Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, recently had a column published for The Hill in which she claimed that “reproductive health is an economic issue.” Lake begins her column by noting that children are expensive, and that people seem to forget to use that term to describe what having a child is like.
“To say nothing of the emotional investment, it is no small choice and so it is not surprising that people take the decision about when to start a family seriously and often put great thought and planning into parenthood,” Lake says.
First off, yes, children can be expensive, but why is it that this admission somehow always leads to abortion advocates pushing to kill children in the womb? “Expensive” may also be a rarely-used term because taking care of others, especially one’s own offspring, is not just considered a challenge but a joy — and a fact of life.
Lake’s column takes a predictable turn, then, as she faults politicians (she specifically names Republicans) for somehow negatively impacting women’s economic rights:
Until policymakers and politicians acknowledge that having the freedom and ability to plan if and when to have children is directly linked to families’ economic security, they will be skipping over a major economic concern for their constituents – and what is a core economic value for many[.]
… Republicans in Congress and state legislatures dismiss the importance of access to reproductive care, including birth control and abortion, in effect dismissing the importance of women actively engaging in their own health care and controlling their own future, including when and if to have children….
Lake’s view is one that dehumanizes the preborn, pregnancy and childbirth overall by simply pretending that the life already developing in the womb is of no consideration whatsoever.
… And yet Republican lawmakers deny this connection and the importance of reproductive care. Across the country, we have seen Republican governors, legislators and elected members of Congress attack access to safe legal abortion – which Gallup shows support for which has remained steady for a decade – move to strip funding for breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, and HIV tests at Planned Parenthood, and cut access to publicly funded programs for women’s reproductive care… Until Republican lawmakers accept this as fact, they will remain hopelessly out of touch with families, leaving American families to pick up the pieces….
It’s not just that many Republicans and some Democrats are in disagreement with Lake’s pro-abortion views, instead believing that the right to life must be protected. (Abortion advocates have a hard time understanding that disagreement is allowed.) No, Lake says, it’s that they’re in “denial”:
In their denial, they are ignoring the basic economic realities that tens of millions of Americans face, forcing an agenda – like defunding Planned Parenthood, restricting access to women’s health care, and stripping publicly funded health programs – that runs counter to what their constituents value.
Let’s back up a moment. No one has moved to “strip funding” for any of the screenings or tests Lake mentions. Instead, pro-life politicians have moved to transfer the funding from one provider, Planned Parenthood, to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), which better serve women and men, with more locations, free services, and without offering abortion. If abortion advocates really wanted to make “access to women’s health care” a priority, they would see that it makes more sense to fund these centers, which vastly outnumber Planned Parenthood in every single state. Lake also fails to mention that these legitimate services have decreased at Planned Parenthood, even while the abortion giant receives more taxpayer dollars.
Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion chain, and is also a world leader in promotion and provision of the barbaric life-ending procedure. Planned Parenthood even has an active political arm, and endorses and funds candidates. Let’s not pretend they don’t have an agenda of their own.
Pro-life politicians don’t “dismiss the importance of access to reproductive care.” They are acting on the importance of the right to life. Engaging in one’s own health care — which does not include abortion — can mean acquiring birth control which is already accessible, or it can mean choosing not to have sex, or it can mean obtaining care for fertility issues or even obtaining prenatal care. What “access to reproductive care” should never include is killing.
And while we’re talking about women “controlling their own future[s],” abortion advocates rarely stop to think (and often deny) that having an abortion can have a negative impact on a woman’s future health and well-being.
“Voters have spoken, and they believe that women and their families should have the freedom to plan if and when they have children,” Lake writes in closing. What Lake fails to either realize or admit is that abortion actually kills children already in existence in the womb. This is what pro-lifers cannot support. Supporting both women and children instead of advocating death is the pro-life agenda.
Current Speaker of the House Paul Ryan penned a 2010 column for the Heritage Foundation about how the economic principles of the free market go hand in hand with the right to life. Maybe Lake –whose firm serves “solely pro-choice candidates” and groups (according to their website) which include no fewer than 15 pro-abortion organizations — should consider this perspective before advocating death as a solution to economic woes.
