If You Don’t Want to Hear It, Why Do You Read It?

Two Idaho blogs responded to my recent post on abortion. First, Binkyboy at 43rd State Blues wrote a diatribe that I won’t respond to given his overall ill-mannered shrillness, but one thing he wrote stood out to me:

So once again, thank you Adam, you open a window into the rabid right wing hyper-religious freak fringe that most of us would rather ignore.

If you would rather ignore it, why don’t you? My blog’s not required reading. If nobody wanted to read it, why bother responding to it? Call me a Fascist, call me all the names you want, but don’t say “I’d rather ignore you” when you’re posting about what I’m writing. If you’d rather ignore me, you’d ignore me, and go about your liberal way.

Sarah at F-words called my article, an “appaling piece of drivel.” She writes:

Where Graham gallops away from reality is with the idea that “the left” isn’t interested in helping women beyond helping them obtain abortions.

Oh, yeah, that’s why the left favors informed consent legislation so women have all their options. Oops, wait pro-abortion groups consistently oppose that, thinking that by informing women of all their options, we’re insulting their intelligence.

What are ways in which Graham is working to expand the options of women in bad situations? Does he support access to birth control? Of course not. Is he concerned about the wage gap? Not that my searching can find. What about other workplace issues that hurt women disproportionately, like discrimination and maternity leave? Crickets. Does he offer a single idea to expand options that women can pursue without the permission of men?

Well, the wage gap is caused by a simple fact that women tend to leave work to have babies and take time to raise their children. Thus the average woman earns less than the average man, because she’s in the workplace less. There are other issues as well where are more likely to end up care-givers. It’s not a conspiracy. If a woman will abandon all other life committments and marry herself to her job and her work with no outside life whatsoever (as many men have done) she’ll find herself earning just as much as the men who do the same thing.

We have a Family and Medical Leave Act which I support continuing. As for birth control, that’s a canard. As a pro-abortion author pointed out half of women who had abortions had been taking the pill. You see, the pill has an 8% failure rate. I extrapolated this out on Where I Stand:

I think what’s happening is that people are rolling the dice and coming up losers. Consider this fact, the average woman gets married at age 27 and have their first sexual activity at age 17. Now, birth control has an annual failure rate of 8%. Over a year or two, if you take the pill consistently, you’ve got good odds of not getting pregnant. However, taken over a ten year premarital sexual career, the odds of not getting pregnant drop. The way I figure it to average the long-term risk you take .92 and multiply .92 by the .92, so that we’re multiplying your 92% chance of not getting pregnant with the pill for one year by your chance of not getting pregnant the second year The percentage drops and you see the odds of not getting pregnant fall as well. So the way I chart this.

Year Effectiveness
1 92%

2 84%
3 78%

4 72%
5 66%

6 61%
7 56%

8 51%
9 47%

10 43% 

It’s not precise, but it’ll do. What I would suggest is that based on this extrapolation that a woman on the pill has asbout a 57% chance of getting pregnant in a 10 year period. So, if you have women waiting that long while having sex, the birth control has chance of failing.

Birth Control has a mixed effect. On one hand, it prevents pregnancy. On the other hand, it creates an illusion of safety. Regardless, it’s no answer to abortion.

Certainly, women have a number of choices including abstinence, sterilization, and limiting their relationships to men who have had vasectomies and men do not make those choices. Indeed, I would know of no way for women to remain Independent of men than to stay out of men’s beds.

Of course, this idea is revolutionary in that contradicts the great Feminist ideal, “A Woman Can Have It All.” But, none of us can. That’s not sexism, that’s life. We all have to make sacrifices. Women certainly deserve respect for the sacrifices they make, but when it comes to sacrificing an innocent unborn child on the altar of convenience, that’s where I draw the line.