Friday, November 12, 2004

Planning an abortion


The Family Planning Association is encouraging those who do not want to get pregnant to use contraceptives. This, it claims, will reduce the abortion rate. In other words if more people were to use contraceptives there will be fewer unwanted pregnancies.

So when the news finally comes out noting that almost half the 18,511 abortions performed in New Zealand last year were on women who say they were using contraception when they became pregnant, that FPA push for contraceptives is not really avoiding abortions and unwanted pregnancies much at all. Our abortion statistics equate to about 40% of our annual immigration numbers.

So what does the Family Planning Association do with all that 7 million dollars in government funding it gets each year? And that's just the government funding.

Although I have not had time to quantify the cost of FPA funding, Abortion Supervisory Committee Funding and the cost of abortions for each of the more than 8000 women who had abortions due to failed contraceptives, I recon it is a fair whack even compared to the money spent on women on the DPB who have extra kids. And some bloggers have been complaining about that recently.

According to David Farrar a women on the DPB gets about $2964 more a year for every extra child they have. (If they don’t name the father/s the benefit goes down by $22 per week, shortly to be $28.00). But take the $7m government funding from the FPA (or the Sexual Activity Association) and you can fund the extra cost of 2300 babies born to DPB mums every year. It's all out of the same purse - your's and mine.

Of course some DPB women may have had abortions as well. And to be fair to the FPA it has done other things with funding other than promoting contraception - like using Government-funded taxpayers money to lobby the Government in support of the Prostitution Act, and taking the piss out of Easter with advertising billboards, for example.

Now you know why I have suggested renaming the Family Planning Association. Call it the Sexual Activity Association, because that is exactly what it is - an association promoting sexual activity.

But on a lighter note, it is time to put the Family Planning back into the Association before the condom cracks and the morning after pill is taken the morning after the morning after because you suddenly realised that the night before was actually the night before the night before.

And then it's too late.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dave, Dave, Dave...

Sorry to rain on your rhetoric, but could our high
abortion rate be due to generational factors? When
the CS and A Act was passed back in 1977, we were
unfortunate enough to have a pack of ignorant elderly
social conservatives who obstructed comprehensive sex education to that generation. While that was remedied when Helen Clark made it legal to provide sex education and contraceptives to under-sixteens, we still have a 'lost generation' that might have passed
on adverse models of reproductive and sexual behaviour to their kids. Ergo, we have these stats.

Added to which, MedSafe is dragging the chain when it comes to new and more effective methods of contraception. And what's wrong with encouraging male responsibility for barrier contraception anyway? As a gay male, I believe that safe sex is an ethical imperative for members of our community. Of course, I'm an old-fashioned boy when it comes to my own long-
term monogamous relationship, but that's not for everyone, straight or gay.

Craig :)

Anonymous said...

Craig, to answer your first wquestion, no. To address your last point, gay couples cannot conceive so safe sex doesnt stop abortions, so your point was....

Greyshade, the DPB is paid for the first 18 years of the child's life provided the sole mum or dad is not in work. In most cases they do go to work before the child turns 18. I understood the figures provided by DPF relate to those on the benefit only - ie with no other income. Of course if the parent does work the increase is less as they wont be getting the DPB in its entirety and may not be entitled to all the IRD support.

$7 million may pay for fewer family support payments but, in terms of the increase, cover a greater number of people on the DPB who have more kids. In any case, under working for families there is an in work payment which I understand can also be paid to beneficaries if they are in part time work.
But that's for another time.
Dave

Anonymous said...

Erm, Dave, the last time I looked, heterosexual safe sex through use of barrier contraception *did* prevent
STIs and HIV, as well as unwanted pregnancy. So your point is...?

Craig

Span said...

Contraception is not some panacea - it requires eternal vigilance - even the injections mean the woman has to remember to have the next one.

So the fact that almost half of those who have had abortions say they were using contraception at the time is not surprising.

Especially when you also consider some of the language barriers involved in teaching people about contraception - both for those with literacy issues, and those for whom English is a second language. I know a Plunket nurse and she told me a story once about a woman who she taught about diaphrams - she told her to put it in at night to avoid getting pregnant to her husband (they felt they already had enough kids). Unfortunately the husband was a shift worker, so they generally had sex during the day...

Hans Versluys said...

The alternative to safe and legal abortion is backstreet knitting needles and gin soaked baths. Surely Krazy Kristians don't want a return to that? The problem with contraceptives is that there is not enough education on their use. it should be compulsory in schools at all levels.
AS for DPB, I think the biological father should be shoulder-tapped first. It would put a national DNA database to good use by recovering dough from deadbeat dads.

Anonymous said...

Craig

condoms etc do not totally stop AIDS/HIV etc, another one of your so called "facts".......

I will give you one tick: you never answer a question. You merely raise another. Is that why you got kicked out of Massey?

Anonymous said...

Hi guys and girls
go to www.drjudithriesman.com and take a look at the article on how safe condoms are.
The info is taken direct from the USA authorities.

with nearly 20% of our lot getting chlamydia you'd think the powers that be and all concerned peoples would say something to our young people.
Can someone show me in the FPA website any indicators that condoms aren't safe?
best
Mike

Anonymous said...

Knowing how you all like source material I got this for you busy people.
I think they are all credible.

The spectacular evidence of condom dangers came from a report co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The high-ranking scientific panel considered data on only eight of roughly 25 widespread STD's: HIV, chancroid, genital herpes, human papillomavirus (HPV), gonorrhea, syphilis, trichomoniasis and chlamydia.

For, it turns out that while STD infections are a principal cause of women's sterility, chronic disease and early death, condoms afford girls and women categorically no protection from seven of the eight STD's studied, even when used faultlessly 100 percent of the time.

Condoms may curb gonorrhea in heterosexual intercourse – but only for men!

The scientific panel studied data from several small groups of heterosexual couples, with one partner an AIDS carrier – the longest follow-up study being three years. Allegedly, if condoms are applied without fail in normal vaginal intercourse, approximately 15 out of each 100 uninfected partners will get HIV annually

Also relevant, condom safety claims may be killing girls and women en masse. Condoms do not stop genital HPV, the most common STD. Said Dr. Coborn, "every year, 15,000 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed and 5,000 women die of the disease. Hundreds of thousands of other women will be diagnosed and treated for pre-cancerous condition. HPV is the cause of nearly all cervical cancer and has also been linked to prostate, anal and oral cancer."

This is several bits out of a whole page, if it's true why is it not on the FPA website and taught in schools?
best
Mike

Anonymous said...

Just a few things to add here on contraception. Us studies found that 1 in 6 couples using condoms conceived in the following year - roughly the same chances as Russian roulette.

Now comes the scary part. A sperm is 100 microns in diameter. The HIV virus is 5 microns in diameter. Condom manufacturers quality control requires there be no holes of more than 10 microns in diameter.

At a conference of sexual health specialists in the US, they were asked how many advise their patients to use condoms to protect against AIDS - most hands went up, they were then asked how many would have sex with someone they knew had AIDS while using a condom - not one hand went up. The experts know the dangers, but they don't want to publicize them - one can see a repeat of the tobacco companies' problems here.

Karl