{"id":8562,"date":"2013-03-14T10:46:32","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T17:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=8562"},"modified":"2013-03-16T13:30:24","modified_gmt":"2013-03-16T20:30:24","slug":"trouble-in-the-nanny-state-the-left-attacks-nyc-teen-pregnancy-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/trouble-in-the-nanny-state-the-left-attacks-nyc-teen-pregnancy-ads\/","title":{"rendered":"Trouble in the Nanny State, The Left Attacks NYC Teen Pregnancy Ads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"by Ann Coulter –
\nLike the proverbial monkey typing for infinity and getting Shakespeare, Mayor Bloomberg\u2019s obsession with reforming New Yorkers\u2019 health has finally produced a brilliant ad campaign.<\/p>\n

Posters are popping up in subway stations and bus stops giving statistics about teen pregnancy that show cute little kids saying things like, \u201cHonestly, Mom \u2026 chances are he won\u2019t stay with you. What happens to me?\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Based on a recent CBS report, the kid could add, \u201cThen again, I\u2019m in the New York City public school system, so even if I graduate I won\u2019t be able to read.\u201d)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to stigmatize \u201cBig Gulp\u201d drinkers, but liberals are hopping mad at this attempt to stigmatize teen pregnancy, 90 percent of which is unwed. To put it another way, if you\u2019re a New York teen with a distended belly these days, it had better be because you\u2019re pregnant. <\/p>\n

Planned Parenthood\u2019s Haydee Morales complained that the ads are creating \u201cstigma\u201d and \u201cnegative public opinions about teen pregnancy.\u201d (I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s the basic idea.)<\/p>\n

Instead, Morales suggested \u201chelping teens access health care, birth control and high-quality sexual and reproductive health education.\u201d Like the kind they got before becoming pregnant, you mean? Are you new here, Haydee? <\/p>\n

Coincidentally, Planned Parenthood happens to provide reproductive health care! Liberals act as if gun owners, soda-guzzlers and smokers are innocent victims of the gun, food and cigarette industries, but the $542 million-a-year birth control industry is a quarry of angels.<\/p>\n

The New York Times\u2019 Michael Powell explained in a column that, as a parent of teenagers, he\u2019s learned that the stupidest thing to do is resort to \u201cthe shame-and-blame game.\u201d Teenage pregnancy, he states categorically, is a \u201cproblem of poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liberals act as if gun owners, soda-guzzlers and smokers are innocent victims of the gun, food and cigarette industries, but the $542 million-a-year birth control industry is a quarry of angels.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I think we have a chicken-and-egg problem, but let\u2019s stick to liberals\u2019 newfound opposition to shaming campaigns.<\/p>\n

Far from opposing stigmas, liberals are the main propagators of them \u2013 against cigarettes, guns, plastic bags, obesity, not recycling, Fox News, racist \u201ccode words,\u201d not liking \u201cLincoln\u201d and junk food.<\/p>\n

The stigma against smoking has gone so swimmingly that you can\u2019t enjoy a little tobacco pleasure 50 yards from another human being without some bossy woman marching over and accusing you of poisoning her.<\/p>\n

California is currently running a series of \u201cReefer Madness\u201d-style anti-smoking ads, including one that shows cigarette smoke going from a woman outside on her porch, up a story, through the door of another apartment, across the living room, down the hallway and into a room where a baby is sleeping. That would be the equivalent of the Bloomberg ads claiming teen pregnancy causes genocide.<\/p>\n

And what exactly was the purpose of the Journal-News publishing the names and addresses of every legal gun owner in various counties in New York state a few months ago? To congratulate them? To start a hunting club?<\/p>\n

No, I believe it was to stigmatize legal gun owners. The fact that we didn\u2019t already know who they were proved that the problem isn\u2019t legal gun ownership. All those legal guns \u2013 and no rash of drive-by shootings!<\/p>\n

Los Angeles has banned plastic bags at supermarkets, even though reusable canvas bags are portable bacterial colonies. But a little ad campaign describing the downsides of teenage pregnancy \u2013 which is still subsidized \u2013 and liberals howl in protest.<\/p>\n

\"Left<\/p>\n

One begins to suspect that liberals aren\u2019t as interested in stopping teenagers from having illegitimate kids as they claim. Do they believe a teenager who gets pregnant out of wedlock is harming herself and her child as much a teenager who smokes? How about an unwed teen who smokes at a landfill?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only a \u201cshame-and-blame game\u201d when liberals secretly approve of the behavior they pretend to oppose.<\/p>\n

Unwed mothers have been the perennial excuse for big government, going back to Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who plotted in the 1960s to create broken families, welfare dependency and urban riots to pave the way for socialist revolution.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why single mothers are revered victims \u2013 victims in need of an ever-expanding social safety net, staffed with well-pensioned government workers. As described in that great book, \u201cGuilty: Liberal \u2018Victims\u2019 and Their Assault on America,\u201d liberals concoct fake victims in order to victimize the rest of us.<\/p>\n

The only thing single mothers are \u201cvictims\u201d of is their own choice to have sex with men they\u2019re not married to. Liberals seem to believe that drinking soda is voluntary, but getting pregnant is more like catching the flu.<\/p>\n

It would be hard to make the case that fast food, plastic bags and cigarettes do more damage than single motherhood.<\/p>\n