As we prepare to cast our votes on the sanity of this country, let's talk a bit about everyone's favorite subject...
Everyone loves copulating; it's the oldest sport and the oldest business in the world. But we've now got 7.6 billion human products of copulation overpopulating the planet to prove the point.
Copulation without some form of birth control produces an exploding human population, straining government resources, degrading the environment and driving mass migration. If we could do just one simple thing to stabilize the globe, it would be to give the world's women unrestricted, free access to modern contraception.
And yes, it turns out, government can play an important role in the bedroom. Look no farther than Colorado, the state that has also, wisely, made cannabis legal. This purple state with a Democratic governor and an open mind has offered free or low-cost access to intrauterine devices for poor young women since 2009. The result: Between 2009 and 2017, the state's teen birth rate fell 54 percent and the teen abortion rate declined 64 percent. As a bonus, according to the Denver Post, Colorado avoided paying nearly $70 million for labor and delivery costs, neonatal costs, medical expenses, food stamps and child care assistance because of fewer births to teen moms.
That strikes us as falling squarely within conservative values. But guess who's opposed to that kind of stunning reduction in the abortion rate? Colorado Republicans, who briefly cut funding for the program in 2015 before it was restored. They can't stand a government success story, and they lie in the name of religion by calling IUDs an abortifacient, which they are not. Apparently, Colorado Republicans would rather concuss America's brains with a prayer book and see higher abortion rates than solve a problem with common contraception.
Unfortunately, this kind of reason-free, religious la-la land has dominated Washington for years, growing much worse in the Trump era. And America is far from the only casualty.
One of Donald Trump's first acts as president was to re-implement the global gag rule that prohibits allocation of U.S. funding to foreign non-governmental organizations that offer abortion services or talk about abortion. One year later, global health care workers say the result has been disastrous, with contraception clinics shutting down, unsafe and fatal abortions rising and families losing health services around the world. Even if a clinic supplies birth control pills, condoms, IUDs or other nonabortion services, if it "talks about abortion," it now gets zero U.S. funding and may have to close. A zero-tolerance abortion policy has produced a zero-tolerance contraception policy.
Marie Stopes International, a London-based abortion and contraception provider that operates in 37 countries, estimates that the 2 million women it serves are losing access to all types of contraception from their organization alone due to the global gag rule defunding. The real impact is much larger and destructive when all global nongovernmental organizations are combined; tens of millions of women are losing access to contraception.
Making matters worse, Trump also ended U.S. funding for the United Nations Population Fund, the world's largest provider of contraceptives and reproductive health services, serving 12.5 million women in more than 46 countries. The International Women's Health Coalition called the UNPF decision "a major blow to the world's most important agency for reproductive health," according to The Guardian.
Add in Justice Neil Gorsuch and his drunken Georgetown Prep School friend Brett Kavanaugh to America's Supremely Corrupted Court to help make America's abortions back-alley again and the world now has a runaway, right-wing, religious war on women.
Read more: Keeping Roe v. Wade Is Not Enough | Opinion
Overpopulation is worsening, environmental degradation is accelerating, and mass migration from poor countries to rich countries—including the United States—is booming. Meanwhile, the Republican Party is praying and telling the world to be fruitful and multiply, even as it sends troops to the border to confront a caravan of women and children.
With a Congress filled with new faces, now's the time to lobby your (likely Democratic) representative and stop the right-wing attack on women, logic and common sense.
Here are your choices on November 6:
D to lower the teen pregnancy rate, the abortion rate, welfare expenses and to stabilize the world's population, the climate and mass migrations.
Or...
R for more pregnant teenagers, more abortions, more state-funded welfare, more overpopulation, more mass migrations and immigration and more unwanted male sperm from the world's Mad Men Misogynists.
Give the old crusty white men who run the Republican political asylum what they truly deserve, America—a swift kick in the political groin on November 6.
Stop aborting America's IQ, Republicans.
D to go forward; R for reverse.
Chelsea Handler is a comedian, author and activist. She is the author of five New York Times best selling books. Chelsea is a co-chair for Emily's List and has been touring the country to help elect women and progressives for the 2018 mid-terms. She is currently writing her sixth book and filming a documentary for Netflix. Glen Handler is an Audit Director of a large multinational corporation. He used to change his baby sister Chelsea's diapers when he was a teenager.
The views expressed in this article are the authors' own.
