tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post1867479861301449563..comments2024-03-12T22:31:46.500-04:00Comments on What Would Phoebe Do?: The squickiness of contraceptionPhoebe Maltz Bovyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-26795909048349014082013-01-31T12:37:55.081-05:002013-01-31T12:37:55.081-05:00oh, but I was going to add, as an adult I think it...oh, but I was going to add, as an adult I think it would be hard to get that info. I suppose you could talk to a gynecologist, and Planned Parenthood has good info on their website, but this is one of my issues with abstinence only education. After HS there's no great way to get people to learn about BC, and maybe you want 14 YOs ignorant about sex, but I don't think we want ignorant 25 or 30 YOs. We teach kids lots of stuff designed for future use, and I think BC knowledge should be seen as similar.Brittahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02224221011978374915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-77062657230948685672013-01-31T12:33:29.733-05:002013-01-31T12:33:29.733-05:00caryatis,
I think your position sounds about righ...caryatis,<br /><br />I think your position sounds about right. People should use birth control as responsibly as possible, but we have to recognize that mistakes (human and non-human caused) happen, and even smart, cautious, prudent people do things in situations that they might not normally do or think is a bad idea. (If you ask me if I would ride in a car with a drunk driver without a seatbelt, I would say absolutely never, but I have done so in China.*) One place I kind of differ with Phoebe and maybe you is I think that 'every precaution necessary' varies by person, and not just in their willingness to have kids. I don't think all women should have to triple up on highly reliable forms of BC in order to be considered responsible or their non kid desires taken seriously. (Like, I agree with MSI that if you're careful with condoms, they're almost as good as pills or IUDs, and they're much better than other methods we might take more 'seriously,' like diaphragms or sponges. Also, FWIW, withdrawal is 96% effective with perfect use, also better than sponges or diaphragms.) <br /><br />I also think we should talk more about BC in public. I do so with my female friends, but we're probably unusual in that respect. I was lucky I had very comprehensive sex ed in middle school, so I knew my options, the pros and cons, and the % failure rate from remembering the chart we had to make and the really frank discussions of our teacher. <br /><br /><br />*Don't tell my motherBrittahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02224221011978374915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-2334094718386373272013-01-31T11:51:49.681-05:002013-01-31T11:51:49.681-05:00Back on the polling aspect of the column's arg...Back on the polling aspect of the column's arguments:<br /><br />Choire Sicha does a quite competent <a href="http://www.theawl.com/2013/01/ross-douthats-firing-offense" rel="nofollow">takedown</a> of Douthat's column based on the squickiness of his use of numbers...Peteynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-51404681672503711742013-01-31T09:33:52.314-05:002013-01-31T09:33:52.314-05:00Caryatis,
Then we're in agreement.
Re: how t...Caryatis,<br /><br />Then we're in agreement.<br /><br />Re: how to be open about contraceptive use... This is actually an area where I think we could use more sharing - where it wouldn't be overshare, but just... useful information. How it came to pass that all the adult women one knows don't have twenty children remains very hush-hush. While no individual woman is obligated to explain, that this is kept quiet (closer/share-ier female friends may bring it up) is not good. <br /><br />The problem, though, is that describing one's own contraceptive use always risks crossing the line into describing (or seeming to describe) the details of one's sexual activity, which generally *is* overshare. There ought to be a way to discuss contraception more openly, without needing to specify anything other than the vaguest information (i.e. heterosexual or bisexual woman, no vow of chastity).Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-19951442672112135062013-01-30T22:07:43.718-05:002013-01-30T22:07:43.718-05:00I agree. It's hard to talk about personal resp...I agree. It's hard to talk about personal responsibility without sounding self-righteous, but I actually do understand that people make mistakes. For that reason, I couldn't justify making abortion illegal, even with exceptions. I guess my version of "anti-abortion feminism" would be, educate yourself, really try to use contraception and stick up for yourself with men, even if it means you have to have an awkward conversation with that guy or that doctor, and as a last ditch, legal and rare abortion.<br /><br />I think you would be surprised how open I am in real life about my support for contraception. Any excuse to talk about myself.caryatisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-63035648185399898302013-01-30T20:00:41.889-05:002013-01-30T20:00:41.889-05:00Andrew,
Re: personal autonomy, giant sodas, illeg...Andrew,<br /><br />Re: personal autonomy, giant sodas, illegal drugs, for that matter, I think the issue is, the choice of whether or not to <i>bring a child into the world</i> is kind of unique. Not wanting to do so is quite different from wanting to drink a giant soda (and it's not as if one cannot order multiple smaller sodas, or just get a huge bottle from the supermarket). But I'm no philosopher-of-abortion. I think it should be legal, agree with Britta that the "partial-birth" conversation is misleading, and can think of many, many reasons other than 'it's murder' (which I don't believe) why a woman might want to do everything in her power to avoid getting one.<br /><br />Caryatis,<br /><br />Not necessarily anti-feminist, but I'd have a couple qualms. The first is that in our society, contraception continues to be stigmatized (you're writing freely about your own experiences, but under a pseudonym), and to be seen as a topic akin to sex acts or number of partners (witness the confusion over whether the Pill is something a woman takes each time she has sex!) Reluctance to come out, as it were, as a sexually-active woman probably does impact contraceptive use. (I could go on re: what this would look like on the ground - everything from not seeing a doctor to not bringing the Pill on a weekend away with a guy who might see the packet and make assumptions.)<br /><br />The second qualm, then, is that even if current silliness re: contraception disappeared, life is messy. The mostly-responsible might miss a pill, or might go off the pill in a prolonged period of celibacy, only to have sex using just a condom. Women might be intentionally "natural" (to return to MSI's terminology) in their approach to contraception, with the half-desire for a kid, only for some event (a partner's unexpectedly negative response, for example) to sway things in the direction of abortion. (Either the notorious 'trickery' example, or the guy gave no indication either way of what he'd do should pregnancy result.) All of this is not to say that abortion-for-reason-of 'life-is-messy' shouldn't be judged. Rather, it's to say it shouldn't be *outlawed.* A woman who got pregnant on account of irresponsibility should not be 'punished' with a child.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-64424949172238381472013-01-30T19:03:45.293-05:002013-01-30T19:03:45.293-05:00Phoebe, to answer your question about whether ther...Phoebe, to answer your question about whether there can be an anti-abortion feminism, what if one were to say that, in this day and age, in a rich country, with readily available contraception, there is no reason a responsible woman should ever need an abortion? (With limited exceptions for unavoidable but rare events like rape, birth defects, and risk to the mother's health.) It is a woman's responsibility to abstain from sex _until_ she educates herself about contraception and gets effective contraception (with "effective" defined as something you know you can trust yourself to use, i.e., if you're not the sort of person who can remember to take a pill every day, don't rely on the pill.) This is not asking women for decades of abstinence, just for abstinence until they are protected.<br /><br />After all, most teenagers go through a period of years when, even though they are interested in sex, they aren't having it because they are not on birth control or not in sufficiently committed relationships. The average age of first sexual encounter, as I read somewhere, is 16, which is significantly later than the age at which one starts thinking about sex (11? 13?). This sort of cautiousness probably preempts a lot of abortions, completely aside from religious motivations for abstinence. <br /><br />Would you consider that point of view, which is a rather more extreme version of what I actually think, too judgmental to be feminist?<br /><br /><br /><br />caryatisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-56662956462758384172013-01-30T14:05:41.579-05:002013-01-30T14:05:41.579-05:00Phoebe, I am not at present arguing that abortion ...Phoebe, I am not at present arguing that abortion should be illegal, merely arguing that abortion is <i>prima facie</i> seriously wrong and most abortions as they are actually performed are seriously wrong. Your argument might be an argument for <i>why abortion should be legal</i> and why women perhaps should be legally allowed to execute a biological organism with a valuable future, but I don't see how to make it into an argument that doing so isn't seriously wrong. <br /><br />I suppose it is possible to argue that a woman's right to personal autonomy outweighs a fetus's right not to be killed. It seems a strange and unnatural moral calculus though. We don't even think a woman's right to personal autonomy is sufficient to allow her to buy a 64-oz. soda in New York City, never mind great enough to allow her to execute other people. I think the argument that the right to autonomy does outweigh the fetus's right not to be killed is really based on a smuggled in assumption that the fetus doesn't really have any such right at all.<br /><br />If you equate feminism with pro-choice, as a very large number of feminists do, obviously it isn't possible to be an anti-abortion feminist. If you don't, then I think it's equally obvious that it is. <br /><br />The irony is that the invention of birth control probably spells doom for its most fervent partisans. It seems inevitable that effective birth control is going to cause the human species to evolve into a more pro-life direction, as those people who are instinctively pro-life will outbreed those of us (like you and me) who are instinctively pro-choice. I don't, however, believe this will inevitably mean the death of feminism.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-54006084282360203162013-01-30T11:29:45.575-05:002013-01-30T11:29:45.575-05:00Britta, Andrew,
This is indeed interesting, but s...Britta, Andrew,<br /><br />This is indeed interesting, but straying awfully far from the original argument. Part of me wants to ask, again, why the obvious dividing line can't be whether the entity-whatever-we're-calling-it-or-him/her is or is not <i>inside of a definitely-a-person woman</i>. (Also taking into account what Britta notes, re: the likeliness that a woman who didn't want to be pregnant in the first place would be waiting till she was 8 months pregnant to do something about it.) We may one day reach a point where technology allows whichever post-conception clump of cells to turn into a baby in a laboratory, so the question of viability seems like one that's likely to be problematic down the line.<br /><br />But another part of me is much more curious what you both, all, think about whether anti-abortion feminism is possible.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-39395190425716839472013-01-30T02:18:16.896-05:002013-01-30T02:18:16.896-05:00Britta, I believe we're biological organisms a...Britta, I believe we're biological organisms and have no need of the "personhood" concept. (This is one of the great advantages of the view, frankly. As Caryatis said earlier, the whole "personhood" thing is too abstract to be believable.) The reason why it is <i>prima facie</i> seriously wrong to kill a fetus or an infant is for the exact same reason it is wrong to kill an adult human - because it deprives them of a future of value. Personhood never comes into it.<br /><br />The biological organism who has a future of value comes into existence at (or near) conception. When exactly that happens is simply a fact of biology. Current science tells us it certainly happens at most a few days after conception. Before conception, there just isn't a biological organism there. A few days after conception, there certainly is. Those few days are currently a grey area.<br /><br />Note, by the way, that I have made no comment on whether abortion should be illegal or not. There are arguments still on the other side of that, even if you accept my view. All I am arguing is that most abortions are seriously wrong because they deprive a biological organism of a future of value.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-69872563776992239892013-01-30T00:13:42.859-05:002013-01-30T00:13:42.859-05:00Andrew,
I'm familiar with the infanticide/abo...Andrew,<br /><br />I'm familiar with the infanticide/abortion argument. The whole point, though, is when does personhood begin? You totally gloss over that, as though it's taken for granted personhood begins at conception. That's a minority position, even for many people who believe personhood begins before birth. Brittahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02224221011978374915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-89028496719383335712013-01-29T22:00:40.532-05:002013-01-29T22:00:40.532-05:00Caryatis,
That was kind of what I was getting at ...Caryatis,<br /><br />That was kind of what I was getting at re: "sexual responsibility," but I wouldn't be too quick to stigmatize, until knowledge is widespread. I grew up in bluest, fakest America, and it was <i>not</i> generally known that condoms weren't all one needed to prevent pregnancy. In certain European countries (the Netherlands?) it's just known that two methods are needed, one to protect against pregnancy, and condoms to extra-protect against pregnancy and also against disease. Until there's widespread awareness among all at the very least late-teenagers-and-adults of how pregnancy is effectively prevented, it seems wrong to stigmatize at least certain forms of irresponsibility.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-60257155862155049982013-01-29T21:09:28.359-05:002013-01-29T21:09:28.359-05:00"It's just not plausible that single 25-y..."It's just not plausible that single 25-year-olds in a society with effective contraception will, as a general rule, be virgins. Whereas it *is* plausible that we as a society could rethink what sexual responsibility means, could destigmatize contraception (which remains vaguely scandalous to talk about), could put it out in the open just how all these women with nice jobs came to not have as many children as their years of sexual activity would have produced without contraception... if all of this could happen, then maybe abortion rates would go down. What's not plausible is that 25-year-old single women will decide en masse that sex is actually awful, that contraception, because it's not 100%, is not worth the bother, and that to have a career, pre-marital celibacy is needed."<br /><br />Agreed, although I would go beyond destigmatizing contraception to actually stigmatizing sexual activity without contraception (except for those few who are okay with the possibility of pregnancy.)caryatisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-4967902288969705982013-01-29T18:21:01.732-05:002013-01-29T18:21:01.732-05:00Britta,
Good point re: "religion" not n...Britta,<br /><br />Good point re: "religion" not necessarily opposing the same choices that social conservatism does. <br /><br />Which gets us back to the root of the problem here. Either "pro-life" is about reducing the rate of abortion (a goal most would agree to, with differences over whether abortion is bad because it's murder or because it's no one's ideal outcome), or it's about a broader worldview which is either near-impossible to implement, or simply, as you say, wrong to implement, given that right-thinking people disagree on what's ideal in sexual behavior. There are some who think it's soul-destroying to have non-procreative sex, and to them I say, by all means, refrain from having non-procreative sex. There are others who think it's dangerous to marry someone you haven't slept with, or dangerous to marry at all before having slept with others - the first of these to avoid sexual incompatibility, the second to avoid Madame Bovary-esque what-ifs. There are <i>still others</i> who believe in being "sex-positive" and define that as no-judgments re: polyamory, relationships in which one partner is a "slave," etc., leading yet others to ask how there are possibly that many hours in the week, but to each his/her/your-preferred-pronoun's own.<br /><br />My own stance is that people should do what they're comfortable with (and, I should add, I'm very pleased that this - mostly - has not turned into a conversation about what any of us an individual does or has done, because that's really not relevant - maybe everyone lives up to their principles, maybe not, maybe principles change, but until someone's running for office on the family-values ticket, I'm not the hypocrisy police, not asking for accounts of successful chastity, etc.). Sex drives differ tremendously, such that the "sacrifice" of chastity from puberty till marriage would be immense for some, and no big deal for others. <br /><br />Things get complicated, though, when the state weighs in on what is and isn't OK. A line obviously *will* be drawn (with polyamorous marriage not something one can get at City Hall, and with it being generally acceptable to advise 14-year-olds to at least consider waiting a few years before having sex), but it needs to be drawn somewhere <i>plausible</i>. It's just not plausible that single 25-year-olds in a society with effective contraception will, as a general rule, be virgins. Whereas it *is* plausible that we as a society could rethink what sexual responsibility means, could destigmatize contraception (which remains vaguely scandalous to talk about), could put it out in the open just <i>how</i> all these women with nice jobs came to not have as many children as their years of sexual activity would have produced without contraception... if all of this could happen, then maybe abortion rates would go down. What's not plausible is that 25-year-old single women will decide en masse that sex is actually awful, that contraception, because it's not 100%, is not worth the bother, and that to have a career, pre-marital celibacy is needed.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-49893822747569483792013-01-29T15:58:37.657-05:002013-01-29T15:58:37.657-05:00Britta, the reason why infanticide arises is becau...Britta, the reason why infanticide arises is because if you investigate a theory which says it is not wrong to kill unborn children, the theory always turns out to be such that it is not wrong to kill children at all. (All "personhood" arguments that I am familiar with, for example.) This doesn't mean the people who hold the theory are for the slaughter of children or anything, just that their theory does not hold that it's <i>wrong</i> to kill them. (There are other cases where a theory holds that it is not wrong to kill fetuses, but is wrong to kill infants, but such theories always turn out to forbid the killing of most animals as well.)<br /><br />As for natural miscarriages, that there are no mourners is logical - nobody ever got a chance to know the fetus. We cannot conclude that because there are no mourners that therefore nothing tragic has happened. Is it all right to kill a hermit whom no one will mourn? Or a person with no close friends? People die in accidents all the time - happens every day. Does this somehow make it not wrong to kill them? <br /><br />Anyway, Phoebe has asked that this thread not turn into a philosophical discussion about abortion, so those are the last points I will make.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-59534038210107294692013-01-29T14:51:39.621-05:002013-01-29T14:51:39.621-05:00Backdoor religious imposition of lifestyle choices...Backdoor religious imposition of lifestyle choices is a big problem with abstinence only education. It's framed as not wanting teens to have sex and to wait for marriage, but that only makes sense if marriage happens around 20. Most people aren't super into teens having sex, so it seems palatable, but the real implications are kind of odious. As an issue of religious freedom, I find it really irritating, because 1) we live in a secular, multicultural nation where there is no official religion, and I'm not sure why other people should be allowed to impose their religious beliefs on people, and 2) *my* religion has no problem with sex before marriage, contraception, abortion, etc, and it feels a bit like an affront to my religious freedom to argue for religious reasons against it. Somehow the only religions that matter when we're talking about respecting religion are the crazies, but mainline Protestantism or, say, reform Judaism aren't "less" valid as religions, or "less" moral because their moral codes focus on different things besides oppressing women. <br />Brittahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02224221011978374915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-42841014303861920852013-01-29T14:42:07.709-05:002013-01-29T14:42:07.709-05:00Very late to the party. With abortion/infanticide,...Very late to the party. With abortion/infanticide, the argument is always made about an 8.5 month fetus vs. a newborn. This is a complete strawman, as no one is aborting a healthy 3rd trimester fetus. A vast majority of abortions occur within the first 7-9 weeks, when the blastocyst/embryo is a clump of cells. 80% of pregnancies spontaneously abort at that stage. Should we be mourning all of these? They're technically also persons, with the same potential of any other person. Every time a woman's period is maybe little late and a little heavier, it's likely it was an early miscarriage/chemical pregnancy, totally undiagnosable unless you took an early pregnancy test, which most women don't do unless their period more than a few days late. Pro-choice advocates in the US are reluctant to cede ground on trimesters because it's seen (probably rightly) as a slippery slope type thing. In countries where abortion isn't stigmatized, it's illegal after the first trimester except for health of the mother/fetus. No one has a problem with that, because women who don't want to be pregnant want to not be pregnant asap, and women who carry a baby for 6+ months usually want the baby, or want it enough not to abort it.<br /><br />Anyways, abortions after 20 weeks are almost entirely due to health of the mother or the fetus. Since we allow people to refuse medical treatment for their really deformed, unviable baby, thus causing their death, is abortion of a deformed, unviable fetus all that different? Should a woman have to carry a "baby" with no brain full term? These are the real questions to be asked about 3rd trimester abortions, not "what if a woman* suddenly decides on a whim not to have a baby after carrying it for 8 months?" <br /><br />*implied that she is too brainless to understand she has a BABY inside herBrittahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02224221011978374915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-55034856675678863252013-01-29T07:55:38.027-05:002013-01-29T07:55:38.027-05:00Caryatis, Andrew,
Interesting debate (which I hav...Caryatis, Andrew,<br /><br />Interesting debate (which I have skimmed), but let's keep this to the questions of a) whether "pro-life" is really just/mostly about being against abortion, and b) whether its actual broader aims ("culture of life," i.e. anti-non-procreative sex) are consistent with Douthat's claim that "pro-life" can be feminist/pro-women-in-workforce.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-10671370570759248982013-01-28T23:48:25.674-05:002013-01-28T23:48:25.674-05:00Caryatis: Yes, I think it's fair to say that w...Caryatis: Yes, I think it's fair to say that we have very different approaches to morality. Yours is a very convenient morality to adopt. After all, the fewer people there are in the world whose right to life I need to respect, the better, from a purely personal viewpoint. And yours allows you to pick and choose at will. I am reasonably sure it's false, however.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-35150454179970124002013-01-28T22:20:11.755-05:002013-01-28T22:20:11.755-05:00MSI,
I too want to respond in multiple comments, ...MSI,<br /><br />I too want to respond in multiple comments, but am tired (not concise, just tired) and so will try in one:<br /><br />I have nothing against individuals, if it works for them, refraining from premarital sex, marrying young (assuming young =/= 15), and never using "artificial" contraception. Nor do I think it's a problem if those who believe this way is best have their say and try to persuade others to do the same. My problem is with governmental policy that assumes people generally do this, or ought to do it. There *is* effective contraception, such that you very nearly don't risk pregnancy, but it does tend to involve using two methods at a time, which I believe a great many people would affirm does not somehow cancel out the advantages to having sex. (And abstinence isn't 100%, either, what with the possibility of rape, not to mention the possibility of using abstinence as your method of birth control but slipping up this one time - a hysterectomy and that alone is 100%.) <br /><br />In the world as it exists, not everyone is going to meet a viable spouse at 20 or even 30, and not everyone is going to want to refrain from having sex between the age of consent and whenever a spouse enters the picture. And having great professional ambition does not, in the vast majority of cases I can think of, correlate with being able to remain celibate, or indeed in thinking it would be ideal to do so. It's this - "If you're pursuing a time-intensive career that delays family formation, you're probably exactly the type of gratification-delayer and impulse-controller who can keep sex to a minimum, w/ or w/o contraception." - that just does not remotely ring true to my experience of the milieu in question. I mean, the question shouldn't even be whether such a woman *could* restrain herself so severely, but why she would, if her religion/quasi-religious moral position didn't demand it. There's no generally-agreed-upon virtue of not having premarital sex, of not having sex except in life situations in which you'd be OK with having a child. This is something <i>some</i> believe, and some subset of that group live up to that ideal, but it's sure not everyone's ideal. <br /><br />But all of this is engaging you in a debate about the relationship between sex and reproduction. My point was, is, that this very conversation explains why the pro-choice side is skeptical of the anti-abortion side's stance wrt women in the workforce. Meaning: if the anti-abortion side has this interest idea that pregnancy shouldn't be viewed as controllable/disastrous, and that women should only be having sex within marriage, regardless of the merits of that view, this is quite simply a <i>departure</i> from how most people actually live or want to live, and therefore serves as evidence that "pro-life" isn't simply about whether a fetus, or a fetus past X weeks/months, is a person, but about women's sexuality. <br /><br />I *also* don't think I've wrapped my head around the idea that because pregnancy isn't entirely controllable, one must throw one's hands up and refuse from using the most effective varieties of contraception, in the name of I'm not sure I understand what, but that's getting us off-track, I suppose.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-27303070994766214602013-01-28T20:24:59.214-05:002013-01-28T20:24:59.214-05:00Andrew, I probably have a completely different app...Andrew, I probably have a completely different approach to morality. The idea that taking away someone's potential is wrong doesn't convince me. It seems to me that inflicting torture (i.e. actual pain) is much worse than painless killing.<br /><br />It’s wrong to kill an adult because 1) it increases the risk someone will kill me and 2) that person has demonstrated value. That’s why capital punishment is okay with me, because those killed have demonstrated they have negative value. But neither reason applies to fetuses or infants. <br /><br />I don’t really feel strongly about infanticide. It just seems pointless. Why kill when you can give up custody? If someone else wants my baby, then it makes more sense to give them it rather than to kill it. <br />caryatisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-11475423258530160762013-01-28T20:18:34.663-05:002013-01-28T20:18:34.663-05:00MSI, no, I do not find sex with birth control grim...MSI, no, I do not find sex with birth control grim. I am quite happy with it. As I think most people are. I do think that many women, including myself, are prone to forgetting pills once in a while, and men are prone to using condoms poorly. But that’s not an argument against birth control so much as an argument against choosing a form of birth control that demands too much mental energy. <br /><br />I agree that ideally all women would have access to IUDs, and research should be conducted to find better methods. The exact level of control a person wants over life is a matter of personal preference. I want as much control over my fertility as I can get, but other women, as you suggest, might be okay with higher failure rates. Very, very few women are okay with no control. My objection to condoms is not that they are completely useless, but that I don’t think most people are aware of precisely how often they fail. (And I don’t think your assertion that there is only a 1-2 percent difference between condoms and other methods is borne out by the evidence.)<br /><br />Yes, a delivered premature infant has more rights than a fetus, because of the basic fact that a fetus’s rights cannot be enforced without infringing on its mother’s rights.<br />caryatisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-58654053230871908502013-01-28T18:22:37.358-05:002013-01-28T18:22:37.358-05:00Caryatis, Don Marquis's argument (which I agre...Caryatis, Don Marquis's argument (which I agree with) is focused around the question of why it is wrong to kill Caryatis or Andrew Stevens and then proceeds from there.<br /><br />Ask a person who has been diagnosed with a terminal disease why it is that he is sad that he is going to die. Chances are he will tell you because he was hoping to do things (like see his children grown) or accomplish things (like write that book) or simply have future interactions with his family or friends. Dying early deprives him of all these things. This is why it is wrong to kill Caryatis or Andrew Stevens. We possess futures of value. In those cases where we don't possess futures of value (we are comatose and will never awake or we face a future of constant agony), then it is no longer clearly the case that it is wrong to kill us. Now, note that this reason for not killing us consists of <i>potentiality</i>. My actuality is already here and, if you kill me, I don't have any actuality any more, so where's the wrongness? Once I'm dead, there's nothing actual left. The wrongness is because you have robbed me of my potentiality, my future of value.<br /><br />Since this is the reason it is wrong to kill Caryatis or Andrew Stevens (and I believe it is), then the question of whether it is wrong to kill something other than an adult human focuses on whether it too has a future of value. Infants do, fetuses do, animals <i>might</i>. (I.e. if you already believe the animal rights arguments, this account for the wrongness of killing probably won't disturb your judgment. If you don't so believe, then it probably won't disturb that judgement either.)<br /><br />But Don Marquis says this all much better and more completely than I do. See his 1989 paper "Why Abortion is Immoral," the argument that convinced me, against my desires, that most abortions are seriously wrong.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-15265340734633999762013-01-28T18:00:58.609-05:002013-01-28T18:00:58.609-05:00Caryatis: I have few personal anxieties about sex,...Caryatis: I have few personal anxieties about sex, w/ or w/o birth control. I've found that being married provides its own security, such that even an unintended pregnancy is not a fearful prospect.<br /><br />But there is a disjuncture b/w what you're instructing me to do - just learn to use the IUD correctly and I'll be ready for constant, anxiety-free sex, vs. your disproportionate concern about a 1-2% different in the failure rate of other devices. Using most contraception <i>correctly</i> (which you seem to think yourself capable of) is 98-99% effective, and should produce as strong a feeling of security as your IUD plus oral contraception plus condom or whatever combination. Why then are you so anxious on behalf of other women's capacities to use them correctly like you? Statistically, of course, we learn from this chart that women are morons who can't do anything properly and pretty much need surgical intervention to get the right result. On one hand, you're very confident about the prospect of all women of attaining complete control over pregnancy and emancipation from fear, but on the other, you admit that this prospect is actually pretty grim without a no-fail intervention controlled by a medical professional.<br /><br />"I don’t think the fact that we don’t have perfect control over life should stop us from exerting the control we do have."<br />Sure, but how much control <i>do</i> we have? Is it enough? Right now, your preferred method of birth control costs a good bit of money; shouldn't it be free and actively offered to all women? Should we call it a day in the quest for <i>even more</i> effective contraception and abortion methods? Right now, we can't get pregnant any time we want, and sometimes couples have to try for a long time, or get medical intervention that only sometimes works. Should we leave things at that level of control? Or we should we exert the control we do have by encouraging more efforts to bring us more control?<br /><br />Also, about the inside vs. outside of the mother status of the fetus, a fetus has a chance of surviving outside the womb (w/ medical intervention) after about six months of gestation. Is a delivered premature infant a person, but an undelivered one of the same age not? Should we close all the NICUs?Miss Self-Importanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04477849823290773026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-40017469209766992952013-01-28T16:45:58.892-05:002013-01-28T16:45:58.892-05:00Andrew, I don’t see how you can separate practical...Andrew, I don’t see how you can separate practical considerations from moral philosophy. A fetus has potential, but by definition, potential doesn’t actually exist.<br /><br />MSI, you may find the thought of using birth control burdensome and anxiety-provoking, but that is hardly universal. I have encountered people who were neurotic about pregnancy and STD prevention, but largely that anxiety was a result of their inexperience. Once you know what you’re doing and have effective birth control, you can put fears of unwanted pregnancy out of your mind almost completely. That’s the great thing about the IUD, for instance--get it once, and you get to basically forget about it for ten years. In a larger sense, I don’t think the fact that we don’t have perfect control over life should stop us from exerting the control we do have. Sounds like a slippery slope argument. The vast majority of us who have non-procreative sex are not necessarily going to turn out control freaks.<br /><br />Planned Parenthood estimates that 15 to 24 per 100 women who rely on condoms alone will get pregnant per year, compared to less than 1 out of 100 women with IUDs. Even with perfect use, condoms sometimes break.<br /><br />http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/birth-control/birth-control-effectiveness-chart-22710.htm<br />caryatisnoreply@blogger.com