Did the GOP shoot itself in the condom?

Did the GOP shoot itself in the condom when it got the administration to drop the funding for birth control and sex education from the Stimulus Bill?

Let’s take all of the emotional issues out of this debate, and look at some facts. I don’t know how many total funding dollars were in the original plan, but let’s just take a $1 million dollar slice of these funds and follow those dollars through the entire process on both sides of this issue.

Reality numbers!

The majority of condoms and sex education dollars go to poor and minority youth. Over 90%. If you assume that each dollar spent would buy a condom or pay for sex education, then the GOP just ensured that a possible one million babies will be born to young poor or minority mothers for EACH million dollars cut from the bill, give or take some amount. That’s a lot of babies, born to poor and minority folks.

In 18 years, how will those folks vote?  Most will vote Democratic. Now multiply that million dollars by the MANY more millions, actually billions, cut from the package, and you see that the GOP just ensured it’s demographical demise in the coming decades.

Now, what will be the cost of these babies born to young, mostly unwed, mothers? Well, let’s see…..no pre-natal care in many cases, infant mortality:

US, 2nd worst in the world, (CNN-’06 stats), at what cost? Emergency room treatments as young unwed mothers generally don’t have healthcare. Then, how many of these mothers will finish high school or wind up on some form of welfare and won’t hold jobs or pay taxes? Who pays for them….we do, the American tax payer, you and I do. What about the number of these babies who wind up in the foster care system? Who pays for them….we do, you and I, the American taxpayers for at least 18 years. What about that percentage of these poor children who wind up as criminals and are incarcerated? Who pays for this for years and years to come, and sometimes for their entire adult life? We, the American taxpayer will be footing those costs as well.

Yes, some percentage of these moms will finish school, have husbands and raise their babies. But, what percentage will not want the child?  Some may allow for adoption, but  about 33% will seek an abortion, that could be about 300,000 babies aborted. Yes, you may say that we can outlaw abortions, but that will not end them. You say, just say no, well young Bristol Palin said it very well, abstinence is unrealistic.

So let’s see what the emotional, ideological GOP succeeded in doing by appealing to a media frenzy with their snippets of “Billions for Condoms” warfare on the Stimulus Plan?

They assured millions more new Democratic voters in the coming years.

They more than likely will cost the taxpayers untold trillions of dollars for decades to come, paying for medical care, foster care, prisoner housing, and many other socio-economic costs, far too high to estimate.

They assured hundreds of thousands, no, maybe millions of abortions in the coming years.

So who really won this condom battle and who really lost the war? There are really NO winners. The majority of young women lost, the majority of babies will lose, but, the American taxpayer really lost. This was all for a partisan war, where the American people, the young women and their babies were never really a concern to these Ideologues.  What a shame and what an unforgivable sin against humanity!