Pregnancies

The hair raises on the back of my neck every time I come across a comment like Robert Conot's ("Watts: Out of the Fire" Opinion, Aug. 5) that the cause of the "increasing disparity" between black and white people's income is because black students "have not been receiving" the education necessary for them to get well-paying jobs. Here it goes again, I shudder at this point, another of the common diatribes against supposedly racist white teachers who deliberately prevent black students from getting the education they need for future financial success.

Controversy about the pros and cons of home birth has raged this summer. Earlier this month, a study was published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology that concluded home birth can be harmful to babies -- tripling the risk of infant death. Home births are on the upswing in several countries; now totaling 1% of all births in the United States (25,000 deliveries per year), 3% in Britain and more than 30% in the Netherlands. But the new data on risks should be cause for reevaluating the practice, said editors of the Lancet in a commentary released Thursday.

When the federal government considers which preventive medical goods and services should be fully covered by insurance under the healthcare reform law, the prevailing issues should be reducing costs and providing maximum choice to the patient. The Institutes of Medicine adhered to that principle with its recommendation last week that insured women should be able to get contraceptives without a co-payment or deductible. Close to half of all pregnancies in this country are unplanned, and about 40% of those result in abortions.

The Obama administration's willingness to defend insurance coverage for family planning services against attacks from conservatives and religious groups is good news for women and for the health of the nation. Last year, the administration first proposed that, like other preventive medical goods and services, contraception and general family planning coverage should be available under the healthcare reform law without a co-payment or deductible. Not just churches but many of their affiliated organizations protested — with the backing of conservative Republicans — that they should not have to pay to provide insurance coverage for medical services that run counter to their beliefs.

The women of California have a new champion, Gov. Wilson. By promoting the idea that Norplant contraceptives be readily available to all women, my faith is restored. There really is a public official willing to risk his political future and act for the greater good. Unlike his predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George Deukmejian, Wilson is willing to look at the hard realities of teen-age pregnancies and family planning help for poor women. The soaring costs of health and welfare for unplanned and unwanted children must be addressed.

Since the beginning of time, women have been prisoners of their bodies because men have always determined whether or not a woman would be pregnant. Today, not much has changed, except that the man making those decisions are not a woman's husband but her congressman. Because of the lack of support by our government to find more effective forms of birth control, American women are continuously being faced with unwanted pregnancies. Unfortunately, the only way to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is an abortion.

Rosie Jimenez, a poor Latina, died indirectly from the 1977 decision to terminate federally funded abortions. She died form having a back-alley abortion. I'm a Latina who fears history will repeat itself. Women of color, as well as poor Caucasian females, will die as a result of the Supreme Court ruling. This decision says to me that a predominantly white bureaucracy couldn't care less about my and other ethnic communities. It's a door shut in the faces of women in need of information.

Since the late 1960s, when an emotional furor forced the Anaheim Union High School District to drop its nationally recognized sex education program, the subject has been so controversial that some school boards have foolishly refused to offer it as part of the curriculum. Anaheim still does not have a formal family life or sex education program. Neither does the Santa Ana Unified School District, the largest school district in the county.

An old Chinese saying suggests that we should be careful of what we ask for, because we may get it. The NAACP wanted legal racial segregation outlawed, believing that it prevented blacks from attaining political and economic equality. Now that segregation is against the law, many blacks remain at the bottom of the economic ladder. In the past, the NAACP was on the right side of the conflict between good and evil. Let's consider today's issues: black-on-black crime, illiteracy and unwanted pregnancies?

After reading two news stories about parents being accused of killing their small children and another about a 15-year-old girl arrested for abandoning her newborn at a construction site (Aug. 12), I again began wondering when our "enlightened" society would begin promoting adoption as a better means of dealing with unwanted children. I began reading Philip A. Lacovara's article with a sense of relief. As an attorney, I could see that his arguments had been well-thought-out and researched and, after all, adoption was mentioned as an alternative means of dealing with unwanted pregnancy.