti mob call “abortion-minded” — and nothing but scare tactic propaganda for those still undecided about what choice they will make.
Just one more example of our tax dollars at work.
I believe the broken link above should be:
Just one more example of our tax dollars at work.
😉
concentrate on the part where they provide actual health care and child care services to students, then it will be a good project. And I think that most schools (well, not Oral Roberts or Liberty U) would probably concentrate on that part if the bill let’s them choose how they spend the dollars. That’s will be the real “tell” for this legislation — who gets to control how the dollars are spent and how do they decide to spend those dollars. If the bill is really are pro-child, then the money will be put toward students with kids, since that is the most effective way to demonstrate to a pregnant student that she doesn’t need to abort. Another agency whose purpose is to slut-shame and sell babies to the well-off won’t.
Being as how I’m highly suspicous of Democratic sponsored bills on reproductive rights written at the federal level, I SURE wouldn’t buy into anything by Liddy Dole (NARAL rating, 2004, 0%) without some concrete proof before I’d say I support it. Color me “not in the market for a bridge in Brooklyn”. The bill as it stands right now isn’t far enough along either, not even any amendments. I’ll bookmark it at Thomas and watch it develop though, so thanks for the heads-up.
If I had to put my five bucks down and place my wager today, I’d say its looks like a funding mechanism for portions of Bush’s base. This part in particular sets off alarms.
(3) Identifies public and private service providers, located on the campus of the eligible institution or within the local community, that are qualified to meet the needs described in paragraph (2), and establishes programs with qualified providers to meet such needs.
private service providers? more info please.
As someone who has had two children while in graduate school, one while single (in my second year) and one while married (in my fourth year) — I can totally relate to the whole “choice” that is available to a woman (single or married) to continue pregnancy and persue a degree (mine is a PhD).
With the first child, I used up all of my retirement and investment savings (about 30,000) while working 3 jobs, for daycare and such, and then ended up on welfare and foodstamps….the second, well, we filed for bankruptcy last month.
The amount of $$ on our credit cards was almost exactly equal to childcare and health insurance expenses for 6 years for two kids. Of course, we still have the $100,000 of school loans ($20,000 from my husband’s degree, but the rest is mine….)
A Danish friend of mine is consistently appalled by the lack of support we endure here in the grand US of A….
This might be a decent program, but as Andi says, the rub is, who controls the $$. If it is not the woman herself or if childcare isn’t just paid for outright, I don’t think it’ll be worth much.
Did you have a question, or was there a point I made badly or something?
I’ll be happy to clarify.
This would definitely be a boon to those students who want to be mothers and have all the resources needed to raise a child but just need child care while they are in school.
However, I have to agree with Janet and others who point out that it does not have a whole lot to do with women who need medical treatment for an unwanted pregnancy.
Ten million dollars is only enough to cover the CPC staff… no money will go to the women… or their children… this is to just get them in the door of universities.
I don’t want to elect Dole. I would absolutely NOT vote for a “pro-life” member of any party, unless it were a difficult lessor of two evils choice.
I think this is an opening. I am completely opposed to the idea that we give up on choice – that is horrible and ridiculous. But I do think the Dems should be more aggressively pro-choice by working to provide meaningful choices. And NO ONE talks about choice and childcare in schools. This is an opening to change the policy debate.
This is NOT about the psuedo-dems who want to alter the debate by sacrificing some subset of women (how about the ones in Kansas?, or just some more of the poor ones?). This is about walking the walk for choice -funding child care and opportunities for families in schools.
Of course, given this administration the money will go to Haliburton to put up fetus posters. But we can do what we can about that for three more years.
Fight it or fix it? Let’s try to fix it. Make it direct grants to universities to provide maternity care. When I gave birth in grad school I wiped out my life savings. I had zero support on the student medical plan.
Good points, about the bill’s support being limited (or seeming to be) to women who are planning to have the child, put it up for adoption, or planning to adopt… but not to terminate a pregnancy.
It’s not perfect, but it’s at least something positive — it will at least (hopefully) give some women students who would really like to continue with their pregnancy the support they need to do so. I’m all for supporting women who want to continue their pregnancy, have their baby and complete their education. In the long run that pays off for both mother and child, and it’s well worth the investment to keep her in school.
We’ll just have to keep working to get medical care to women who choose to NOT continue a pregnancy, so they can do so and complete their education as well.
I hate to rain on this parade, but I’m going to. This bill can be thought of as replacing another, very good program that was run through the Dept. of Education – I was one of the grantholders for my university. That bill provided direct childcare subsidies for low-income student parents. Any parent receiving, or eligible to recieve a Pell Grant by income (they didn’t have to actually be getting a Pell), could get a subsidy.
It was a wonderful program, co-sponsored by Repubs and Dems. It allowed a lot of parents to stay in college because they had good, reliable child care. The care had to be licensed, of good quality, etc. The program recently ended, thanks to Bush funding cuts.
I have just read this new bill, albeit quickly. Even with a fast read, what I think this is, is simply for a referral service. I see little or nothing that is earmarked for actually providing funds for childcare. I think it does provide for a)surveying campus needs; b) surveying what kinds of services are available on or near campus [and I wonder what they will do with this info, if, say, such services include Planned Parenthood], and c) providing “resource & referral”, e.g. connecting young women/parents to childcare, pregnancy care services [and I’d bet those Crisis Pregancy Centers], etc.
Yes, it does say that colleges can elect to provide such services, but I don’t see any funds earmarked for those purposes. In fact, I don’t see any new funds earmarked for this bill whatsoever. And 10million comes to $50,000 ea. That will about run an office for a year, plus do some low level surveys and resource and referral. It will NOT support campus housing or child care or maternal care. Now, possibly I missed that, but I suspect the funds for this are to be carved out of other College support funds such as Pell Grants, which are being cut anyway.
I apologize for making such a long post, but I had to say how I read this bill, and it is not one that I think will have a positive effect. I think it is a cover for its true purpose, which is to discourage abortion among college women, and to reduce access to birth control services for young women. The devil will be in the administrative details for the program, if it passes Congress. I fear this will be another “Healthy Forests” sort of initiative.
The child care program I referred to above has not entirely ended – but it has been greatly reduced, and is a potential target for being cut out entirely. This proposed new bill would likely be funded from the same section of the federal budget gave these child care subsidies, e.g. scholarships and financial aid.