Clutch Magazine: Poor Women Find Diminishing Reproductive Choices

Image by the Guttmacher InstituteIn a recent post for Clutch Magazine Online, I tackled the plight of poor women who deal with tougher choices when it comes to sex, children, family planning and birth control than their better off, insurance having counterparts. The reality -- that no one likes to talk about when they're passing judgment -- is that half of all U.S. women, regardless of race or class status, before turning 45 will have at least one an unplanned pregnancy. The main difference between the sexual habits of the poor and the not-so-poor isif you're better off financially, have insurance or live in an area with better access to health care services your reproductive choices stay between you and a doctor and can be dealt with quickly.

Poor women, don't have the same options, so they're becoming the "face" of abortion due to being underserved by family planning programs. 

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Jon Huntsman Picks Up Toys, Goes Home; Romney Hands Out Cash

Jon Hunstman, the Republican president candidate who could never shake that "Obama hired me to be Ambassador to China," moderate conservative stink off himself, dropped out of the GOP race today. Huntsman, naturally, endorsed the man who he most resembled without all the complications of being a horrible phony -- Mittens Romney.

Mittens, known for his robotic qualities and pathological inconsistencies was somewhere in South Carolina giving a poor black woman $60 in cash. It was a perfect storm of annoyances -- from the optics of a black person getting an actual "hand-out," to reinforcing the ideology that occasional donations from Daddy Warbucks should take care of our poor and not a strong social safety net built on our tax dollars, to reinforcing the belief that all poor, begging people are black people.

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Hey Everybody, Let's All Look At Rick Santorum Now!

Despite my many, many protestations to anyone taking Rick Santorum seriously, Santorum had to go and almost tie Mittens for a win in Iowa. Even though ol' Santy lost by eight votes, he's a "winner" since two weeks ago he was polling around four percent in Iowa. Of course, this ignores that GOP voters have played "Anybody But Romney" with pretty much everyone and it was now Santorum's turn. (Will it ever be Jon Huntsman's turn? Hahahahahaha. No.) 

But Santy's the one (for now). So let's all look at him, shall we?

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Poverty In America's Suburbs Jumps By 53 Percent

From the NYT SlideshowOnce a symbol of "making it," the suburbs continued their slide into growing older and poorer. The New York Times reports today that poverty level in America's suburbs has jumped by more than half since 2000, compared to the cities, which saw an increase of 26 percent. And the limping economy has only hastened the 'burb's poverty rate, with two-thirds of of that growth happening between 2007 and 2010.

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Nobody Likes You When You're Poor. Even If Last Week You Weren't.

From The Smoking Gun.When tornadoes ripped up the Southeast late April, killing more than 300 people, one of the towns hit was Cordova, Ala. Many residents lost everything, along with their homes. So when FEMA rolled up with a bunch of single-wide trailers for storm victims to live in it only made sense to Cordova Mayor Jack Scott to say "no" to those trailers, enforcing a town law banning trailer homes because ... um ... they make the neighborhood look bad.

More after the jump.

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