Planned Parenthood: Less than 100 years ago.

When my wife and I go on trips we like to listen to audio books. One of the books we listened to recently was The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards. It was about connecting with a long lost relative by the name of Rose that had influenced her family but they really didn’t know her history. Rose was a free spirit of the early 1900’s who up and joined the march with ladies demonstrating instead of doing the gardening she was supposed to do. She was also taken advantage of a boy from rich family and got pregnant, had to leave her child in her families care and made her way from then on.

It is a good story but what caught my ear was the state of women less than one hundred years ago in terms of options over their own lives. They did not have the foggiest idea of how their own bodies worked or how to control family size. In fact, it was illegal, due to the Comstock laws to teach women about sex education.

The leading force against this ignorance and oppression was through Margaret Stanton who founded Planned Parenthood. Stanton’s own mother had 18 pregnancies, bore 11 children and died in 1899 at the age of 40. As a nurse, Stanton saw how the Comstock laws affected immigrant families on New York’s lower east side; sickness, misery and death from unwanted pregnancy and illegal abortion. You can find many good histories of this era and Stanton on the internet including the Planned Parenthood site: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/history-and-successes.htm.

But to think of this type of inhumanity less than 100 years shocked me no end. Politicians have always had a hand in this from those early inhumane laws of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s to the more enlightened views during the Nixon administration where both parties worked together for adequate family planning services; and of course, Roe v. Wade in 1973. The movement lost ground during the Reagan years, Reagan opposing abortion and made simplistic arguments to limit Planned Parenthood work and limited research dollars. And we are all aware of the violence and bombings of clinics by fanatics over the years. George H.W. Bush catered to the right wing on this issue though initially supporting it. Bush 43 tried to turn back the clock and on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, his first day in office implemented a gag rule to restrict funds for international family planning. Enough detail, you can look it up for yourselves.

I then wondered how citizens of the future a hundred years from now will look at our social policies and perhaps see them as draconian and inane as we see the policies of yesteryear.

What will they think of a country without universal health care preferring to give governmental preference and aid to privatize medicine when other wealthy countries care for their citizens far better. What will they think of a country that did not have universal child care programs again in contrast to other more enlightened countries? What will they think of the rhetoric of extremists such as Newt Gingrich who stated on CNN that child labor laws are stupid? What will they think of our countries growing difficulty in providing and funding good educations that made us less able to compete globally? What will they think of our support of fossil fuel use and large carbon footprint and not investing aggressively in modern forms of energy as other countries have? What will they think of a tax system and government regulations that gave half the wealth of the country to one tenth of 1% of the population and drove down middle class poor incomes? What will they think of the hate mongering of radicals on immigration? What will they think of efforts to get rid of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and other safety nets? What will they think of a country that actually seemed to believe that trickle down economics worked? What will they think of the ability of the rich to buy elections and influence the legal system by corporate funding? What will they think of corporations being classed as people? What will they think of a country that buried its head in the sand over global warming ignoring the research of the scientific community? What will they think of a country that has more guns that any other country in the guise of the 2^nd amendment but where militias never did anything? What will they think of a country that incarcerates more people than any other country and is known for its violence? What will they think of a country that proclaims its religious freedom and belief but does not follow the moral teachings of those religions? What will they think of a president who said, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” And then did everything he promised not to do: making the government larger, increasing the debt, etc.? What will they think of congressional representatives who let biased lobbyists write the legislation they should be researching and writing?

I wonder if in the future there will be two honest political parties with conservative and liberal components but have the willingness to work for the common good and recapture the vision of the founding fathers and give us back democracy.