Something Else That Drives Me Nuts: Opposition to Planned Parenthood

As you know, sometimes lately, Post-W, I slip and read a part of the newspaper, forgetting why I should SO not do that. The other day I read this in the lovely Midland Reporter Telegram, aka The Repository of Bad Grammar & Faulty Punctuation, and I nearly lost my mind. There are few things that make me nuts as quickly as a complete lapse in logic. People who let their emotions guide them set me off in the most spectacular way.
(Do not rant at me about Planned Parenthood and abortion. If you already know you don’t agree with my views, then stop reading right now. You aren’t getting paid to be here. Go fix a nice cup of tea and come back tomorrow, when we’re sure to be talking about something else.)
This is what one of the protesters said about why Planned Parenthood shouldn’t offer sex education classes:
Bustillos said Planned Parenthood  “promotes death” so others who promote life should offer education to youngsters.
“We do need to talk to each other and help each other,” Bustillos said. “I think we could do better, but ultimately it has to come from the families, from the moms and the dads and the grandparents and the family itself. Even if it’s some church group. Someone that teaches life, not death.”
(Note:  this is a woman who became pregnant at age 15. Fine that she didn’t have an abortion—that was her choice. But just think if she’d known how to postpone getting pregnant until she’d finished her education and was no longer a child. Imagine.)
Just a note before I start the main rant:  Bustillos apparently has absolutely no idea what Planned Parenthood is about. She says it “promotes death,” and that is, without a doubt, the stupidest thing I have heard anyone say in, oh, months. Since January 19th, at least. Planned Parenthood promotes family planning. It’s where I got birth control when I needed it, and it’s where they hooked me up with Dr. Mendez, the only doctor in town who would do a tubal ligation on me, someone who had never been pregnant. They did not, need I add, say to me, “Never mind the birth control. Why don’t you get pregnant so we can provide an abortion and get some money out of you?” They did not charge me a penny for either birth control OR a referral. And it was not because I was poor and couldn’t pay them; it was because that was what they did. If you think Planned Parenthood and its doctors are getting rich by providing abortions to the people who are forced to go to Planned Parenthood with unwanted pregnancies, you’re sorely misguided in the way the world works. The women who have money and resources do not go to PP. They go to their own private doctors, where unwanted pregnancies are Taken Care Of quickly and quietly, and the word “abortion” is never even used. A diagnostic D&C is a rich woman’s best friend. So the women who are forced to go to The Hated Planned Parenthood are not paying the Big Bucks for abortions. No one’s getting rich off them.  “The Business of Death” is one of those illogical but catchy little phrases the anti-choice people feed their followers.
What’s the best way to end abortion? End unwanted pregnancies. If you said, “Make it illegal,” then come over here and let me introduce you to what we in The Real World call Illegal Drugs. Marijuana. Crack. Heroin. Or maybe blow jobs for cash. Sure, sure:  I know that, in your imaginary world, these things don’t exist, because THEY ARE ILLEGAL. On Planet Earth, however, that’s not the way it works. Just making something illegal—crack, prostitution, cock-fighting, gambling—doesn’t work nearly as well as you people on Planet Denial believe it does.
So if you want to make something go away, you don’t make it illegal. You have to get rid of the perceived need for it. And how do you get rid of the perceived need for abortion? Help people not get pregnant unless they plan to get pregnant.
If you said, “Make sure they don’t get pregnant until they’re married,” then you’re still not paying attention. You’re not taking into account the married women who get abortions. It happens all the time (you don’t hear as much about it because, duh:  they have more resources (theirs + those of their spouse) and more often have a private doctor).
So:  to end abortion, you end unwanted pregnancy. And how do you do that?
--safe, effective, affordable, easy-to-use birth control AND
--education.
Therefore:  wouldn’t it seem logical that people who are opposed to abortion (and that would be all of us, as no one is a fan of abortion, at least no one I know, and I know a lot of people who are staunch supporters of a woman’s right to choose) would be in favor of education? Wouldn’t it?
Well, in my world it would. Maybe I’m living here all alone, but that’s OK. It just makes me nuts that people like this are trying to influence other people’s lives. It’s bad enough when someone sane and logical is out there trying to foist their opinions on the rest of us. But this? This is so short-sighted and self-serving and completely, totally without logic that—and this is the truth--I was getting ready to take a shower and started thinking about it and got so irritated that I had to come in here and write about it before I exploded. The EGE has already heard this rant this week, and I figure once for it is about as much as anyone can be expected to tolerate.
What’s my conclusion? Logic is a lovely thing. More people should come to know it. Education is also lovely, and none of us should ever stop embracing it. And some people just need to go back to the beginning and start over. Pay attention in school. Learn to think logically. Realize the imaginary world they’d like to live in is not the one they actually inhabit.
Or just shut up.