The main problem with the OP’s proposal is that it doesn’t account for situations where the man wants children and the woman doesn’t, or the man doesn’t care about whether sex leads to pregnancy or not.
Ē posted in error, realized while the edit window was still open, and changed it to “nm” because you can’t just delete a post on your own.
In other words, NM means, I posted in error please ignore this.
Or I said something but now I regret it.
Developing ANY sort of long-term, reversible, non-hormonal BC method would go a long way toward improving quality of life for everyone. I HATE hormonal BC. It warps my personality drastically. I don’t feel like myself. It also has real costs and risks. I get so upset when people basically treat hormonal bc as so simple and so easy that it’s perfectly reasonable that women shoulder the burden–it’s no big deal. I get that in the 60s when the alternative was celibacy or a chain of babies, it was revolutionary. But it’s not a perfect system.
You must have posted the wrong link, that study does not mention sex education at all.
Can you provide one instance of a state legislature banning any form of birth control besides abortion in the last 50 years?
Either the doctor refused to do it on principle or the insurance wouldn’t pay for it.
ETA: Most likely the doctor refused to perform the vasectomy on principle.
~Max
Yup. When I went into having a consult for mine, the doc wouldn’t even let me get a word in and spent the whole time basically lecturing me about how supposedly wrong my decision was. I’m going to try again in a couple years when I hit 30, but there’s definitely a high likelihood that I’ll run into the same issue.
And that’s the practice that I’m talking about either banning or making illegal. I just think it would go a long way towards alleviating some of the tension on the anti-abortion crisis.
WADR I didn’t see any references to education in your cite. It seemed to say that the decline was due to differing patterns of usage in contraceptive methods. Assuming for the moment that this is the case, what were the changes in sex education that brought about those differing patterns in 2008-2011? If they were in fact brought about by sex education.
So again, I would like to see a cite that lists [ul][li]What form of sex education you mean, and [*]that it reduced abortion overall. [/ul][/li]
Regards,
Shodan
You can’t force a doctor to perform an operation they consider unethical or medically unnecessary. Not even legislation can do that. Vasectomy is considered permanent and I can sympathize with doctors who think you may come to regret your decision. It is their right to refuse to endorse/perform a medically unnecessary operation and it is your right to find another doctor. I am not a doctor but my opinion is that merely wanting to be sterilized does not constitute medical necessity or an ethical obligation for the doctor.
Orchiectomies on the other hand are carried out as treatment for testicular cancer, advanced prostate cancer, or as part of sex reassignment surgery. It would be unethical for the doctor to let you die of cancer because the operation is irreversible. Some doctors (or insurances) still refuse to recognize sex reassignment as medically necessary.
~Max
Take that studies find about reduced unwanted pregnancy. Google a study about sex education leading to reduced unwanted pregnancy. It shouldn’t be difficult.
Well again, my proposal is to just change that practice. Obviously I think the simplest solution is to just ban it, but there could be other avenues as well. Maybe the state governments could provide some sort of incentives for docs who agree to do it on younger men? I.e., compiling a statewide database of docs who are willing to do it, offering those docs higher Medicaid reimbursement rates, possible student loan forgiveness, etc.
<waves hand> I joke about it but I had 2 losses before getting my tubes tied the old fashioned way, loop and rubber band the tubes. The first one could have been named OrthoNovum Didn’t Work and the second OrthoNovum Didn’t Work, Rubber Broke … the main reason they are removing the tubes now is the THIRD kid should have been named You Have Got To Be Fucking Me, I Had My Tubes Tied 10 Years Ago after what I screamed at the poor lab tech calling me to tell me I needed to set up prenatal visits [the Navy used to bunny test every woman of reproductive age that walked into the hospital for any reason.] I am one of the reasons they cut and burn now =)
I love the idea. Someone on facebook posted something aboutnot suing for child support, but for loss of income and opportunities related to being saddled with a pregnancy and subsequent ‘glass cielings’ thanks to dragging around a kid that women get … though I would also add on perpetual medical coverage for the mother as well, pregnancy can have some permanent problems if things go wrong - destroyed pelvic musculature leading to permanent incontinence, nerve damage from episiotomies, c-section nightmares … people don’t always realize that pregnancy can be not just life threatening but physically damaging as well.
excellent idea. I can also forsee a reproductive underground railroad of people willing to drive women out of state for abortions or to obtain sterilizations or IUDs/implants/shots not available legally locally. If I didn’t live so far north, I would be more than willing to drive a couple friends somewhere ‘for a vacation’
I did a little Googling and I couldn’t find anything about sex education reducing abortions overall, which is what was alleged. But then again, the burden of proof doesn’t lie with me.
But you’re right - if it is really true that sex education reduces abortions overall, it shouldn’t be difficult to show. So, go ahead.
Regards,
Shodan
They don’t have “reliably reversible” rapes, either, for the women who are impregnated by them.
To me, the issue is simple. Any man or group of men who think they can legislate and control my reproductive rights as if I were some kind of breeding heifer can go fuck themselves. They should move to the Middle East instead where they can treat women like garbage to their hearts’ content.
Ask your doctor if you are a candidate for an IUD. There are two types, one leaches progesterone (a hormone) into the uterus, and the other is copper, and probably works by producing very low-grade inflammation around it. But even the hormone one doesn’t leach enough progesterone to have noticeable systemic effects for most women.
I had issues with the birth control pill, too, and really wish I’d never taken it. But once I got past the first month or two of “adapting” to the progesterone IUD, I’ve had no issues with it at all. Plus, the added bonus that my periods became so minor I didn’t really need to use feminine hygiene products. (Maybe a pantiliner for a day. Or maybe not.) My obstetrician tried to talk me into trying one after the birth of my second child, and I said “no”. Years of wasted opportunity.
You can add all the incentives or disincentives you want, but ideally that would not affect the doctor’s ethical obligation or assessment of medical necessity. Expect a lot of resistance when the legislature tries to dictate what is or is not medically necessary or medically ethical.
~Max
IUDs seemed to work or not work differently depending on the woman. My wife loved hers, much better than birth control pills. But when we had our second child in 1986 (planned) they were almost impossible to get in the US. That’s when I got my vasectomy.
The only problem we had with the IUD was that sometimes I felt the string.
Here is a good paper on it, though it is about abstinence only education.
Teen pregnancy rates are highly elevated in states with more abstinence only education. (See Figure 1) Teen abortion rates are roughly comparable across all levels of abstinence-only education, which means that teen birth rates are also highly elevated.
But this doesn’t take into account that abortions are harder to get in abstinence education only states, and I suspect social pressures against them are greater. All things being equal, if abortion rates are correlated to unwanted pregnancy rates (not a stretch) you’d get higher abortion rates, I think.
ETA: I’d suspect that abortion would be treated very negatively, if at all, in classes on abstinence, so that might be another reason.
To me mainly interesting mindset of some people who seem believe there’s a solution to every problem by the govt providing things for less than they cost (at the margin and taxing other people to pay for it). My own caveat, I’m no Libertarian or small govt extremist. I think the total size of govt now in the US, federal state and local should get at least somewhat smaller, then again I accept it’s more likely to get bigger (even the GOP pays less lip service to smaller govt than it used to), though I seriously oppose it getting a lot bigger. But lots of complicated situations or problems come as a result of people’s own decisions only marginally affected by govt subsidies and abortion would be one of them. I doubt you could directly change the rate of abortion more than a few % by any program of subsidies. People are free to argue that a fundamentally more collectivist society would eventually lead to improved social welfare which would reduce the need for abortions; I don’t agree but perhaps a plausible argument could be made for that. But the idea subsidizing vasectomies would have any real effect on abortions is again an interesting mindset, to me.
Condoms aren’t perfect in preventing unwanted pregnancies but vastly reduce the rate per act of heterosexual intercourse compared to no condom. But I’d guess a large proportion of unwanted pregnancies occur from sex without condoms. So making condoms free would solve that, for all the people who can’t afford condoms? Obviously not, condoms aren’t used when they should be because the men involved don’t want to use them. I don’t see how vasectomies are fundamentally different, except that lots of men have a much more valid reason not to get a vasectomy (as in, they anticipate eventually wanting to father children their mates will want to keep) than they usually do to not use a condom. Nor do I see it as wise in general for men in their 20’s to get vasectomies. I wouldn’t want laws prohibiting that (there aren’t AFAIK) but that doesn’t strike me as much of an idea.
Seems the proposal would have more internal logic to it, though no chance of happening, if it was forcing men to get vasectomies. The main reason they don’t now is they don’t want to, not cost. Although OTOH some people are always up for one more thing the govt should pay for. I guess a single payer health plan would probably make them ‘free’, but I doubt change the rate a whole lot.
Also just a footnote overturning RvW would not make abortion illegal, and there would be nothing for ‘blue’ states to ‘ignore’. They simply would not enact state laws making abortion illegal (or remove ‘dead letter’ anti-abortion laws they still have on their books from pre-Roe), and it would remain legal. Also their state supreme courts might find their state constitutions to contain an unwritten right to an abortion like Roe, or if not their legislatures and governors could pass amendments to their state constitutions explicitly granting such a right making it more difficult to reverse than just a future state anti-abortion law. Also they could pass legislation prohibiting their municipalities from enacting local abortion bans. Overturning Roe would only remove the right to an abortion for women living in states which elect legislators and governors which pass and sign abortion bans. I’m not saying that’s a non-event nationally, but in states where the electorate is strongly in favor of abortion rights it would be.