95-10 Initiative vs reality

(Written for the Carnival of Ohio Politics, now in it's 9th week thanks to Paul Miller of Northwest Ohio Net. This week's Carnival is now up, as always some really good writing/research by my fellow Ohioan bloggers.

This issue is going to be discussed alot more in the future, especially here in Ohio where we have several Democratic candidates who have already stated their support for this. It is with some trepidation I write this but I feel it has to be brought up. On a personal level as a woman and a Catholic I don't support abortion, yet it is not my right to tell another woman what she can do with her own body. I consider myself pro-choice for that reason. Given that, the first statement as part of the 95-10 Initiative sounds very encouraging:

The 95-10 Initiative is a comprehensive package of federal legislation and policy proposals that will reduce the number of abortions by 95% in the next 10 years. While both Democrats and Republicans talk about reducing the number of abortions, Democrats for Life of America offers real solutions to make this goal a reality. With bold new ideas, sound research and policy arguments, the 95-10 Initiative contains proven policy suggestions to dramatically reduce the number of abortions in America.

So far so good, after all that is a very noble goal. Then....

Federal Funding for Toll-Free Number/National Public Awareness Program

Federal Funding for Pregnancy Prevention Education

Federal Funding for Abortion Counseling and Daycare on University Campuses

Increase Federal Funding for Domestic Violence Programs

Fully Fund Federal WIC Program

Require SCHIP to cover pregnant women

First, only one of these programs deals with the only real way to prevent abortion, preventing an unwanted pregnancy in the first place:

Federal Funding for Pregnancy Prevention Education

Provide grants to school districts that are in need of funds to administer effective, age-appropriate pregnancy prevention education.

Then this next one concerns me:

Provide Accurate Information to Patients Receiving a Positive Result from an Alpha-Fetoprotein Test tests.

Pregnant women who choose to undergo prenatal genetic testing should be provided with information on the accuracy of these tests.

There can be false-positive results, indicating a problem when the fetus is actually healthy.

The real solution to this is to develop a better test. There are known issues with this test, personally it's a hellishly bad test in which if you do get a positive result the stress you go thru to either determine it was right or it was wrong given the rate of accuracy is a test that in my opinion should be discontinued. It was designed to be a first screening tool, yet even when it is correct, the disagreement surrounding the rate of the false positives alone is enough to question the use. Yet as far as the 95-10 Initiative, very few women have abortions based on this test, the majority of abortions that happen do so before this test would even be administered. The AFP test is generally done between the 16th and 18th weeks of pregnancy. The CDC in 2003 estimated that 58 percent of legal abortions occur within the first eight weeks of gestation, and 88 percent are performed within the first 12 weeks. Many doctors now encourage the use of the triple screening test which can be done earlier, yet still this would not have a huge impact on the numbers of abortions if the CDC is correct.

Next is how can the majority of this even be implemented? Right now budget cuts just approved by a Republican majority have hit entitlement programs with more cuts to come. From this very Initiative it clearly states the numbers of women and infants who will be affected by the current cuts in WIC:

Special Nutrition for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) is funded at about $4.9 billion, which advocates say is $268 million less than what's needed to serve the current 7.86–7.90 million participants.

The administration expects 8.2 million pregnant women, infants, and young children to be served by the program. Thus, this analysis assumes that an eight percent reduction translates into 670,000 fewer people being served (which is eight percent of 8.2 million).

The administration also proposes placing an overall cap on all non-defense, non-Homeland Security discretionary spending for the next five years. By 2010, those discretionary caps could force 660,000 recipients to lose WIC in 2010. Between 2006 and 2010, the WIC cuts could total $657 million.

If you as Democrats cannot even get WIC funding to cover those who currently need it? How the rest of this plan can move forward under the current political climate I really have to question. Where is the funding for the rest of this Initiative going to come from?

My primary issue with this is the majority of the focus is not on preventing pregnancy, it is on encouraging pregnant women to not have an abortion. I understand that Democrats that are pro-life are trying to find a way to get their message out there. I'm just not sure if I agree with this one as the way to do that. To me the main focus of 95-10 should be to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place, then focus on what can be done to help those who do not want to terminate a pregancy thru abortion. Finally, how this would be paid for is an issue that also needs to be really looked at.