No Surprise: Contraception Prevents Unwanted Pregnancy

The Guttmacher Institute has released this their findings on how consistent use of contraception prevents abortions.

The two-thirds of U.S. women at risk of unintended pregnancy who use contraception consistently and correctly throughout the course of any given year account for only 5% of all unintended pregnancies. The 19% of women at risk who use contraception inconsistently account for 43% of unintended pregnancies, while the 16% of women at risk who use no contraceptive method at all for a month or more during the year account for 52%.

These simple statistics demonstrate how effective contraceptive use can be. They also categorically refute claims by anti-contraception activists that access to contraception somehow leads to more unintended pregnancies and subsequent abortions.

Only five percent of women that properly use contraception account for abortions. Conservatives would have you believe that contraception will lead to the downfall of mankind and abstinence is the only way to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Never mind that when (then comedian) Al Franken sent letters to Bush administration officials asking for their stories on how they abstained from sex until they were married, he never got an abstinence confessional.

In bizarro world: Fox News host Laura Ingraham absurdly claims that rapists will give their victims Plan B. Stupidity ensues.

It’s a good deal for pedophiles, a good deal for people who commit statutory rape against young girls. If mothers and fathers across this country hear this, and they think, ‘Well, I guess my daughter or her boyfriend or her rapist can go out to a pharmacy and get a bunch of, you know, hormone pills to give a little girl’... We don’t really know the effect of a spiking or dropping a little girl’s... in many cases a young woman’s or a little girl’s hormonal levels. It’s outrageous!

Of course, Ingraham provides no evidence to back her conspiracy theory. Other conservatives, such as Trent Franks, thinks that women rarely get pregnant after being raped.

"The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low," Franks said, according to a transcript.

Franks made this argument in defense of a DOA bill to ban abortion nationwide after 20 weeks of gestation. This falls under the same form of bogus science as Todd Akin's infamous comment.

"First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare... If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

The reality is Ingraham, Franks, and Akin want women to have no control over their own bodies if they are raped. They also don't want women to have access to birth control. It is a fact that the pill lowers the amount of abortions in this country. If conservatives really want to eliminate abortions then they would back access to the pill. Conservatives don't because they are held hostage by the Christian Right that views sex as a dirty thing.

Update: Massachusetts Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez (R) distances himself from Trent Franks.

"I think that he’s a moron and he proves that stupid has no specific political affiliation,” Gomez told ABC News on Wednesday. “I have no idea what goes into the mind of a moron like that ... These kinds of comments only come from a moron and they shouldn’t be tolerated one bit."

Trent Franks: Deficit Peacock

"We know that if we grow this economy, that nothing will do more good toward bringing in additional revenues to government. And that’s not to theory; that’s a historical observation. Even the much-maligned Bush tax cuts brought in an additional $100 billion a year to government coffers. We forget that unless someone is out there producing, there’s no tax revenue. There’s no revenue. There’s no nothing for anyone."

Rep. Trent Franks

Even George W. Bush appointees said to Congress that the tax cuts did not bring in more tax revenue.


Robert Carroll, deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department during Bush’s second term.

“As a matter of principle, we do not think tax cuts pay for themselves.”

Alan D. Viard, a former economist at Council of Economic Advisers during President Bush's first term, said there is no proof that the Bush tax cuts brought in more tax revenue.

"Federal revenue is lower today than it would have been without the tax cuts. There's really no dispute among economists about that," said Alan D. Viard, a former Bush White House economist now at the nonpartisan American Enterprise Institute. "It's logically possible" that a tax cut could spur sufficient economic growth to pay for itself, Viard said. "But there's no evidence that these tax cuts would come anywhere close to that."

Former Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson.

“As a general rule, I do not believe that tax cuts pay for themselves.”

Edward Lazear, former chairman of the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, told Senate Budget Committee that the Bush tax cuts lost tax revenue.

“Will the tax cuts pay for themselves? As a general rule, we do not think tax cuts pay for themselves. Certainly, the data presented above do not support this claim. Tax revenues in 2006 appear to have recovered to the level seen at this point in previous business cycles, but this does not make up for the lost revenue during 2003, 2004, and 2005. The tax cuts were a positive step and have contributed to the enhanced economic growth, additional jobs, higher real disposable income, and the low unemployment rates that we currently see today.”

Even Bush's economic team admits that the tax cuts do not increase tax revenue. Simply mathematics dictate that you do not add by subtracting. Franks is another deficit peacock. Franks doesn't care about reducing the deficit. He just wants more tax cuts.

Wingnut Alert: Trent Franks Supports Impeaching Obama

Rep. Trent Franks is the first Republican to publicly voice support for impeachment of President Obama. Franks uses the insane rationale of Obama's deciding not to have the Justice Department defend the Defense of Marriage Act in federal courts. Obama decided that the equal protection clause of the 14 amendment.

Obama used his office to sell planes for Boeing. That is impeachable and against federal law. Republicans would never impeach a sitting president for helping a major corporation make a profit. Gay marriage and blowjobs are reasons to remove a president. Republican are seriously uptight about sex.