# What's your solution to a million unwanted pregnacies occurring as a result of protected sex? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 26, 2009, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156 "2009-10-26T10:14:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![SmartAlx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@SmartAlx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlx)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/221 "2009-10-29T02:33:31Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > t’s just that, when you come to attitude, there really isn’t much of a good backing for trying to change things when the result is personal too other than to “save people from themselves” - which is a bit of a tricky ground to negotiate, since, likely enough, they’re going to disagree, and the basis of a debate being “I know better than you” isn’t going to go down well (especially in terms of changing attitudes towards something, which is a kettle of fish in itself). Look, there is a difference between doing what you believe is okay and encouraging, no, TEACHING people to do the same things, esecially when doing those things has a negative effect on our whole society. Girls Gone Wild glorifies sex. Having dating people have sex on sitcoms teaches that sex should be a regular part of dating life. Maybe you think that TV reflects reality and not the opposite. Maybe we didn’t have shows like that until a decade after the sexual revolution was concluded. Remember Three’s Company? How about Animal House? The media and culture feed really off of each other and if we gradually change one we will change the other. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/222 "2009-10-29T02:40:52Z")
> [@SmartAlx](#): > > Look, there is a difference between doing what you believe is okay and encouraging, no, TEACHING people to do the same things, esecially when doing those things has a negative effect on our whole society. Right, which is why I find your ideas about sex repulsive. You’re trying to encourage and teach people to behave in ways I find negative for the whole society. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/223 "2009-10-29T03:00:39Z")
I agree with jsgoddess. SmartAlx, your ideas about sex and its effect on our culture are both repulsive and factually incorrect. Therefore, your advocating for these ideas - ideas with no basis in fact - is hurting society. You have a first amendment duty to stop the spreading harmful speech. Your bubble is waiting for you. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/224 "2009-10-29T03:25:33Z")
Have you heard about [Geroge Sodini](http://www.hilaryshepherd.com/rantsnraves/2009/08/05/george-sodini-website/), the guy who shot a bunch of women in their aerobics class because he hadn’t been laid in decades? I’m not saying that not getting laid was _really_ this guy’s problem, but I do think that creating a more repressive society will drive more people like this out of the woodwork. If anything, society needs to be less repressive. Nothing will stop those who want to from still joining that convent. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/225 "2009-10-29T03:30:58Z")
> [@SmartAlx](#): > > I want the world to be a place where pregnant women and the fathers of those children who had sex would say, “I made my bed. Now I have to sleep in it.” Abortion affords them that opportunity. Terminating a pregnancy is taking responsibility for it. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/226 "2009-10-29T03:32:29Z")
> [@SmartAlx](#): > > Yes they are. You are ignoring problems that occur as a result of a girl who is unprepared to raise a child getting pregnant. Problems such as poverty, poor education, lack of positive role models, abstentee fathers, even issues such as crime can occur as a side effect. Abortion is not a solution. Many women who have abortions suffer from deep psychological conditions from their abortions. That’s suffering, right? I’d call it more “largely imaginary”, not to mention rather selective. Women who are forced to bear children against their will also suffer; and far more universally than those who get abortions. The “women who get abortions suffer terrible trauma” is largely a right wing myth. And abortion is a much better solution to all those other problems than forcing a woman to get birth; forcing them to breed will make those problems worse not better. > [@SmartAlx](#): > > Whatever I am doing, I am not actually **ACTIVELY** hurting people. Not yet, because you haven’t got your way. But what you are advocating is the moral equivalent of raping millions of women, or worse. THAT is “hurting people”, to put it mildly. > [@SmartAlx](#): > > Abortion might be a stop gap solution to the population problem of accidental pregnancy due to “safe sex,” but you can hardly say it alleviates suffering. I can and do say that it reduces suffering. Forcing women to bear children against their will on the other hand makes it far worse. > [@SmartAlx](#): > > Look, there is a difference between doing what you believe is okay and encouraging, no, TEACHING people to do the same things, esecially when doing those things has a negative effect on our whole society. Such as your anti-sex, anti-woman beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/227 "2009-10-29T03:41:57Z")
SmartAxl- Shall we teach the Dhammapada (sayings of the Buddha) to 6th graders then? It is full of the kind of talk that might promote your cause: > [@](#): > > _Understand that the body > Is merely the foam of a wave, > The shadow of a shadow. > Snap the flower arrows of desire > And then, unseen, > Escape the king of death. > … > Death overtakes the man > Who gathers flowers > When with distracted mind and thirsty senses > He searches vainly for happiness > In the pleasures of the world. > Death fetches him away > As a flood carries off a sleeping village_ You get the idea. Is this the kind of thing you’re trying to get everyone to understand? If so, good luck. Horny young people mostly don’t buy it. Plus there is that whole freedom of religion thingy. I framed it in a Buddhist context because I wonder if a maybe a christian theocratic bent is your true motive, in which case you really ought to open a new thread about that. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@SmartAlx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlx)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/228 "2009-10-29T04:07:58Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > Right, which is why I find your ideas about sex repulsive. You’re trying to encourage and teach people to behave in ways I find negative for the whole society. > [@Merneith](#): > > I agree with jsgoddess. > > SmartAlx, your ideas about sex and its effect on our culture are both repulsive and factually incorrect. Therefore, your advocating for these ideas - ideas with no basis in fact - is hurting society. You have a first amendment duty to stop the spreading harmful speech. Your bubble is waiting for you. Well, **what IS your solution to the problem of a million unplanned pregnancies in America each year**? Abortion? And what effect would that have? Don’t the large numbers of women who suffer from clinical depression, anxiety, and suicidal behaviors after an abortion count for anything? > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Abortion affords them that opportunity. Terminating a pregnancy is taking responsibility for it. No, it’s not. It’s denying your responsibility. ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/229 "2009-10-29T04:16:16Z")
> [@SmartAlx](#): > > Free speech is not protected when it hurts other people, nor should it be. As to whether it should be, well that’s up to you and your opinion. As to whether it is, I can definitively say “yes. Free speech is protected even when it hurts other people.” ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/230 "2009-10-29T04:16:36Z")
How is it denying responsibility? Terminating a pregancy is taking the responsibility head on and dealing with it. Problem solved. Responsibility met. what responsibility is still left? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/231 "2009-10-29T04:19:23Z")
> [@SmartAlx](#): > > Well, **what IS your solution to the problem of a million unplanned pregnancies in America each year**? Abortion? And what effect would that have? Less babies > [@](#): > > Don’t the large numbers of women who suffer from clinical depression, anxiety, and suicidal behaviors after an abortion count for anything? This is anti-choice boilerplate. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@SmartAlx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlx)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/232 "2009-10-29T04:22:52Z")
If our society still had a conservative approach towards sex, would you still have had sex as soon as you did? Maybe you would have but 40% wouldn’t have. The Kinsey institude showed that roughly 50% of women had premarital sex back then, and now statistics show that about 90% of women have premarital sex. A very clear rise in behavior. What caused that rise? The statistics don’t cover how much sex people had. Women in 1955 might have had pre-marital sex before they were 30 but did they have sex with every guy they dated or was it with her fiance? How much sex would you have had if our attitudes were more conservative. Single people are more sexually active than they were when America was more conservative. So if you believe that the attitudes towards sex don’t have an effect on society then you have to be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/233 "2009-10-29T04:31:02Z")
Removing the stigma allows women to be more honsets about self-reporting. I think where you’re spinning your wheels is in your utterly unfounded, and rather archaic view that there’s anything morally wrong with non-marital sex. There isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@SmartAlx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlx)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/234 "2009-10-29T04:31:46Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > This is anti-choice boilerplate. So I’ll take it that you don’t believe that women who have had an abortion suffer from any psychological problems due to their abortions? I know a few women who have had abortions and they would want to kick you in the nuts if they heard you say that. They most definitely had severe issues of remorse and guilt and depression. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/235 "2009-10-29T04:33:15Z")
> [@SmartAlx](#): > > If our society still had a conservative approach towards sex, would you still have had sex as soon as you did? It never stopped any guy from trying to have sex before. It sure wouldn’t have stopped me. My virginity was an albatross to me when I was a teenager. I was overjoyed to get rid of it. No amount of “conservative” society would have stopped me. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/236 "2009-10-29T04:34:19Z")
> [@SmartAlx](#): > > **RTFirefly** , I’m trying to make a point that there is no such thing as safe sex. Really? So despite my vasectomy 15 years ago I could pop a sprog any time? I wonder why I bothered then. ---
**Author:** ![Nilesta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Nilesta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nilesta)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/237 "2009-10-29T04:34:43Z")
The ‘tragedy of women’ having abortions thing is not only factually wrong, it has this wonderful tendency to actually stigmatize women with postpartum depression after giving birth. Please stop. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/238 "2009-10-29T04:36:15Z")
> [@SmartAlx](#): > > You don’t watch tv at 3am. Neither should _you_, young man. Junior high school requires that you come to school ready to learn, and that means well-rested. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/239 "2009-10-29T04:37:35Z")
> [@SmartAlx](#): > > So I’ll take it that you don’t believe that women who have had an abortion suffer from any psychological problems due to their abortions? I know a few women who have had abortions and they would want to kick you in the nuts if they heard you say that. They most definitely had severe issues of remorse and guilt and depression. Every woman I know who has had an abortion still thinks it was the right thing for her to do at the time, and only regrets that the situation she was in made it the best choice at the time, not regrets doing it at all. Does that count as a “psychological problem”? Not in my estimation, having known all those women, no. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@SmartAlx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlx)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156/240 "2009-10-29T04:37:37Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Really? So despite my vasectomy 15 years ago I could pop a sprog any time? I wonder why I bothered then. Yes, you could. 5 out of every 1000 men who have had a vasectomy do get a woman pregnant. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-solution-to-a-million-unwanted-pregnacies-occurring-as-a-result-of-protected-sex/515156.md?page=13)