Birth control in the water supply ... tell me why not

Great Debates
1

What would it do, besides help eliminate teen pregnancy, unwanted (and subsequently abused/neglected) children, crack babies, etc.?

When you want to have kids, go buy your special parental bottled water. Then it would involve some degree of intelligence and decision-making.

It strikes me that this idea will probably be unpopular with the strongly religious (“playing God” accusations and so forth), but I for one am willing to accept the news flash that people are having sex for other than procreative reasons.

“We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out.” Primo Levi

2

Two words: side effects.

3

I was actually hoping to move this debate away from logistics and into the moral/ethical realm.

For the sake of argument, there are no appreciable side-effects, the birth control can be put into wells in rural areas, the “parental water” can be distributed for free, etc.

Would this be a good thing to do or a horrible thing to do?

“We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out.” Primo Levi

4

No, no, no! Add the contraceptives to bottled water. That way you can get to both the idiots and the French!

For once you must try to face the facts: Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.

5

Birth coltrol drugs can trigger depression in some, weight gain - which probably causes the depression! - even blood clots than can be life threatening.

The alternative is depro shots, or those things the implant in your arm. AND they need to get them for BOYS!

When your kid hits puberty, neutralize them…and dont un-neutralize them until they are responsible grown ups.

If they come up with a drug for boys, I would have NO moral opposition to giving it to my boys with or without their consent/knowledge. Condoms are great for fighting off disease, but I was told by my doctor that condoms are not effective birth control.

I fear the girls who say they are protected, or the ones who ‘miss a pill’…

Sesquipedalophobia --fear of long words

6

That was unlcear. When I say the alternative is depro shots or implants, I meant that is an alternative to drugging everyone in the water.

7

Um, how you gonna measure the proper dosages? What women vs. men drinking the water?

8

Two words: man-boobs!

(OK, one hyphenated word.)

Dr. J

“Seriously, baby, I can prescribe anything I want!” -Dr. Nick Riviera

9

I myself am done having kids. But I’ve got two little kids, ages 3 and 6 months. I’m no doctor, so this is just a WAG, but having them drink water with some form of birth control in it can’t be good for them, my son in particular. The pills on the market now are designed for the feminine reproductive system. They haven’t mane one yet that will work for both males and females (of course, it would be extremely cool if & when they ever do).

Like so many other things, though, birth control is a choice. It is a choice that I very strongly support, and I believe that anyone who can use it should use it, until such time as they are completely ready to not use it. But there are some that can’t use an ingestible (for lack of a better term) form of birth control.

Cristi, Slayer of Peeps

I made my husband join a bridge club. He jumps next Tuesday.

(title & sig courtesy of UncleBeer and WallyM7!)

10

I read a science fiction story once where Earth was taken over by an omnipotent alien race. They actually had to go somewhere else and take care of some business, but in the meantime they left the first people they had run into, asteroid miners I think, in total and complete charge of the planet.

The guys in charge immediately decided that there would be adequate food, water, shelter, medical care, etc., for everyone. You didn’t have to work for it, it was available totally free. Of course, if you CHOSE to support yourself, you could do that. And if you did, you had access to food and water without contraceptives.

Talk about your social engineering. Wonder what the human race would be like, a few generations down the line.

11

Really really really small…

12

Milossarian,

To clarify: are you talking about some hypothetical, risk-free birth control chemical?

13

As Dr.J so eloquently said, MAN-boobs!
Do you have any idea how birth control works?
Basically it “tricks” your body into thinking you’re pregnant… MY PUMPING YOU FULL OF ESTROGEN! that’s basically what the pill is–estrogen.

Now, if we put this stuff into the water pretty much everyone and everything will have a chemical imbalance–and dear god(figure of speech :P), what about the animals and plants? What about them?

Ok, lets say i’m too poor to buy this water. What then? Yes I know the counter argument to this would be that people that poor wouldn’t be able to raise a child anyway, but still. It’s their choice to to have children.

ahh gtg finish up later

14

Milossarian isn’t saying that anyone (government or otherwise) is going to have control over the parental water supply. That is, anyone who wants to have a child can still have one; there is no test one must pass to become a parent. It seems to me that the only way this idea would be possible would be if there were a perfect method of birth control. This method would turn a person’s fertility on or off at will, with no other effects. If such a method were available, then much of the unwanted children problem would go away. There will always be some, though.

The OP suggests we turn the “default state” of people’s fertility from on to off, by putting the birth control in the water supply. This would eliminate the risk of unwanted children, as it would require deliberate action to get the parental water. Again, there isn’t control over this parental water, but the risk is now introduced that someone could gain control of it. So which is the greater risk - that some unwanted children will be born, or that someone could gain control over people’s fertility? I think the latter is worse, so I’m against the idea.

15

Uhm, I have a question, kellibelli. Do you mean by this to say that you WOULDN’T give your girls this hypothetical birth control, or do you simply mean that you only have boys? If you mean you wouldn’t give it to girls, why not?

As for the OP question, I think Millossarian intended the hypothetical birth control to have zero side effects, be easily reversible, take zero effort to use, and be easily dispensable for no cost. However, if such a thing were possible, I seriously doubt it would be necessary to put it in the water supply. Hell, I’d take it, and the chances of me impregnating anyone anytime soon are laughably (pathetically) low.

It’s not like many teenagers/crack-addicts want to be pregnant, they just don’t have the wherewithall (is that a real word?) to have sex responsibly. If it took zero responsibility to prevent pregnancy, the only “undesirable” pregnancies would be clearly voluntary, and then I’d have a problem not allowing those.

One became great by expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal, but he who expected the impossible became greater than all. -Kierkegaard

16

Leaving aside for a moment my utter disgust that a parent would administer drugs to a child without the child’s knowledge, quoting from the University of Rochester Health Services page re the effectiveness of condoms as birth control:

It strikes me that a method which prevents pregnancy by itself 9 times out of ten is effective birth control. A doctor who says it isn’t has some other agenda.

As to the OP, I’m going to assume that the birth control referred to is a hypothetical chemical which does nothing other than prevent conception with no other effects or side effects. Introducing this chemical into the water supply would be improper because regardless of the most strigent safeguards someone who doesn’t want it will ingest it and someone who does want it won’t get it. For example, some horrible parent will give it to her children without their knowledge. That being said, in a fantasy world I very much enjoy the idea of there being no reproduction at all by anyone for an extended period of time. Of course in my fantasy world I also enjoy the idea of halving the world’s population and making lists of all the people I’d remove.

17

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiricy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Now it’s really starting to get scary in here!

18

Basically, delaying puberty so that mental and physical maturity are acheived simultaneously.

Teen sex used to be a necessary thing, back when teen years were fully adult years, when, in another fifteen years, you’d be a dying old man.

Now it’s unwanted because we have to spend so much more time growing up. Our advanced society has charged us with the responsibility of teaching our children much, much more in order to be effective members of society. They have to know about complex social interactions, financial affairs, and, of course, technical career training. This all takes at least twenty years. In the meantime, our bodies follow their own pace, and have us ready for reproduction five to ten years before mental maturity is reached.

If I understand the OP correctly, the idea of birth control in the water is not meant to be universal birth control, to control who can and cannot have children, but as a selective birth control, that would preven people who were not yet recognized mature adults from having children.

That is, no more teen pregnancy. Only from, say, the age of eighteen up could people have children.

With that limitation on it, I would agree.

I would modify it, however, to a slightly more practical method: at birth, all children (so long as they are born in a hospital, of course), receive an implant that will not activate for ten years, but will, at that point, begin producing a contraceptive. Of course, I would only agree to it so long as the contraceptive was proven to have NO effects other than contraceptive. The child grows up healthy, happy, and without making children of its own until it’s an adult.

As to logistics, if 90% of children are given this contraceptive device, then most teen pregnancies would be prevented, yes? I would understand that perhaps those most likely to have children as teens would be those most likely to not receive the treatment. That, I feel, would be the case with any method.

I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.

19

I think a lot of responders are missing the point of the post. Milossarian has already said that for the sake of arguement we should assume that there were no side effects: no man-boobs, no having to worry about dosages, no worrying about estrogen levels etc. I believe what he’s getting at is the moral implications of doing so. The Catholics are against any sort of birth control whatsoever so this would clearly not jive with those guys.

I’m going to go off on a tangent myself (sorry Millo), but what I see as the product of this is that if it were to simply be added to the water supply tomorrow, the long-term repercussions would be devastating to the structure of our society. It is my feeling that MOST (at least %80) pregnancies are not %100 planned. If my blue-sky number of %80 is correct then the birth rate would drop to 1/5 of its current level. You are probably aware of it, but I would just like to remind you that we are entering a time when the social security system is being threatened by a modest increase in birth rate dating back to the 1950’s. What I’m saying is is that if this birth control plan were implemented tomorrow, in 40 years when we are all in nursing homes, there’s not going to be anyone around to take care of us and/or there will not be a large enough tax base from which to draw funds for our maintenance.

I’ve read somewhere recently that one of the higherups of Sun Microsystems was conjecturing that in the future humanity will be imperiled by increasing automation. That when everything is accomplished by robots and computers and no one really has to work any more, that a large human population will be superfluous and that whoever is in charge at the time will be tempted to cull the herd by one of two methods. Bad method: Kill all the extras outright. Not so bad method: Let the excess die off. This sort of techonology is exactly the sort of thing which could be used in the not-so-bad-method scenario.

Someone was concerned about the animals. Animals don’t usually drink tap water and would therefore not be affected a great deal.

Someone else was concerned that someone may gain control of the water supply and impose forced sterilization through the drinking of effected water. I would like to respond by pointing out that no one can control all the water. Rain is pretty damn pure. Additionally, you can boil just about any water to make it palatable. You can also get these little pills at the sporting goods store which will sterilize water.

My opinion: If we could somehow avoid overburdening our progeny, I’m all for it. My philosophy professor in school told us that it was our duty to have more children to help balance out the idea that the underclasses breed more readily than the more concervative middle and upper classes. If there were obstacles to becoming pregnant, I feel it would shift the balance from the ill-planned, spontaneous, irresponsible types to the more thoughtful, responsible types. Yes, a serious form of eugenics. Furthermore, with 1/5 the number of kids we could invest much more in education per capita (at least initially which would have very long lasting results.) And although there really isn’t an overpopulation problem, it wouldn’t hurt to trim down.

One final problem which I just thought of is that the implementation wouldn’t be world-wide probably. In which case, our population would drop to 1/5 while everywhere else in the world the population would remain the same or increase. Then all the foreigners would want to move here to our utopia and take advantage of our sacrifices.

20

Voltaire, it’s not so scary. I have my own list of people ‘Better off dead’. I believe that Otto’s vision of the world was more of a crunchy hippy one :wink: where people live in harmony with nature and no longer rape the world, right?

Personally, I think that ‘problem’ will be solved as soon as we can colonize other planets.

I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.