Universal Birth ControlFollow

Not to be obvious, but what do you think the purpose of providing birth control is?

Or are you suggesting that free (aka: govenment paid for) birth control is an end to itself? That seems odd, unless your entire objective is simply to **** of social conservatives and get a rise out of them...

I'd rather spend my peanuts to distribute that new cancer drug DCA that's lacking a patent. Abstinence is free.

I realize you're speaking to Smash but, once again, I'm speaking more inclusively than just condoms. In fact, I'm not even concerned (for this thread) with STD prevention or "health care", just population control particularly among the lower class.

'Grats on missing the point

I assume you're referring to this comment.

I agree in principle with what you're saying (and at least your suggestion makes some sense). I still think it's going in the wrong direction though. There's two issues at play here IMO:


1. To what degree should the government provide birth control to the population (for free in this case)? This is purely a cost issue. However, as I pointed out the problem really isn't just that condoms are difficult to use or reduce pleasure, or whatever other excuse is out there. The problem is that even with pills, condoms, and whatever else available, most people choose not to use them. I could write a big long post about *why* that is, but I think it's safe to say that it simply is. And I don't think making the multi-month hormonal treatments freely available at clinics across the nation will have much of an impact at all.

Which leads us to "how does the government ensure that everyone uses birth control that should use birth control". This gets into the "choice" problem. Do we mail the free birth control pills/hormones/whatever to ever female in the nation? When that doesn't work, and rates of poor single mother does not go down, do we legistlatively mandate them? This is because (presumably) the whole point of this excersize isn't just to provide birth control for the sake of birth control, but to actually reduce the rate at which children are born into homes in which they can't be supported.

And that leads me to...

2. Does the government have a responsibility to do this in the first place? Again. It's a "choice" issue. We can't force people to take birth control (or should not). How then do you get "the people" to make the right choice? My position is that the only way to get "people" (large numbers) to make the right choice is to make sure that the wrong choice hurts them. That does not mean artificially punish them. I'm not talking about prison for unwed mothers or anything like that. But how about not rewarding them by providing them with money? Wouldn't that be a great start?

My suggestion is that the reason we have a high rate of poor single mothers is because we have created federally funded programs that appeal specifically to poor single mothers-to-be. The life of a wellfare mom isn't going to appeal to middle-class Jane. It *will* appeal to poor-class Shaquisha (yes. Blatant racial stereotyping ftw!!!). She'll see that 400-500 bucks a month and think "That's more then I can make working part time as the local market". She'll look at the housing she can get and think "This way I can move out of my moms house and be a grown up supporting my own family.". By the time she realizes the trap that her life has become, it's too late.

Remove the incentive programs and the thing you are incenting (poor women to become single mothers with no means of support) disappears. Dunno. That just seems incredibly obvious to me. I know that this is a bit outside the scope of the original thread topic, but IMO it's the correct solution. If we accept that the problem is poor single mothers, so much so that we're suggesting free birth control to try to stop them from having so many, it seems like yet more funding is absurd.


Again. I'm a conservative. My position is always that the government should involve itself less in the direct day to day lives its citizens because I believe that even things intended to help "the people" ultimately end up hurting them in the end. This is just one example of many.

What do you think that means? This entire thread is predicated on the assumption that we're talking about "unplanned/unwanted" pregnancies/births. The entire argument for funding birth control is to reduce the number of children born to poor single mothers.

Total birth rates have gone down. But rates of births to single mothers as a percentage of total births has gone up. By a factor of ten. And not in the last hundred years, but in the last 50-60. In the 40s, about 3% of children born in the US were born to single mothers. Today, about 35% of all children born in the US are born to single mothers.

That's a scary-bad statistic. Given the statistical success-odds of children in those situations, we're looking at a *huge* hit in the next 20 years. We're looking at a huge increase in the rates of those "in need". What that means is that middle class folks are moderating their birth rates as our population has grown. Poor folks are breeding like freaking rabbits. What exactly do you think that'll cause economically down the line? Yeah. A lot more poor people...

Not rocket science Smash. Just common sense.



Yes. And the choice to use a condom is 100% the guys, right? Seems pretty simple. If she can't obtain other birth control, she either buys her own and insists that whoever she's having sex with wear it, or she make the guy buy them and doesn't have sex unless he's got one and wears it.


Maybe if the girl can't get her guy to wear a condom, they shouldn't be having sex in the first place? Just a thought...


And while the pill isn't "free", it's incredibly cheap. So much so that pretty much anyone can afford it. I think someone earlier in the thread quoted like a $25/month cost for the pill. That's about right from what I've heard. It's just not that expensive. Are you seriously suggesting that a few hours at minimum wage is too much for someone to pay for their own birth control?


Again. It's about choice. I'm pretty much positive that you could provide any amount of birth control absolutely free at any clinic everywhere in the country and you still would not see rates of unplanned pregnancies decrease. It's just not about availability. No matter how much you want it to be.

Maybe if the girl can't get her guy to wear a condom, they shouldn't be having sex in the first place?

Who cares? They do. They would if it was punishable by death. It's a basic human drive. What people 'should' do based on your particular odd moral code is irrelevantly. All that matters is what they actually do. If we all agree we're not going to somehow force people not to have sex, which hasn't worked in the course of human history, is providing them with every possible option to prevent pregnancy somehow a problem?

I'm confused as to what you're actually even arguing here, that if there is widely available free birth control people might not use it? Ok, and? The point is that they have the option. Clearly women having access to the pill dramatically lowered birth rates, you'd agree with that? Or are you arguing that the sudden drop in birth rates coinciding with the introduction of oral contraception putting the control in women's hands just happened to coincide with a sudden shift in cultural values. Perhaps people were just much less promiscuous in the 60's.

Yeah, really. It was just you. Honest.

Again, I gave the parameters for my question. Now, you can take those and run with it and extrapolate some "OMG LIBERALS SUCK" screed from it but, again, that's just you and you should really own that instead of trying to pretend that it came from anyplace else.

To be fair, Angelina Jolie adopted.

The point is that having the option but not using it results in more women having sex with men the do not intend to have long term relationships with. Meaning that when they do get pregnant, they're vastly more likely to be single moms, and therefore vastly more likely to end up "poor".

I would think that a guy with a sociology degree would understand this. Even the best forms of birth control are not 100%. It's not just increased sexual rates, but increased numbers of partners, and decreased selectiveness of partners. The mere knowledge that "effective" birth control is available changes those sexual patterns accross the entire society, whether any given individual uses that birth control or not.

"Women" as a group adopt different social behaviors. But it's individual women who end up getting pregnant. And individual women who choose to use or not use birth control. And that's ignoring the simple chance of failure. Without access to effective birth control women will avoid having sex, but more importantly will make sure that those they do have sex with are guys they would consider for marriage. Thus, if she ends up pregnant, the two go on and get married and the problem is reduced. The very existance of birth control results in women as a social group feeling they are "free" to have sex with anyone they want. Which means that when failures do occur (and they statistically do), it'll be with "anyone". That's usually not a good thing.




No. I don't know that it's had much effect at all (as small one at best). You're tossing the FSM argument out there now. The same time period also included the rise of the middle class in the US. You're also seeing a spike from the baby boom right before that same period. There are a lot of factors involved.

The real point is that total birth rate isn't the issue. It's births to single mothers that is the issue. Specifically "children born in poverty". That number has gone *up* since the introduction of the pill. Dramatically.





Um... I've already talked about how those two things are linked. However, the fact that total birth rates have reduced is overshadowed by the increase in rates of children born to single mothers. That's the "cultural change" that occured. We can argue which caused the other all day long, but that is a "change". And that's what is causing the problem.

Don't get me wrong. As a hedonist, I'm all enthused with the idea that we can have promiscous women running around having sex with as many men as they want while avoiding the negative side effects we've seen so far. However, I'm pointing out the reality that so far no amount of availability to birth control has corrected this problem. As much as I'd like to say that it will work. The historical facts say that it wont...

Sorry. I think you're incredibly naive and optimistic. No amount of making birth control "more available" has changed the rate of the "problem" this would seek to fix. Why think this would change anything?


You know what? I'm *almost* willing to say we should do it just because if we did, then *maybe* a couple of you would realize that it didn't work and maybe even a smaller number of you might realize what's going on when someone suggests yet another "solution" to the problem that avoids the real issue. Of course, you'd all be shot down when you argued that we shouldn't implement <the next idea>, just as I'm being shot down in this thread.

Sigh...



Then why not simply stop doing those things? Stop funding wellfare programs for poor single mothers. Stop giving them tax deductions.

Do you see how those things are incentives? If poor single moms are something we want to avoid in our society, why do we reward women for becoming poor single moms?

It really is that simple. Unfortunately, the farther we go along the slope we are on, the more expensive and painful it is to fix.



So you'd agree that by funding them and helping take care of the children they produce, we're just increasing the percentage of such people in our society, right? The point is that if you simply *don't* provide for people in those situations, then the number of people needing help from the government will decrease over time. People are amazingly adaptive. Put them in an environment where they must work hard to survive, and they'll work hard (and survive). Put them in one where they can survive by being poor and languishing on the government's dime, and they'll do that instead.





Ok. What part of this at all starts with "as a conservative"?! You've pretty much repeated the exact rationale for social liberalism and creation of the wellfare state.

/boggle!

The real point is that total birth rate isn't the issue. It's births to single mothers that is the issue.

It is?

I guess kids need a ***** around not to grow up to be psychopaths. Who'd have known. Here I'd thought that it was actually sometimes the problem, too.

The reason gbaji (and other "social conservatives") are against this idea is simple:

Lower birthrate = less people paying taxes = ZOMG CUTTING TAXES DOESN'T PUT MORE MONEY INTO THE GOVERNMENT!

Forgive me if I'm wrong about this, but it seems to be what follows logically from "birth control should not be freely available" and "cutting taxes improves the revenue taken in by the government".