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It's so ridiculously Orwellian (or should I say Atwoodian?) that I can't imagine anyone except in the most deranged countries is going to roll back access to bi

It's so ridiculously Orwellian (or should I say Atwoodian?) that I can't imagine anyone except in the most deranged countries is going to roll back access to birth control. The obvious long-term solution is that we do nothing and the fact that a desire for children is partially genetic solves the problem on its own.

abathur 3y ago
Thought exercise: functionally speaking, how similar is ~compromising the quality of high-school sex education (i.e., getting rid of it, making it elective, giving parents any control or veto over the curriculum, converting it to an abstinence-only curriculum, ensuring it's taught by prudes, etc.) to rolling back access to birth control? (Edit: not really directed at parent poster. Just something you made me think of...)
- DoingIsLearning 3y ago
  I am all for thought experiments but this discussion is fairly disturbing. How about: - 12 month parental leave for fathers and mothers - 20 days minimum payed holiday - paid sick leave - Free childcare - Insurance covered 15 days assistance at home post partum with a post-natal caregiver - Child stipends up to the age of 18 years old None of this is ground breaking in many developed countries. So much work yet to do in implementing pro-child policies and yet your first step is entrapping teenagers into a pregnancy and a lifelong commitment?
  - lovich 3y ago
    Oof, each one of those sounds like it might cost more than 10 dollars, much less all together. Guess I’m going to vote for going with the dystopian choices or the more palatable one of sticking our heads in the sand and not deal with the problem until it’s a catastrophe
  - abathur 3y ago
    You seem to be imagining that I support the undermining of sex-ed. I am merely pointing to the dots. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education_in_the_United_...
  - nightski 3y ago
    That's going to be very rough on small business. I think it all sounds fantastic don't get me wrong, but most mom and pop shops can't float employees for 12 months while paying in full for their child care and other services.
    - scotty79 3y ago
      It's usually mostly tax funded
    - bzzzt 3y ago
      That's why we pay taxes in the EU...
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    Not sure how long parental leave we have, but here in France most [0] of your other points are available, yet birth rate has still been below replacement for 20 years [1]. So something else may be going on. [0] While childcare is technically free, my understanding is that, in practice, places are limited, especially in big cities. [1] https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/512101/nombre-enfants-par-femme-france/ https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/512101/nombre-enfants-p...
    - newaccount74 3y ago
      Same in Austria. Theoretically we have very affordable childcare. But in cities there are too few places, so only a small fraction of parents can actually use them. On the country side opening times of childcare are so limited that they are incompatible with most jobs (childcare Mo-Fri 8-12 is better than nothing, but there are very few jobs that are compatible with those times). The result is that most mothers pause their careers while the kids are small. The consequence is that most couples only have one or two kids.
    - ajnin 3y ago
      Childcare is not free in France, it is subsidized but parents pay in proportion of their resources.
  - Maakuth 3y ago
    This is basically what Finland does, but it doesn't seem to result into larger baby count. These are very humane policies and I'm all for them but they don't solve this particular problem.
    - saiya-jin 3y ago
      I think the aim is rather to raise few well-balanced kids who are taken care of by professionals so parents' work is not FUBAR. Motivating modern parents to have >2 kids takes a bit more than that. The simple fact is, parenting these days is effin' hard. Even if you have place to put your kids in 5 days a week. I mean hellishly hard for few years, people go very close to mental breakdown regularly, or sometimes quite deep into it - seeing it a bit around us. The bar to call yourself a good parent ain't about kids simply surviving. We know that ignoring child's cries whole night, every night messes them up badly for later life. Day naps effectively ruin your weekends. Diapers, fights for toys, lack of sleep which alone will fuck up most people badly but here we talk about all of this and much more, for years, while work doesn't wait. No help there. The fact is, most folks simply have enough after 2 kids, we sure as hell do. There is very little additional 'parenting satisfaction' after 2 kids, yet costs and stress mounts. Also seeing quite a bit of fertility issues after first child around us, but that's not what people like to talk about.
      - Maakuth 3y ago
        I think you are onto something, although we've got three :). Raising well-balanced kids, who then become well-balanced adults isn't for nothing of course, but it's way harder to measure than the raw count of babies.
  - arrozconcosas 3y ago
    There is no correlation in practice between these benefits and greater birth rates. Countries with some of the most friendly policies to parenting have the lowest birth rates. In the past, people with much more difficult lives had many more children. This sounds nice in theory, but doesn't hold up in the real world.
    - beiller 3y ago
      Quick google for France shows 1.83 births per woman vs USA's 1.64. So maybe there is a correlation.
  - rendall 3y ago
    I suspect that the decline in birth rates in developed nations have to do with raised expectations. The amount of resources and time that parents are expected to devote to each child are quite high.
nobody9999 3y ago
>It's so ridiculously Orwellian (or should I say Atwoodian?) that I can't imagine anyone except in the most deranged countries is going to roll back access to birth control. My country is, apparently, one of the most deranged then. While all forms of contraception are currently legal across my country, it's harder to gain access to it in some places than it is in others: https://www.glamour.com/story/birth-control-laws https://www.glamour.com/story/birth-control-laws However, some places in my backwater country have attempted (but not yet succeeded) to limit various forms of contraception, despite its legality[0] nationwide since 1965: https://stateline.org/2022/05/19/some-states-already-are-targeting-birth-control/ https://stateline.org/2022/05/19/some-states-already-are-tar... And hundreds of elected representatives in the national government voted against[1] and finally blocked[2] nationwide legislation ensuring access to contraception. What's more, some members of our highest court have indicated that they'd like to revisit the issue[3] with an eye towards revoking such access. I wish I didn't live in such a backwards country. :( [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-republicans-voted-against-birth-control-protections_n_62d84d4be4b03dbb9913f86d https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-republicans-voted-again... [2] https://www.help.senate.gov/chair/newsroom/press/republican-senator-blocks-bill-to-codify-americans-right-to-contraception- https://www.help.senate.gov/chair/newsroom/press/republican-... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/contraception-supreme-court-clarence-thomas-griswold/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/contracep... (https://archive.is/dvON8 https://archive.is/dvON8 )
wly_cdgr 3y ago
The United States is literally in the middle of doing exactly that right now. And I don't think too many reasonably impartial observers would put the US in the top few dozen most deranged countries, for all its many serious flaws and faults.
hnbad 3y ago
While the GOP now literally has candidates in its primaries that explicitly position themselves in favor of "maybe some people should have access to abortion sometimes and we shouldn't put people in prison for it", prior to the catastrophic failure of its so-called culture war, the GOP actually had very vocal factions explicitly framing contraceptives as abortion - starting with the "morning after" pill, which literally prevents impregnation rather than inducing abortion in any sense of the word, but up to and including the regular "pill", which simply prevents ovulation at all. Sure this is still not at the level of banning all forms of contraception, but it's not a long shot and given the historically evident incremental nature of this combined with the focus on "abstinence only" sex ed (i.e. no sex outside marriage, i.e. no need for easy access to condoms or any other OTC contraceptives) I don't think this can be dismissed as a "slippery slope" fallacy either.
- jtbayly 3y ago
  You are spreading misinformation about basic scientific facts. You should do some more study. The Pill prevents birth via two major methods. One way is preventing ovulation, yes. The other main way is by preventing the fertilized egg from successfully implanting. That is also how the morning-after pill works. A fertilized egg has its own unique DNA, and begins development and dividing immediately. By the time it implants, it is made up of 200-300 cells. Yes, this is, objectively speaking, an abortion.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 3y ago
    A blastocyst that doesn't implant is not a pregnancy.
    - jtbayly 3y ago
      A blastocyst that is intentionally prevented from developing further by making the uterine environment inhospitable is precisely the same thing both in intent and outcome as what happens with a medication abortion (RU-486): “RU-486 works by blocking the action of the hormone progesterone, which is needed to support the development of a fertilized egg.” (From https://www.britannica.com/science/abortion-pregnancy https://www.britannica.com/science/abortion-pregnancy ) The pill works at times by thinning the uterine lining, which is needed to support the development of a fertilized egg. You can talk about what changes have or haven’t taken place in the body of the mother, but these are the same thing, just accomplished by two different means. We have other means as well.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> a desire for children is partially genetic While true, any western reduction in birth rates can be trivially explained by changes in child-raising. Children's critical hours of self-raising/peer-raising have been sharply degraded thru danger-culture & the erasure of free-roam areas. All of that is being forcefully replaced with adult micromanagement. In short, we've swapped much of the joy with stress and stunting.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

abathur 3y ago

Thought exercise: functionally speaking, how similar is ~compromising the quality of high-school sex education (i.e., getting rid of it, making it elective, giving parents any control or veto over the curriculum, converting it to an abstinence-only curriculum, ensuring it's taught by prudes, etc.) to rolling back access to birth control? (Edit: not really directed at parent poster. Just something you made me think of...)

DoingIsLearning 3y ago
I am all for thought experiments but this discussion is fairly disturbing. How about: - 12 month parental leave for fathers and mothers - 20 days minimum payed holiday - paid sick leave - Free childcare - Insurance covered 15 days assistance at home post partum with a post-natal caregiver - Child stipends up to the age of 18 years old None of this is ground breaking in many developed countries. So much work yet to do in implementing pro-child policies and yet your first step is entrapping teenagers into a pregnancy and a lifelong commitment?
- lovich 3y ago
  Oof, each one of those sounds like it might cost more than 10 dollars, much less all together. Guess I’m going to vote for going with the dystopian choices or the more palatable one of sticking our heads in the sand and not deal with the problem until it’s a catastrophe
- abathur 3y ago
  You seem to be imagining that I support the undermining of sex-ed. I am merely pointing to the dots. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education_in_the_United_...
- nightski 3y ago
  That's going to be very rough on small business. I think it all sounds fantastic don't get me wrong, but most mom and pop shops can't float employees for 12 months while paying in full for their child care and other services.
  - scotty79 3y ago
    It's usually mostly tax funded
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    That's why we pay taxes in the EU...
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  Not sure how long parental leave we have, but here in France most [0] of your other points are available, yet birth rate has still been below replacement for 20 years [1]. So something else may be going on. [0] While childcare is technically free, my understanding is that, in practice, places are limited, especially in big cities. [1] https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/512101/nombre-enfants-par-femme-france/ https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/512101/nombre-enfants-p...
  - newaccount74 3y ago
    Same in Austria. Theoretically we have very affordable childcare. But in cities there are too few places, so only a small fraction of parents can actually use them. On the country side opening times of childcare are so limited that they are incompatible with most jobs (childcare Mo-Fri 8-12 is better than nothing, but there are very few jobs that are compatible with those times). The result is that most mothers pause their careers while the kids are small. The consequence is that most couples only have one or two kids.
  - ajnin 3y ago
    Childcare is not free in France, it is subsidized but parents pay in proportion of their resources.
- Maakuth 3y ago
  This is basically what Finland does, but it doesn't seem to result into larger baby count. These are very humane policies and I'm all for them but they don't solve this particular problem.
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    I think the aim is rather to raise few well-balanced kids who are taken care of by professionals so parents' work is not FUBAR. Motivating modern parents to have >2 kids takes a bit more than that. The simple fact is, parenting these days is effin' hard. Even if you have place to put your kids in 5 days a week. I mean hellishly hard for few years, people go very close to mental breakdown regularly, or sometimes quite deep into it - seeing it a bit around us. The bar to call yourself a good parent ain't about kids simply surviving. We know that ignoring child's cries whole night, every night messes them up badly for later life. Day naps effectively ruin your weekends. Diapers, fights for toys, lack of sleep which alone will fuck up most people badly but here we talk about all of this and much more, for years, while work doesn't wait. No help there. The fact is, most folks simply have enough after 2 kids, we sure as hell do. There is very little additional 'parenting satisfaction' after 2 kids, yet costs and stress mounts. Also seeing quite a bit of fertility issues after first child around us, but that's not what people like to talk about.
    - Maakuth 3y ago
      I think you are onto something, although we've got three :). Raising well-balanced kids, who then become well-balanced adults isn't for nothing of course, but it's way harder to measure than the raw count of babies.
- arrozconcosas 3y ago
  There is no correlation in practice between these benefits and greater birth rates. Countries with some of the most friendly policies to parenting have the lowest birth rates. In the past, people with much more difficult lives had many more children. This sounds nice in theory, but doesn't hold up in the real world.
  - beiller 3y ago
    Quick google for France shows 1.83 births per woman vs USA's 1.64. So maybe there is a correlation.
- rendall 3y ago
  I suspect that the decline in birth rates in developed nations have to do with raised expectations. The amount of resources and time that parents are expected to devote to each child are quite high.

nobody9999 3y ago

>It's so ridiculously Orwellian (or should I say Atwoodian?) that I can't imagine anyone except in the most deranged countries is going to roll back access to birth control. My country is, apparently, one of the most deranged then. While all forms of contraception are currently legal across my country, it's harder to gain access to it in some places than it is in others: https://www.glamour.com/story/birth-control-laws https://www.glamour.com/story/birth-control-laws However, some places in my backwater country have attempted (but not yet succeeded) to limit various forms of contraception, despite its legality[0] nationwide since 1965: https://stateline.org/2022/05/19/some-states-already-are-targeting-birth-control/ https://stateline.org/2022/05/19/some-states-already-are-tar... And hundreds of elected representatives in the national government voted against[1] and finally blocked[2] nationwide legislation ensuring access to contraception. What's more, some members of our highest court have indicated that they'd like to revisit the issue[3] with an eye towards revoking such access. I wish I didn't live in such a backwards country. :( [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-republicans-voted-against-birth-control-protections_n_62d84d4be4b03dbb9913f86d https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-republicans-voted-again... [2] https://www.help.senate.gov/chair/newsroom/press/republican-senator-blocks-bill-to-codify-americans-right-to-contraception- https://www.help.senate.gov/chair/newsroom/press/republican-... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/contraception-supreme-court-clarence-thomas-griswold/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/contracep... (https://archive.is/dvON8 https://archive.is/dvON8 )

wly_cdgr 3y ago

The United States is literally in the middle of doing exactly that right now. And I don't think too many reasonably impartial observers would put the US in the top few dozen most deranged countries, for all its many serious flaws and faults.

hnbad 3y ago

While the GOP now literally has candidates in its primaries that explicitly position themselves in favor of "maybe some people should have access to abortion sometimes and we shouldn't put people in prison for it", prior to the catastrophic failure of its so-called culture war, the GOP actually had very vocal factions explicitly framing contraceptives as abortion - starting with the "morning after" pill, which literally prevents impregnation rather than inducing abortion in any sense of the word, but up to and including the regular "pill", which simply prevents ovulation at all. Sure this is still not at the level of banning all forms of contraception, but it's not a long shot and given the historically evident incremental nature of this combined with the focus on "abstinence only" sex ed (i.e. no sex outside marriage, i.e. no need for easy access to condoms or any other OTC contraceptives) I don't think this can be dismissed as a "slippery slope" fallacy either.

jtbayly 3y ago
You are spreading misinformation about basic scientific facts. You should do some more study. The Pill prevents birth via two major methods. One way is preventing ovulation, yes. The other main way is by preventing the fertilized egg from successfully implanting. That is also how the morning-after pill works. A fertilized egg has its own unique DNA, and begins development and dividing immediately. By the time it implants, it is made up of 200-300 cells. Yes, this is, objectively speaking, an abortion.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 3y ago
  A blastocyst that doesn't implant is not a pregnancy.
  - jtbayly 3y ago
    A blastocyst that is intentionally prevented from developing further by making the uterine environment inhospitable is precisely the same thing both in intent and outcome as what happens with a medication abortion (RU-486): “RU-486 works by blocking the action of the hormone progesterone, which is needed to support the development of a fertilized egg.” (From https://www.britannica.com/science/abortion-pregnancy https://www.britannica.com/science/abortion-pregnancy ) The pill works at times by thinning the uterine lining, which is needed to support the development of a fertilized egg. You can talk about what changes have or haven’t taken place in the body of the mother, but these are the same thing, just accomplished by two different means. We have other means as well.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> a desire for children is partially genetic While true, any western reduction in birth rates can be trivially explained by changes in child-raising. Children's critical hours of self-raising/peer-raising have been sharply degraded thru danger-culture & the erasure of free-roam areas. All of that is being forcefully replaced with adult micromanagement. In short, we've swapped much of the joy with stress and stunting.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]