It's pretty clear to all of us that Conservatives aren't okay with abortions at all because they view it as murder or ungodly or whatever have you. I'm going to try to be as tolerant as possible while I present a simple solution that we could all get behind.

Abortions, no matter how you do it, aren't cheap. The pill alone costs up to 800 dollars depending on your situation. In clinic abortions aren't much better, ranging up to about 1500 dollars. Conservatives are quite angry about the idea that abortions should be federally subsidized. To some extent, I can agree with that. They aren't cheap and costs a fair deal of tax money. However, if we are to end federal funding of abortion clinics, that leaves us with a swath of people who are going to need abortions. So what do we do about that? I have 2 solutions.

The first is integrating a comprehensive sex education program in our public schools. In 2011, 45% of pregnancies were unintended ones. Now there's probably a small percentage in there where genuine misfortune was present, but many of them were due to not being educated on how to have safe sex. Let me break this down for you. 24 states and DC mandate sex education. Of those 24, 22 mandate both sex and HIV education. Only 2 mandate solely sex education. 27 states and DC mandate that sex ed programs meet certain requirements when provided. Of those 27, only 13 require that the information be medically accurate. 13. That's only a little over 25% of the entire country that mandates medically accurate sex ed programs. It should also be noted that only 2 of those 27 states prohibit religious practices in those programs. That's right. Only 2 states. That means that abstinence-based sex ed (which is a strong Catholic principle) has the potential to be the dominating force in sex ed. In fact, between the years 2011 and 2013, 80% of adolescents were instructed on saying no to sex. Meanwhile only 55% of men and 60% of young women were educated on contraceptives. In rural areas the numbers are declining alarmingly. Specifically 71%-48% among females and 59%-45% among males were educated about contraceptives. Just in 2014, a shocking 76% of high schools taught abstinence as the most effective method to avoid pregnancy and only 61% taught about contraceptive use. That number is even lower at the middle school level and 88% of schools allow parents to opt their children out of sex ed entirely.

These statistics are alarmingly dangerous. Ignorance of the importance of sexual health is what causes abortion numbers to sky rocket. But Conservatives would rather push an agenda that has been proven to be ineffective over a period of decades for the sake of religion. Listen. I'm all for religion. I'm a Catholic myself. But when religion interferes with the public health of the country, it has no place in making decisions. This leads to my next solution.

Promotion and provision of contraceptives not only in schools but public institutions in general would go a long way to reducing the number of abortions every year. Birth control pills for example, cost up to 50 dollars per month. In any given year, that's 600 dollars. That's 200 dollars cheaper than an abortion pill and 900 dollars cheaper than an in-clinic abortion. In a year, you've just saved anywhere from 200-900 dollars per woman that could've ended up pregnant in a given year. We have damn near 4 million births a year. Do you know how much you save with just the fraction of people who's pregnancies are unintended or needed to be aborted if you just promoted a form of birth control? Millions of dollars in tax money. Condoms are even cheaper (and have no hormonal effects on either person involved). At your local Walmart, a box of condoms costs (depending on the size of the box) anywhere from 4 dollars to roughly 20 dollars. Contraceptives are much cheaper than abortions so if you don't like abortion type solutions let's promote prevention based methods instead.

The solution to this problem is really simple Conservatives. Why do you have to make this particular issue such a big dilemma. Just get your heads out of your Bibles for a minute and do what the hell we elected you for. We didn't elect preachers. We elected Congressmen. The Constitution isn't the Bible for God's sake. Do your damn job.

https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/facts-americ...

https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/se...

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/births.htm

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/abortion/i...