With Chris Romer’s volley questioning rival Michael Hancock’s pro-choice credentials, much “he said, he didn’t say” has made its rounds through Denver’s political Web sites and news outlets. The crux of the “discussion” has focused on three main points:
However Hancock explains the admittedly less-than-effusively pro-choice positions highlighted by the Romer campaign, voters will actually receive little clarity about whether
either candidate would be a pro-choice mayor, versus simply a mayor who is pro-choice.
Given Denver’s political dynamic, a mayor who aggressively advances pro-choice policies, rather than maintaining the status quo on issues related to reproductive health care, would face little repercussion come re-election. Speculation should quickly turn then, to what the candidates’ future political ambitions are, and how those ambitions could be compromised by staking out unabashedly pro-choice positions on abortion and reproductive rights policy.
Denver is home to regional Catholic political and policy power Archbishop Charles Chaput,
who, as the Ritter administration could readily confirm, is hardly a shrinking violet when
it comes to declaring The Church’s preferences on things abortion and GLBTQ rights — and
veiled implications for spiritual retribution should elected officials fail to heed his
wishes. A mayor who is pro-choice likely would avoid public tussles with the
religious leader, whereas a pro-choice mayor could credibly challenge the rigidity with
which his flock adheres to the pro-life dogma. Organizations like Catholics for Choice will
tell you that while Church figureheads like Chaput spout hard-line theology, average
Catholics not only regularly use birth control and think that health insurance, including
taxpayer-funded insurance programs like Medicaid, should cover contraception, but have
abortions at equal rates as their non-Catholic counterparts and are less willing to judge
their friends and neighbors for having an abortion than The Church would like. A pro-choice
mayor would strongly espouse his conviction that whichever religious deity an individual
subscribes to endowed women with the moral agency to determine the most appropriate actions
for themselves, their bodies, their health, and their lives based on their own belief
systems.
Both Hancock and Romer have pointed to Denver schools as an area in need of reform. What
neither candidate has emphasized is the correlation between teen pregnancy and drop-out
rates. Among all age groups, Denver’s teen birth rate far exceeds state rates. Consider the
following data compiled by Colorado
Youth Matter:
between 2006-2008; in Denver, the rate was 1.1 for that age group
Why is this significant? National research shows that teen pregnancy and parenting are among
the top reasons youth drop out of school. A report issued
by the state’s Department of Regulatory Agencies confirmed that teen mothers are more
likely to drop out of school and live in poverty, while “the rates of both infant and
maternal mortality and illness are higher because teens have more complicated pregnancies”
marred by premature delivery, “significant anemia,” “placenta previa” and preeclampsia.
Moreover, compared to children born to adult women, children of teen mothers “are more
likely to have developmental problems, live in poverty, live in a single-parent household,
experience abuse and neglect, enter the welfare system, and become teen mothers if they are
girls or be incarcerated if they’re boys.”
But the issue of adolescent sexual and reproductive health is hardly limited to discussion
of teen pregnancy. It also extends to sexually transmitted infections, an area where Denver
also falls short compared to statewide data. Also from Colorado Youth Matter, we know that STI
rates (infections per 100,000) in Denver were 3,454 for chlamydia for teens ages 15-19 in
2007, compared to 1,504.3 for the state; 739 for gonorrhea compared to Colorado’s rate of
223; and 14 for HIV compared to 3.1 statewide.
While Denver’s teen pregnancy and STI rates are striking on their own, what cannot be
ignored is the fact that Denver youth are sexually active — and not always engaging in
responsible sexual behavior that has been proven to prevent pregnancy and the
spread of STIs. To the extent Denver schools fail to aggressively implement teen-pregnancy-
and STI-prevention initiatives and programs to support pregnant and parenting teens,
pregnancy-related dropouts and challenges associated with managing an STI diagnosis will
continue to affect Denver youth’s ability to complete their education and position them for
success later in life.
Denver’s next mayor has an incredible opportunity to prioritize adolescent and sexual health
by, among other things, continuing the Denver Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program established
by former Mayor Hickenlooper. A mayor who is pro-choice should at least maintain the
program. A pro-choice mayor should push for community-wide buy-in to implement best
practices to address the issue, including use of comprehensive sex education that discusses
the health benefits of abstinence and contraception; contraceptive counseling and
distribution through school-based health centers; and even taking a page from New York Mayor
Michael Bloomberg’s playbook by rolling out a free condom campaign.
Of course, preventing unplanned pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted infections
cannot focus only on adolescents. The majority of individuals who experience unplanned
pregnancy or test positive for an STI are adults. As such, Denver’s next mayor can clearly
distinguish himself as as a pro-choice mayor by working with City Council, Denver Health,
and community health care providers to ensure low-cost or free access to birth control and
STI screening. While attempts to strip funding from Planned Parenthood garnered headlines
nationally and in Indiana, Colorado and elsewhere, Republicans’ obsession with women’s reproductive rights included an effort to completely eliminate the nation’s Title X family planning
funding stream, which enables eligible clinics to provide free or low-cost birth control to
millions of Americans. As home to several Title X
clinics, a Republican success on this front could have a devastating impact not only on
Denver families’ ability to plan their families and prevent unplanned pregnancies, but on
individuals in surrounding communities who use the Denver facilities. Whereas a mayor who is
pro-choice may remain silent when Congressional Republicans take aim at the Title
X program, a pro-choice mayor would lock in “no” votes not only from Diana DeGette, but also
from each of Colorado’s remaining 6 members of congress by leveraging the power of his office to lobby
his counterparts statewide to protect their communities’ Title X access.
The same holds true for state-level efforts to deny Medicaid reimbursement to any health
care facility that provides abortions. While the amendment ostensibly targeted Planned
Parenthood, any health care facility that provides abortions and also provides pap smears,
birth control, prenatal care, and other obstetric and gynecological services to Medicaid
patients would be barred from contracting with the state. As the county of residence for
thousands of adults and children who qualify for Medicaid or CHP+, Denver could ill afford
to lose doctors who choose to withdraw as a Medicaid provider rather than refuse to provide abortion. It’s easy to dismiss the ability of a mayor who is pro-choice to
affect the outcome of debate on state law, but a pro-choice mayor would make damn sure that
his community didn’t lose physicians who treat low-income Denvervites because of an
ideological power play.
You’ll notice this diary mentions very little about abortion, which was intentional: It’s
largely true that banning or restricting abortion are actions where authority rests with the
people by way of ballot initiatives, state Legislatures and governors, Congress and the
courts. But a pro-choice mayor has significant power to pursue policies that reduce the need
for abortion all while upholding a woman’s fundamental right to choose abortion — and
access it without being subject to harassment — and a health care professional’s ability
to provide the procedure to women who choose it without facing threats to their lives and
overly burdensome regulations aimed at making the cost of doing business too high to
continue to provide the service.
Which begs the question laid out at the beginning of this diary: Will either Hancock or
Romer act as a pro-choice mayor willing to leverage the power of the office to profoundly
affect the reproductive health outcomes of Denver and beyond, or simply be a mayor who is
pro-choice and who pointed to his position during the campaign but was willing to settle for the
status quo once in office>?
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