Though Cowards Flinch

But does it come with socialized medicine and means-tested abortions?

It’s easy to claim that Obama and many Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans. It’s not difficult to point out suitable examples, such as the Stupak Amendment. Whenever the Senate and House resolve their different HCR laws (HR  3962, which includes a ‘public option’, and HR 3590, which does not) and, in addition to abortion not being covered, there’s no ‘public option’, it may cause disillusionment amongst the army of activists who secured a Democratic presidency, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House.

Yet some of the damage that has lasted since the Republican Revolution of 1994 is being undone. Between May and August, Obama led with legislation that de-funded many of the utterly useless abstinence-only programmes in the US. According to abstinence programme advocate Valerie Huber, by the start of the next fiscal year, September 2010, an additional one hundred and thirty programmes will have to cease their activities. Step forward Senator Orin Hatch (R-Utah) who is trying to cram an abstinence-only amendment into the Senate bill on healthcare reform.

In December, however, some more fruits of a Democratic victory flowered. President Obama signed into law the Omnibus Appropriations bill, finally killing federal funding for abstinence-only programmes. US $110 million will go towards ‘proven’ programmes – i.e. comprehensive sex education. There is no question that comprehensive sex ed. reduces the potential for teen pregnancy and increases rates of ‘safe sex’. As the key 2007 study confirms, as rates of pregnancy and STIs are higher among the poor, this is a key success for the American working class.

Obama has pulled something of a bureaucratic fudge on the issue, however, rather than relying on debate over the merits of abstinence only programmes and the sort of mindset which sustains them. The new law basically outsources sex ed, and anyone seeking federal funds must prove to the new Office of Adolescent Health that their programme is effective. Since abstinence-only programmes are ineffective, this is likely to rule them out. But it also avoids the debate over why people want abstinence only programmes and why they’re wrong.

The other danger is that a revised ‘abstinence’ programme comes back looking for funds, much in the way ‘intelligent design’ was an attempt to get around the clear order of the First Amendment to the US Constitution that Congress should respect no one religion, thereby preventing the teaching of the Genesis creation story on a par with the theory of evolution in public schools. It may be effective, but is it as effective as comprehensive sex education from a young age? This is left unspoken for.

Nevertheless, the HCR bills under conference debate between Senate and House contain respectively an additional US $75m and $50m to be distributed among the states for comprehensive sex education. This is not something only of value to egghead liberals who want to have a beef with those of religious conviction. It is of value to all rungs of American society, particularly the working class, to reduce teenage pregnancies and facilitate taking control of one’s own reproductive system and its uses.

The next challenge, should they choose to accept it, is getting the public option in healthcare approved, and extending municipal and state programmes of free contraceptives to federal level. We know the Democrats aren’t socialists. We know they’re not revolutionaries, they are reformists – and bad ones, by and large. These are still baby steps, if key ones, but they are ones that we should press for as they have immediate results for the practical equality of women, and the health of American labour.

Appendix 1. For those anoraks out there who, like me, retain their J-STOR access, I thought this article from the British Medical Journal was rather amusing. It’s from 1962 and it goes to show that sometimes precious little changes, for all that we talk about Progress with a capital ‘P’.