Burch: Killing Nashville teens

GOP geniuses are on a roll. Their plan to drown the earth in pollution and unwanted babies keeps gathering steam. As a result, the lives of Nashville teenagers are increasingly endangered.

Last year, as reported by the Associated Press, “the Republican-controlled House voted to strip federal money from President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and from Planned Parenthood and to bar the EPA from issuing global warming regulations.”

This year, Ohio Republicans added an amendment to a budget bill that would de-fund Planned Parenthood. Nina Turner, an Ohio Senator, told The Daily Beast, “It’s a social, racial and economic attack. Most of the women who are affected are poor, or black, or brown. It’s becoming a sin in this country to be poor and female.”

The family planning organization is also under attack in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other states.

Closer to home, Tennessee Representative Stacey Campfield recently compared defunding Planned Parenthood with taking the prettiest girl at prom home (presumably to make whoopee and lots of babies).

What will happen here in Nashville, if Planned Parenthood isn’t around to dispense birth control and counsel young people who aren’t ready to assume the tremendous responsibilities of parenthood? It seems obvious that we’ll end up with more unwanted babies and more stressed-out teenagers dropping out of school, doing drugs and committing suicide. How many pregnant girls will end up ripping their insides out with coat hangers, or paying unqualified backroom abortionists to mutilate them, because qualified doctors weren’t available? How many teenagers will end up with terrible diseases like AIDS, if they aren’t given free condoms?

Will the highly dubious, shortsighted “morality” of Tennessee Republicans kill young Nashvillians who aren’t ready to become parents? Unfortunately, yes. Make no mistake about it, any successful GOP scheme to de-fund Planned Parenthood will result in more pregnancies and thus more abortions: very unsafe abortions that will result in more dead teens and pre-teens.

Conservatives seem intent on forcing other people to live (and die) according to their beliefs. According to their simplistic “ethics,” people should remain virgins till marriage and pre-teen mothers should be forced to risk their lives by having babies their bodies aren’t ready to bear. Where do conservatives get such bizarre ideas? Primarily from the Bible. Should young Nashville girls risk physical harm because American conservatives derive their “morals” from Moses, a barbarian who in Numbers 31 commanded his warriors to murder captured women and male children, keeping only the virgin girls alive for themselves?

Planned Parenthood helps save the lives and preserve the health and mental well-being of young Nashvillians. If we want fewer unplanned pregnancies, fewer abortions and fewer teen and pre-teen fatalities, we need Planned Parenthood, not stone-aged thinking derived from barbarians.