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The Battle for Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood is a preventative health care provider that is a key tool to improving community health. The preventative health care that Planned Parenthood offers is more cost efficient and has a greater effect on community health than secondary and tertiary healthcare. Despite the the effectiveness of Planned Parenthood as a preventative health care provider it is in danger of being defunded. This would mean that Planned Parenthood would lose 41% of its funding. Without this amount of revenue Planned Parenthood could not survive and continue to make efforts to improve community health with preventative medicine.

Unfortunately, the conversation surrounding Planned Parenthood more often than not starts, and ends, with abortion.  Abortion, the polarizing service which Planned Parenthood offers is what the majority of the debate around Planned Parenthood is centered around. Rebecca Hagelin of The Washington Times uses pathos to provoke emotion and persuade the reader. Rebecca recalls a visit to a Planned Parenthood where she says she saw “crammed inside the pint-size tomb and immersed in that same sickening liquid was a perfectly formed little baby. A human baby.” Obviously, this is an upsetting and gruesome thing to visualize but it shouldn’t completely stop the conversation surrounding Planned Parenthood and preventive health care. Instead of solely focusing on abortion services I believe it is more effective to focus on what preventive services Planned Parenthood offers and the benefits of preventive services. After all, only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s budget goes towards abortion services. The other 97% are preventative health measures that have been proven to increase community health.

The preventive services which Planned Parenthood makes available are contraceptives, pap tests, breast exams and tests and treatments for stds. Last year, Planned Parenthood reported they prevented 579,000 unintended pregnancies. Additionally, planned parenthood provides educational programs and outreach to 1.5 million young adults each year. 

These are positive, measurable preventive healthcare measures which are often lost in the debate over abortion. One of the main points which opponents to Planned Parenthood make is that federal tax dollars shouldn’t be put towards abortion services. Luckily for them, they don’t!. Due to the Hyde Amendment no federal funds are used towards abortion services. Bradford Richardson of The Washington Time wrote “The Hyde Amendment bars federal funds from being used to pay for abortions and has been approved as a rider in every Congress since 1976.” The argument that federal tax dollars are used to pay for abortion services is a false narrative. Instead, these services are funded by state taxes in 17 states and outside donations. Despite this fact, appealing to one’s emotion is still a very effective rhetorical device for opponents of Planned Parenthood due to lack of knowledge about Planned Parenthood. The rhetoric of those against Planned Parenthood is so fiery and impassioned that it effectively drowns out the quantitative evidence of all the good Planned Parenthood does.

So what are the consequences of getting rid of Planned Parenthood and what is the quantitative evidence proving PP increases community health? For one, the lack of accessible contraception which would be created by defunding Planned Parenthood is a huge problem and increases the likelihood of teen pregnancy. A sexually active teen who doesn’t use contraceptives has a 90% chance of becoming pregnant within the year. This unintended pregnancy which could have possibly been prevented with free PP contraception causes a young girl to become a mother. That girl would have been 90% less likely to become a mother if PP had the opportunity to get her or her partner contraceptives. This girl’s whole life is changed forever because of the lack of preventive care and our failure as a nation.

You may be thinking how exactly could her life be changed? For one, parenthood is the leading reason for why teen girls drop out of school. About 50% of teen mothers never graduate from high school. This means that their prospects for employment later in life are extremely limited due to the fact that many employers require at least a GED. Less than 2% of teen moms earn a bachelor degree by the age of 30. This problem is most apparent in minority communities who are often undeserved and need preventative services like PP the most. In black and latino communities, teens are two and a half times more likely to become parents. Additionally, more than half of the mothers that are on welfare became mothers as teenagers. How can we expect young men and women to become economically upwardly mobile when we do so little to prevent such an extreme lifetime expense? To me, this is a slap in the face to those less economically advantaged who have little to no room for financial error.

The right continuously talks about how we should lower taxes and make people less dependent on the government to survive. This can be done, at least in part, by embracing preventive measures like Planned Parenthood. The best way to reduce the cost of healthcare or really any social service is to build a strong foundation that focuses on preventive measures. We pride ourselves on being the greatest country in the world but our healthcare system still needs to make improvements when it comes to affordable preventative healthcare.  Often, people only go to the doctor when there are health issues rather than going to prevent future health problems. This is because of the lack of affordable healthcare options like Planned Parenthood. Tami Luhby of CNN wrote that In 2012 “43% of America's working-age adults, didn't go to the doctor or access other medical services last year because of the cost.” This goes to show that we’re on the verge of defunding one of the few affordable bright spots that exist for America in terms of preventative medicine.

I think it’s a fair assumption that Americans think our healthcare system is superior to that of Cuba which is less economically advantaged. After all, according to The World Health Organization the U.S spent $9,402 per capita on health expenses in 2014 while Cuba spent $2,474. However, despite the U.S spending almost four times as much per capita Cuba’s healthcare system outperforms America’s in many ways.

The reason that Cuba out performs America in regards to healthcare is because of affordable preventative health measures. Instead of embracing preventative healthcare, we threaten to defund Planned Parenthood which works at the preventative level. Cuba, due to its emphasis on preventative medicine is one of the healthiest countries in the world. This healthcare success in Cuba is known in the healthcare community as the “Cuban Healthcare Paradox.” This is because Cuba is known as a fairly economically disadvantaged country yet has one of the best healthcare systems in the world due to preventive medicine. For example, because of preventative medicine the infant mortality rate in Cuba is now lower than that of the United States according to The CIA Factbook. 

So we can see that there are positive health effects of having affordable preventative health care, but, what is the economic impact? As you may have guessed, it’s positive as well. According to Forbes “The US ranks 3rd in health care expenditures, spending 17.9% of its GDP  on health (2011). In contrast, Cuba only spent 10% of its GDP, putting it on par with Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Canada.” It’s because of these facts that I’m continually baffled by the extreme amount of opposition to Planned Parenthood.

Debating whether or not abortion is moral or ethical is a complicated and usually unproductive dialogue due to how set in their believes most people are. It’s not productive to focus on this issue when trying to sway people on Planned Parenthood and instead the focus should be that there is hard, statistical proof that if we focus on preventive medicine then our country’s health as a whole will improve as a result. As soon as we develop policies backing preventative health care like PP community health will increase as a whole as a result.

Finally, if the hard facts aren’t enough let's think of who is really suffering due to the defunding of Planned Parenthood. It’s most likely not me and it’s probably not someone reading the New York Times. The person who really pays the price of defunding Planned Parenthood is a 15 year old girl from a low income family who had sex without contraceptives because they weren’t readily available. That girl most likely won’t be able to achieve an education and break the cycle of economic oppression which her family has suffered for possibly centuries. We as a nation fail that girl and her future child by putting her into a situation she’s not ready to deal with. We have to be better than that as a nation and with services like Planned Parenthood, we can be.

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Do Organics Exploit Your Humanity With A False Narrative?

The False Narrative of Organics

Neil Fitzsimons

Could the idea that organics are more ethical be a false narrative used to disguise how much less cost efficient organics truly are? If we know that industrial farming is more efficient, why even have organics? One of the main reasons is because people believe eating organically is their duty as responsible, ethical citizens. People are willing to pay more for essentially less because they believe they are doing the “ethical” thing.  Organics are thought to have a lower environmental impact and to treat animals with greater care, but how true is this?

I grew up in a very forward thinking city in Burlington, Vermont and from a young age, I was told that eating organically was the responsible and ethical thing to do. It seemed that if you had the money and cared about animal rights and the environment, you ate organically. Looking back, however, I can’t pinpoint one specific person who had the authority or knowledge to justify these claims. They were mostly upper-middle-class white collar workers whose extent of farming knowledge was based on documentaries and news articles. What made any of these people an authority?

Omnivore’s Delusion by Blake Hurst is written by a farmer, so if anyone’s opinion should be valued it should be his. Hurst starts off his writing by calling out all the pseudo-experts that exist in regards to food production. It’s these same pseudo experts that imprinted the beliefs I had early on growing up in Burlington, Vermont.  Hurst goes against what I was raised to believe by arguing that organic farming does not have the clear ethical advantage when it comes to animal rights. Hurst draws from his own experience as a lifetime farmer to educate the reader about the false narrative they were taught to believe. Hurst argues that “Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is. This is something the critics of industrial farming never seem to understand.”  Hurst then draws attention to the fact that before industrial farming pigs used to crush and eat their young and turkeys used to look upward while it rained until they drowned. Hurst also draws attention to the brutal way farm animals are killed by predators when being raised through organic means of productions. While it’s fair to believe that Hurst may just be saying this to promote a more effective and profitable way of farming I value his opinion more than the average person because of his first-hand experience as a farmer.

While Hurst focused more on animal rights and how there wasn’t a clear advantage between industrial or organic farming, “Why Industrial Farms are Good for the Environment” by Jayson Lusk argued for the ethical advantages of industrial farming from an environmental perspective. Lusk writes that the technology available through industrial farming “reduces the use of water and fertilizer and harm to the environment.” This evidence implies that the environmental impact is actually lower for industrial farming. Again, this goes against the narrative that I have been told my whole life that organics are far superior environmentally when compared to industrial means. If industrial farming could ameliorate some environmental problems related to farming it would be fair to suggest the possibility it would be the “ethical” choice

The Article “Animal Cruelty or the Price of Dinner?” by Nicholas Kristof discusses the ethics of food production. Kristof takes a position that would argue that today’s industrial means of meat production are unethical. Kristof is the type of critic which would go against the likes of Hurst or Lusk. The main point that Kristof makes is that we value the lives and well beings of animals like dogs yet animals like chickens suffer. While this article by Nicholas Kristof was extremely well written (he did win two Pulitzers after all), I find myself wondering why Nicholas Kristof is an expert on this issue. Kristof tries to argue that industrial farming is the cause of chickens suffering but perhaps they would suffer equally through organic means of farming. After all, this is what a lifetime farmer and expert on farming claimed. If there isn’t a definitive advantage in the quality of life for organic or industrial animals shouldn’t we instead focus on what we know for sure?

What we know for certain is that we have a growing population and the poor struggle to eat nutritiously. If it isn’t blatantly clear that organics are ethically superior in terms of animal’s well-being and environmental impact shouldn’t we support industrial farming which is proven to produce more and be more cost efficient? Even Kristof who is clearly against industrial farming concedes “chicken companies excel at producing cheap food, with the price of chicken falling by at least half in real terms since 1930.” While Kristof uses the word “cheap” to try to belittle this advantage what he really means is affordable. To me, we should act on what we know for sure and it seems like the ethical thing to support farming which makes quality food available to the most people as possible.

“You Are What They Eat” in Consumer Reports illustrates exactly how efficient and cost effective industrial farming is. What really stood out to me is how waste and feed is recycled and given back to the animal. Like most people, when I first read this I was disgusted and ashamed that we as people would do this to innocent animals. However, once I became aware that there was actually nutritional value in this meal and got over the “ew” factor I felt my opinion shifting. Recycling animal waste is just another way that industrial farming can lower costs and make nutritional and quality food available to those who otherwise couldn’t afford it. If the animal doesn’t know what it’s eating and gets the nutrients it needs, what’s so wrong about it? My only concern with the added efficiency and lower prices is the reduction in food safety. Nestle in her book “Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety.” points out that efficiency increases the possibility of an outbreak of tainted meat. While this is a valid concern, I would argue that by making food more affordable overall health of the nation is increased even if there are some tragic incidents of tainted meat.

While organics could have some advantages ethically, it isn’t clear that they do. While it would be easy to believe that organics are “good” and industrial means of farming would be “bad” it’s not that simple.Like many issues, there is a large amount of gray area surrounding the issue of food production. Are we sacrificing the environment and animal rights to make food available to everyone and at what point is affordable food not worth it? For every decision, there is a reaction. For every pro, there is a con. It’s our job as citizens to educate ourselves, make our own decisions and decide what we need.Animals may be treated better, but the environment and prices may suffer. What’s key is to find a balance, where animals enjoy a decent quality of life while keeping prices reasonable and the farming methods sustainable. There is a give and take and it’s our goal as a society to find the balance and come up with the most ethical system of farming.