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Well if you look at what happens to women when they don’t have contraceptives, the cost/benefit ratio tends to allow quite a few costs. For example, blood clot
by pyuser583 5y ago
Well if you look at what happens to women when they don’t have contraceptives, the cost/benefit ratio tends to allow quite a few costs.
For example, blood clots. Hormonal birth control causes blood clots. But nowhere nearly as often as pregnancy.
Would you apply the same reasoning for men? There’s a school of medical ethics that says treatments must focus exclusively on good outcomes for the patient.
According to this school of thought, prescribing a man a pill that has a .001% chance of blood clots to prevent his female partner from having a .01% chance of blood clots is unacceptable.
And this is a very, very influential line of thought among doctors.
- reducesuffering 5y ago> There’s a school of medical ethics > very, very influential line of thought among doctors I'm not very "rah rah we currently live in a patriarchy", but wtf? Is it not elementary to consider GROUP effects when dishing out medicine? If a couple (most of the people where the women is taking birth control) come into a doctor's office with that blood clot predicament, it should not be very hard for a doctor to consider them as a couple, when they can clearly communicate that they care about their total health equally. If our medical system is mostly only able to consider the primary patient, unable to prescribe medicine taking into account the second order effects in that person's life to people they care about, then our medical institutions are (even more) flawed.
- pyuser583 5y agoIt’s fine if it’s something that benefits everyone. Like cleaner air reducing lung cancer. But when you adopt an attitude of “you’re going to have to take one for the team” that’s where the principal comes into play.
- tangjurine 5y agoI think I would support some sort of government incentive for this. It's good for everyone if people are encouraged to make sacrifices that net benefit society. In the long run, everyone should benefit (if the sacrifices and benefitees are equally distributed enough).
- pyuser583 5y agoAlternately, one could argue sacrifices should be made by those who gain the most from them. Preganancy can cause very bad outcomes. Therefore it's more appropriate contraceptives development focus on women. Think of it this way - a guy says "yeah I'm on the pill ... no of course I didn't for get to take one of the pills yesterday ... trust me." Why isn't this as reassuring as a woman stating she's on birth control?
- olliej 5y agoHormonal birth control causes blood clots in women all the time, including those not trying to get pregnant? Why are we dealing with a binary that is a woman wants to get pregnant vs not wanting to? In the case where pregnancy is desired birth control is by definition irrelevant. So the correct thing to compare is the health risks to a non-pregnant woman vs the health risks to a man, and the risks from pregnancy have nothing to do with it.