Warren Buffett’s Family Secretly Funded a Birth Control Revolution
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
People who don't like abortion (for whatever reason) should be all in favor of better contraception methods. What better way to avoid an abortion than to not become pregnant at all? Those who oppose contraceptives reveal themselves for who they really are: people with middle-ages thinking who think that a woman's job is to just bear babies.
This is a pretty common opinion among anti-choice people. One of the many divides in views on abortion is between people who believe life begins at birth vs. before birth, with a significant number of the latter believing life begins at conception.
EDIT: Obviously views on abortion are complicated and vary widely. All I'm saying is that it's really not hard to find people who will tell you life begins at conception (and by that logic, believe that killing a fertilized egg is equivalent to killing a baby).
The split in viewpoints, as I understand it, is that early life isn't significant enough to protect at that stage of development.
early life isn't significant enough to protect at that stage of development
>"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names."[1]
I don't really like the term 'anti-choice', but 'pro-life' is also an epithet that many pro-choice people dislike (because it implies that pro-choice people somehow oppose life). 'pro/anti-abortion' are problematic for similar reasons.
So while I'd like to use an uncontended term, I really don't know of one.
>I don't really like the term 'anti-life', but 'pro-choice' is also an epithet that many pro-life people dislike (because it implies that pro-life people somehow oppose choice).
Your reasoning is just as strong when used against you, as when you employ it.
So what neutral term would you suggest we use instead that is acceptable to everyone being described?
> Your opponents are of a similar mind.
Please don't make assumptions about my views on abortion or who my "opponents" are, especially since I've very explicitly tried to refrain from opining on the matter.
I would suggest that you refer to people by their preferred epithet, unless you can find a neutral one (which I cannot). This is common practice in most other ideological situations, (i.e. religions, political groups, and philosophical creeds,) and appears to be moderately effective at avoiding distraction from the discussion.
>"Please don't make assumptions about my views on abortion or who my "opponents" are, especially since I've very explicitly tried to refrain from opining on the matter."
I would be geniunely surprised if you self-described as 'anti-choice' (as I have never heard anyone describe themselves as anti-choice or anti-life outside of a joke,) so please correct me if I am wrong, but I stand by my assumption until it is proven false.
I can see how word games might make you roll your eyes, but does the above line of thinking also make you roll your eyes? I'm not suggesting we outlaw abortion, but I don't think it's that much to ask that people be honest about precisely what is happening. There are word games being played on both sides of this disagreement.
We've been controlling pregnancy as a species for millennia. Abortion, in the medical, clinical sense, is just a safe, reliable, and legal way to do so, that also happily gives a woman body autonomy (a good place for us to get to, after so much of our history telling women their bodies aren't theirs).
Hey, maybe you don't like any of those, and sex should be purely procreative in its goals. Some people do feel that way, maybe you're one of them.
Many pro-life people dislike epithet "pro-choice" (because it implies that pro-life people somehow oppose choice).
Actually both implications are sort of correct. That whole debate is about what is more important: the right of fetus to live or freedom of choice of a pregnant woman.
Full stop.
Unless you want to be called "anti-life" it's better to use traditional names for such groups: "pro-choice" and "pro-life".
There is some evidence that a large percentage (30-75%) of all fertilized eggs do not implant. If every one of those was a human life, your friend might consider this an extremely large public health problem, and perhaps of greater significance than poverty, war, and plagues.
1. that people currently share your so-called values, and
2. that you have any business identifying or imposing desirable values.
Keep your "values" to yourself, please.
(I didn't even touch on "increased risk of sexual transmitted viruses [sic]"; by the time abortion comes into play, STIs are a done deal, so what in the world are you talking about?)
Please don't be personally abrasive in HN comments. It degrades the discourse, whether your argument is right or not.
This, of course, could be related to where I live.
I do wonder though: what specific cultural values does abortion cause a drop in?
It isn't that simple. I was hoping that the article would dive into the reason why contributors to these endeavors are so quite about it, given the title, but unfortunately it didn't. I'm guessing that it has something to do with the very touchy issue of eugenics, the attempts to use birth control to reduce the number of "unfit", and the fact that early eugenicists and birth control proponents where also wealthy white people. [0] The parallels are so easily drawn that it is much more simple to just keep a relatively low profile.
So some of those middle-ages minded people you mentioned might actually be more concerned about the long term impact of disproportionately servicing the historically vulnerable with birth control.
The issue with implementing Eugenics in certain populations... is that suspicion of Health Care workers is abnormally high in those populations. I'm not talking about the mentally ill, or the deficient. But certain ethnic populations harbor DEEP suspicions of medical professionals and the medical industry in general. So, over time, it's become hard to get those populations to do even those things that really are objectively "good" for their health. Let alone implement a Eugenics effort.
The problem is social... not technological. We have had cheap, and effective technology to keep people from getting pregnant for decades. How do you get people to use it??? If you had ever worked in health care, you would realize this is not so simple a question to answer. You have to get people to trust you. That's what Buffet should have spent his money on. Getting certain populations to trust medical professionals.
All Liletta is... is yet another birth control device. We have those already. How do you get people to use them??? I mean forget Liletta. How do you get people to use ANY of them ???? The patch? Implants? The pill? ANYTHING?
If Eugenics was the goal, the money was wasted. Because what you need for Eugenics... is cooperation. And, right now, you just don't have that from certain populations.
Now... if you could FORCE them to use birth control... then you'd be on to something. But that's already been tried... with Norplant. And it turns out that forcing them doesn't really work either.
No doubt the Norplant case is terrible but I am unable to see the problem with offering low-income women a monetary incentive to get an IUD. It is reversible with no permanent side-effects. They can use the funds to get out of debt or get education. Even if they waste it on luxury goods, isn't it better than more impoverished children? Demographically, I can see how it will disincentivize a higher portion of minorities from having children but it might end up having a much better effect on their lives in the long-term if instead of remaining childless, more women just have children when they are older and better capable of providing for them.
While I recognize the concern, I think it's rather infantilizing to take a choice away from women because of a concern that they will be subject to coercion and unwilling to avail themselves of the protections afforded by the criminal justice system.
Consider an analogous situation with men instead of women: Men are coerced into enlisting in the US military in order to gain cash for their partners and parents. Should the answer be to transform the US military into an unpaid volunteer force?
there are already people who complain bitterly about the military incentives (after they have taken and spent the money or gotten the education they wanted)... but no political groups are going to be taking up thier cause.
I'm glad we don't have to rely on democracy for progress :)
https://books.google.com/books?id=LhMGSDiQghEC&pg=PA137&lpg=...
Even if you pay completely out of pocket, Canadian medicine is much cheaper than US. I had an emergency appendectomy while on vacation in Quebec, and the total bill, with surgery, anesthesia, an overnight stay in the hospital, and the 100+ mile ambulance ride to get me out to a real hospital, was around $2500. That's the deductible on my US health insurance... A comparable procedure in a US hospital would be billed at nearly an order of magnitude higher (source, several in-patient orthopedic surgeries I've had)
This is the problem most people overlook when talking healthcare reform in the US - if you just make it single payer (the government), you're still screwed if the prices are 10x what it should be.
For major surgeries, people do fly to Europe for the procedure:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/us/the-growing-popularity-...