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Should the country pay for women's contraceptives?

Should the country (taxes) pay for women's contraception?

  • Yes

    Votes: 41 41.8%
  • No

    Votes: 57 58.2%

  • Total voters
    98
Some women used contraceptives in the 1950's. They didn't become widely available until after 1965.

The entire concept of the family and female sexuality changed at that time, hence the whole women's liberation movement of the 60's/70's.

I bring it up to point out that family planning was possible before the widespread availability of contraceptives.

I wasn't talking about the 1950's. That's not distant history, is it.

And if you think women of the 50's didn't use contraception and abortion, you're deluded.

But to answer your question, it was about 70 for women. Fertility rate was around 4 live births per woman. Today, it's about 80, with a fertility rate of just over 2.
 
I say no. Being able to get these things at the expense of others not only enables bad behavior, but reinforces the entitlement ideology. Men and women should take responsibility for their decisions, not get a free ride to be irresponsible.

Yes. A new study released this month shows free birth control significantly lowered the abortion rate.


When more than 9,000 women ages 14 to 45 in the St. Louis area were given no-cost contraception for three years, abortion rates dropped from two-thirds to three-quarters lower than the national rate, according to a new report by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis researchers.

From 2008 to 2010, annual abortion rates among participants in the Contraceptive Choice Project -- dubbed CHOICE -- ranged from 4.4 abortions per 1,000 women to 7.5 abortions per 1,000. That’s far less than the 19.6 abortions per 1,000 women nationwide reported in 2008, the latest year for which figures are available.
Advertise | AdChoices

Among teen girls ages 15 to 19 who participated in the study, the annual birth rate was 6.3 per 1,000 girls, far below the U.S. rate of 34.3 per 1,000 for girls the same age.

And, if you are a fiscal conservative, it is important to lower the rate of unplanned pregnancies because:
According to a 2011 study from the Guttmacher Institute, unplanned pregnancies costs the United States a conservatively estimated $11 billion per year.

Further:
“It’s hard to imagine how politicians wouldn’t like to spend a dollar to save four,” Trussell said. As to the objections like those of White, he concluded that “it makes no sense whatsoever. Regardless of your views on abortion, virtually everybody says preventing unintended pregnancies is smart.”

http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/201...s-abortion-rate-dramatically-study-finds?lite

So, yeah.
 
What was the average life expectancy for a woman in the 1950's?

This is good it touches on things that have improved life expectancy worldwide. . . one such very important factor are immunizations to protect against diseases that can be deadly - like the measels.

In the 1950's the average life expectancy was 50 years for developed countries - 33 years for developings countries - and 28 years for undeveloped countries.

Projections at the time of this briefing were for 2005 - putting 30% of deaths are cardiovascular - 30% are Communicable diseases including maternal and perinatal causes as well as nutritional deficiencies.
 
I agree with everything but this. We should be doing everything we can to encourage people who are married and financially stable to have more children, and the reversals are far far more expensive than the initial procedures. Paying for reversals not only encourages people to get the procedure done in the first place, but it allows people to reverse it when the time is right.

While I think this is toeing a dangerous line, at least the logic is sound. Anybody that hasn't seen foul, crude, obscene, and tragically true "Idiocracy" should go rent it now :p.
 
Adam Smith remarked that "the most decisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants."

Livi-Bacci observed, "All things being equal, population increase leads to increased per capita production."

Mark Steyn notes in America Alone, "There is no precedent in human history for economic growth on declining human capital."

Simon Smith Kuznets won the Nobel Prize in economics for his theory of "tested knowledge." As Kuznets explained: "More population means more creators and producers, both of goods along established production patterns and of new knowledge and inventions."


So much for the theory that population control is good for society.

And, if you are a fiscal conservative, it is important to lower the rate of unplanned pregnancies because:


Further:


Free birth control cuts abortion rate dramatically, study finds - Vitals

So, yeah.
 
So, we have established, before contraceptives were widespread, women weren't dying before their reproductive days were up. Family planning was still possible.

This is good it touches on things that have improved life expectancy worldwide. . . one such very important factor are immunizations to protect against diseases that can be deadly - like the measels.

In the 1950's the average life expectancy was 50 years for developed countries - 33 years for developings countries - and 28 years for undeveloped countries.

Projections at the time of this briefing were for 2005 - putting 30% of deaths are cardiovascular - 30% are Communicable diseases including maternal and perinatal causes as well as nutritional deficiencies.
 
I say no. Being able to get these things at the expense of others not only enables bad behavior, but reinforces the entitlement ideology. Men and women should take responsibility for their decisions, not get a free ride to be irresponsible.

Although I agree with you fundamentally...I voted yes and heres why. Sex is one behavior no one can change, its the strongest emotion if not one of the strongest. So if you cant stop sexual behavior...we all have to pay for the results of it...which the costs of are far far higher....its a damned if you do damned if you dont situation.

Its very similar to the thousands of people that choose prision over being homeless..at a cost of 100,000 a yr plus and choose prison to get care for a health problem because they have no insurance... one sick convict costs MILLIONS of taxpayer dollars....I know conservatives hate to hear this...but sorry folks its THE PURE TRUTH....
 
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Some women used contraceptives in the 1950's. They didn't become widely available until after 1965.

The entire concept of the family and female sexuality changed at that time, hence the whole women's liberation movement of the 60's/70's.

I bring it up to point out that family planning was possible before the widespread availability of contraceptives.

Condoms are contraception, and so is sterilization. Both were widely available.

I never argued against that. But as you'll note, fertility was MUCH higher. Two reasons.

1. Contraception, while available, was less effective (sterilization not withstanding, although that was major surgery at the time).

2. Women had almost no control over their own lives, so they had as many children as their husbands decided to put in them. Women today have a lot less, because now they have the social ability to decide.

So arguing that women were "more responsible" about their childbearing, when they had twice as many children, those children were more likely to die, and poverty was far more crushing, is frankly hilarious.
 
Adam Smith remarked that "the most decisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants."

Livi-Bacci observed, "All things being equal, population increase leads to increased per capita production."

Mark Steyn notes in America Alone, "There is no precedent in human history for economic growth on declining human capital."

Simon Smith Kuznets won the Nobel Prize in economics for his theory of "tested knowledge." As Kuznets explained: "More population means more creators and producers, both of goods along established production patterns and of new knowledge and inventions."


So much for the theory that population control is good for society.


So China & India are the greatest places on Earth?

Surely there's a limit on how many people is enough.

7 Billions isn't enough?

Clean water, food, energy, and such...
 
I say no. Being able to get these things at the expense of others not only enables bad behavior, but reinforces the entitlement ideology. Men and women should take responsibility for their decisions, not get a free ride to be irresponsible.

I'm going to disagree (that's right, the libertarian leaner disagrees). If we eradicated every form of welfare/entitlement, this would be the last to go, if it were up to me. Same goes for vasectomies and other sterilization procedures. Availing contraceptives to women leaves young adults with much less excuse as to why they need more freebies, i.e. "I got pregnant and then X, Y, Z happened and now here I am, single mom, no education, woe is me..."

I do not agree that contraceptives enable "bad behavior" in any significant way. Especially relative to the other entitlements out there.

Pick your battles. Start with the real problem. That would be Medicare.
 
No. There should be some minimal level of personal responsibility that we as taxpayers should demand of the people living in this country. Paying for one's own birth control should be the responsibility of the person engaging in that optional, recreational activity.
 
Fertility was higher because I used the 1950's as an example. This was the baby boom era, when all the men came back from the war and "got busy."

Look at the 20's or 30's then. Fertility rates were the same as today's, and average life expectancy for women was still beyond reproductive years.

Condoms weren't widely available at that time either.

Condoms are contraception, and so is sterilization. Both were widely available.

I never argued against that. But as you'll note, fertility was MUCH higher. Two reasons.

1. Contraception, while available, was less effective (sterilization not withstanding, although that was major surgery at the time).

2. Women had almost no control over their own lives, so they had as many children as their husbands decided to put in them. Women today have a lot less, because now they have the social ability to decide.

So arguing that women were "more responsible" about their childbearing, when they had twice as many children, those children were more likely to die, and poverty was far more crushing, is frankly hilarious.
 
So China & India are the greatest places on Earth?

Surely there's a limit on how many people is enough.

7 Billions isn't enough?

Clean water, food, energy, and such...

Adam Smith lived before population became an issue. I dunno about Livi and I'm guessing Steyn is Catholic and Kuznets I don't recall exactly.


Point being, listening to people about population being all good, who lived before it even became a problem, is ludicrous.
 
The economic argument isn't that a high population is good, it's that a growing population is good.

China and India are probably overpopulated. The United States is not.

So China & India are the greatest places on Earth?

Surely there's a limit on how many people is enough.

7 Billions isn't enough?

Clean water, food, energy, and such...
 
Convince me that it's a problem. China and India may be overpopulated. The United States and Australia could double or triple their population and be just fine.

You know we pay farmers to NOT grow crops in this country?

Adam Smith lived before population became an issue. I dunno about Livi and I'm guessing Steyn is Catholic and Kuznets I don't recall exactly.


Point being, listening to people about population being all good, who lived before it even became a problem, is ludicrous.
 
I'll show you guys something to drive the population argument home intuitively.

USA-population-density-per-square-mile.jpg


This is a population map of the USA. Do you think the east coast is "overpopulated?" No, it is fine.

Now we have the WHOLE REST of the country where barely anyone lives. We could put a lot more people out west and believe me, there's room and plenty of food.
 
Convince me that it's a problem.

Go to the community college and take Introduction to Environmental Science (Ev101). I can't be expected to outline a chapter for such a lack of knowledge.
 
Go west young man. There's plenty of room. This is one of America's unique advantages in the next century.

Go to the community college and take Introduction to Environmental Science (Ev101). I can't be expected to outline a chapter for such a lack of knowledge.
 
Now we have the WHOLE REST of the country where barely anyone lives. We could put a lot more people out west and believe me, there's room and plenty of food.

Because the map has a light shading on those places, right?

Can we see national parks or deserts on this map? No. That's messed up and misleading. Low pop density counties look the same as preserved land and deserts.

Next, let's consider that the major aquifer for the mid-west is 50% depleted over the last ~100 years. And you wanna put more people there and grow more food? How long will that aquifer last.
 
Go west young man. There's plenty of room. This is one of America's unique advantages in the next century.

Compared to Europe? Yes. But we don't need to end up like them and solve the same problems in the same flawed ways. Better we avoid severe over-population.
 
I'll show you guys something to drive the population argument home intuitively.

USA-population-density-per-square-mile.jpg


This is a population map of the USA. Do you think the east coast is "overpopulated?" No, it is fine.

??? That's quite an arbitrary assertion. The standard I use for whether I feel that a place is overpopulated goes like this: Would the carrying capacity of the local ecosystem sustain this number of people? If not, then the area is overpopulated.

Now we have the WHOLE REST of the country where barely anyone lives. We could put a lot more people out west and believe me, there's room and plenty of food.

Ignoring for a moment how this could actually happen (i.e. how we would maintain a peaceful transition onto other people's land), there are large areas of land that are sparsely populated because they're uninhabitable. Other large pieces of land in the "breadbasket" are mono-crop agriculture, i.e. crops planted year after year which have depleted soils and only grow there because of petrochemical fertilizers and water pumped from non-replenishing fossil aquifers (as ecofarm notes above).

800px-USA-satellite.jpg
 
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Fertility was higher because I used the 1950's as an example. This was the baby boom era, when all the men came back from the war and "got busy."

Look at the 20's or 30's then. Fertility rates were the same as today's, and average life expectancy for women was still beyond reproductive years.

Condoms weren't widely available at that time either.

Yeah, starvation and disease tends to put a cramp in your reproductive organs.

And actually, you're wrong about condoms. Condoms have been widely available since the 1800's. As a matter of fact, the 1920's was when the latex condom first came out. They were more effective and longer-lasting than previous varieties.
 
Are you suggesting that fewer people live out west because of all the national parks?

Actually, the reason the east coast is more heavily populated is because people came from Europe, landed in the heavily shaded areas, and most people didn't travel too far afterward.


Because the map has a light shading on those places, right?

Can we see national parks or deserts on this map? No. That's messed up and misleading. Low pop density counties look the same as preserved land and deserts.
 
So, we have established before contraceptives were widespread, women weren't dying before their reproductive days were up. Family planning was still possible.

Mmm - birth control was illegal in this country - most people considered it to be vulgar or offensive to even research and discuss. Opening the door for discussion and research happened in steps. The first major step was during WWI where contraception and venereal diseases couldn't be ignored anymore.

Life Expectancy by Age, 1850–2004 — Infoplease.com

So - over that time frame - we can look at life expectancy and see it increase as we go deeper into the 20th century:

In the 1850's it was 40.5 years at birth for a white female (afterall - back then they didn't give a **** about minorities)
1890's: 44.46
1900-1902: 51.08 (white) - 35.04 (other = minorites) / 16.04 year difference between whites and minorites.
1909-1911: 53.62 (white) - 37.67 (other = minorites) / 15.95
1919-1921: 58.53 (white) - 46.92 (other = minorites) / 11.61
1929-1931: 62.67 (white) - 49.51 (other = minorites) / 13.61
1939-1941: 67.29 (white) - 55.51 (other = minorites) / 11.78
1949-1951: 72.03 (white) - 62.70 (other = minorites) / 9.33 Since this is getting to be a smaller gap I'd say it's have dual-benefits for everyone.

See the trend - up and up as quality of healthcare - which includes better prenatal care, inoculations and prevention increased?

It went from 79.4 (white) to 80.8 (white) between 1990 and 2004 (1.1 increase)
It went from 65 (minorities) to 69.8 (minorities) between 1990 and 2004. (4.8 increase)

So - for the average white female the statistics provide an increase of 29.72 years between 1900 and 2004.
For the average minority female that's a 41.46 years increase between 1900 and 2004

Note - the biggest time span for life expectancy increase for women (whites and minorities) was between the 1900's (before WWI) and the 1950's (after WWII) - an increase of 23.11 years for whites and 31.46 years for minorities.

This means that of the 29.72 years that whites have gained between 1900-2004; 23.11 years out of 29.72 were gained between 1900 and the 1950's - the remaining 6.61 years have been gained in the last 45 years.

For minorities that means puts that 1900-1950's gain at 31.4 years . . . leaving the remaining 10 years to be gained in the 45 years since then.

I'd say that having the first 50 years of the 20th century net the majority of life-expectancy gains is pretty damned significant and hard to write off as anything other than better healthcare for women overall since both races of all economic levels benefited. . . and that includes better pregnancy prevention and prenatal care = both provided by private insurance and the federal or state government if needed.
 
Are you suggesting that fewer people live out west because of all the national parks?

I'm saying:

1. A lot of that "low density land" is desert and preservations.
2. Low density areas are made to appear pristine.
3. The map is meant for examining population density, that's obvious; however, extrapolating lightly shaded areas of a pop density map into "we have lots of room" is too simple.

Actually, the reason the east coast is more heavily populated is because people came from Europe, landed in the heavily shaded areas, and most people didn't travel too far afterward.

I'm well versed in population dynamics and the demographic transition. I doubt someone of your expertise on this subject could surmise the major factors of such satisfactorily, and I don't feel like going down that road at the moment.
 
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