Prose Before Hos

A Homosexual’s Take On Newt’s Marriages

Posted on March 15, 2012 in Images

If Newt can have several marriages, gay people should at least be allowed one.

Do Economic Arguments Against Abortion Make Sense?

Posted on March 15, 2012 in Images

The intersection between reproductive rights, health care and religion has been a bloody and treacherous place to travel for decades. The abortion issue as figurehead and lightning rod ignites the most heated social debates in the American political landscape, so much so that many decry such purely social and cultural issues as distractions from the real business of politics: the almighty dollar. So is it any wonder that there is an economic influence lingering around this controversy and that this association may be further impeding the progress of women’s reproductive freedom?

Dennis Howard, President of the pro-life group Movement for a Better America, has been researching the economic impact of abortion since 1995. In a 2008 interview, Mr. Howard asserted, “that the 50.5 million surgical abortions since 1970 have cost the U.S. an astonishing $35 trillion dollars, in lost Gross Domestic Product,” and “if you include all the babies lost to IUDs, RU-486, sterilization, and abortifacients, the number climbs to $70 trillion.”

The sum and substance of this position is that abortions and birth control shrink the population, causing loss in labor and consumer power and a decreased tax base for national revenue. However, the US population, even with access to birth control and legal abortions, is still steadily rising. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of US births reached a record high of 4,315,000 in 2007, while that same year the CDC announced that life expectancy reached a new high of 78. So Americans are having more babies than ever and we’re living longer.

Even if Mr. Howard’s figures are accurate, overpopulation has plenty of its own set of detrimental economic and environmental side effects. In the United States, the expense of raising a child through the age of 17 can cost middle-income families anywhere between $221,000 and $300,000. This puts low-income parents–single mothers mostly–in an untenable position that often leads to recurrent poverty. Removing a woman’s right to choose not only removes her control over her body, but also her ability to control her economic future.

PETA: Guilty Of Things You May Not Think Of

Posted on March 15, 2012 in Articles

The Article: PETA’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad History of Killing Animals by James McWilliams in the Atlantic.

The Text: In 2011, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) behaved in a regrettably consistent manner: it euthanized the overwhelming majority (PDF) of dogs and cats that it accepted into its shelters. Out of 760 dogs impounded, they killed 713, arranged for 19 to be adopted, and farmed out 36 to other shelters (not necessarily “no kill” ones). As for cats, they impounded 1,211, euthanized 1,198, transferred eight, and found homes for a grand total of five. PETA also took in 58 other companion animals — including rabbits. It killed 54 of them.

These figures don’t reflect well on an organization dedicated to the cause of animal rights. Even acknowledging that PETA sterilized over 10,500 dogs and cats and returned them to their owners, it doesn’t change the fact that its adoption rate in 2011 was 2.5 percent for dogs and 0.4 for cats. Even acknowleding that PETA never turns an animal away — “the sick, the scarred and broken, the elderly, the aggressive and unsocialized…” — doesn’t change the fact that Virginia animal shelters as a whole had a much lower kill rate of 44 percent. And even acknowledging that PETA is often the first to rescue pets when heat waves and hurricanes hit, that doesn’t change the fact that, at one of its shelters, it kills 84 percent of supposedly “unadoptable” animals within 24 hours of their arrival.