
Warren Buffett’s Family Secretly Funded a Birth Control Revolution - nkurz
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-30/warren-buffett-s-family-secretly-funded-a-birth-control-revolution?
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discardorama
Good for them.

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.

~~~
chokolad
I had an argument recently with someone who is anti-abortion and his opinion
is that life starts when sperm and egg meet. Anything preventing implantation
of an egg is essentially killing of a baby - hence IUD is not acceptable
contraception method. Condom is though. Or anything else which prevents sperm
from meeting an egg.

~~~
chimeracoder
> I had an argument recently with someone who is anti-abortion and his opinion
> is that life starts when sperm and egg meet. Anything preventing
> implantation of an egg is essentially killing of a baby

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).

~~~
benjohnson
From what I've seen, people with a pro-choice viewpoint generally acknowledge
that life biologically begins at conception.

The split in viewpoints, as I understand it, is that early life isn't
significant enough to protect at that stage of development.

~~~
mistermann
FWIW, from any of these debates I've read on reddit at least, I've encountered
almost no pro-choice people who believe life begins at conception. The party
line seems to be that it is a zygote until birth - well, of course they'd
never state it in such clear terms as that, instead you get any variety of
mental gymnastics to avoid the question, but one thing they are _absolutely
certain_ about is, it is not a life.

~~~
amake
"Life" vs "(viable) human life". Not the same thing.

~~~
refurb
A 26 week old fetus is viable, but you can still abort it.

~~~
amake
I think most people would say that "viable only with massive medical
intervention" is not what they mean by "viable" in this context.

~~~
refurb
There are plenty of full term babies that need "massive medical intervention".
Are they viable?

~~~
mistermann
They are not, and using the exact same logic advocated by the the pro-choice
camp, there should be no _moral_ issues with not providing the necessary
medical support for the baby to survive. Taken at their word, if it is not
self-sufficient, it is not a life.

------
chime
> This March, a state legislator in Arkansas proposed a bill that would pay
> unwed, low-income mothers on Medicaid $2,500 to get an IUD. That echoes a
> not-so-distant controversy over the Norplant hormonal implant. After it hit
> the market in 1991, legislators in more than a dozen states introduced bills
> that would have pushed women into getting the implant as a condition of
> welfare, in lieu of jail time, or in exchange for cash... If more
> policymakers try to contort the effectiveness of IUDs into a tool for social
> engineering or make its use a condition for state support, the Susan
> Thompson Buffett Foundation may find itself needing to fund yet another
> battle—to ensure that a woman not only has access to an IUD, but that it is
> her choice to get one.

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.

~~~
steve19
The problem arises, as explained to me by a woman when I made the same point,
is woman could be coerced to get an implant in order to get cash for her
partner or parents etc.

~~~
cperciva
_a woman could be coerced to get an implant in order to get cash for her
partner or parents etc_

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?

~~~
steve19
yes, but consider the political environment.

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.

------
paul
"Almost all women—and therefore men—use a form of birth control at some point
in their lives, yet contraception is so politically and legally radioactive
that legislators and pharmaceutical companies avoid funding it. So it’s no
coincidence that the money behind the Colorado initiative, the St. Louis
study, and Liletta all came from an unnamed philanthropic source—they all were
from the same discreet foundation. Very few people will discuss The Anonymous
Donor on the record, but tax filings, medical journal disclosures, and an
archived interview with a foundation official show the funds come from Warren
Buffett, the chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway, and
his family."

I'm glad we don't have to rely on democracy for progress :)

------
hyperion2010
For anyone wondering postpartum IUD implantation is one of the most effective
forms of birth control known [1]. You catch women right after they have gone
through giving birth and have a strong incentive not to have the experience
again. They are also already at a location that can do the implant so the
extra effort needed to get them to come back is not an obstacle.

1\.
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25439838](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25439838)

------
lcons61388
This shouldn't be news - it was revealed in the late 90's and chronicled in,
among other places, Munger's biography.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=LhMGSDiQghEC&pg=PA137&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=LhMGSDiQghEC&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137#v=onepage&q&f=false)

------
cjslep
As always, talk to your doctor about the risks. For example, if there is a
complication with removing the IUD (ex: the uterus is too tight and pushes the
IUD too far up) they may have to schedule an appointment with the OR at a
hospital to have it removed, instead of the OBGYN. Anecdotal (not me, I have
no uterus), but still no fun.

------
xnull2guest
While I'm thankful that wealthy men try to do things in the world they think
will benefit themselves or other people, it bothers me that democracy is not
able to compete with the influence of big money - even for things as simple as
birth control.

------
raarts
More than $800? Funny americans. IUDs cost between $20 and $100 here in The
Netherlands. I don't know why you're not rioting over healthcare costs...

~~~
GFischer
American healthcare is indescribably inflated. There must be very powerful
anti-market forces at work.

~~~
tormeh
Well, at those prices, what's keeping you from flying to another country,
getting stuff done there and going back again?

~~~
douche
Many people near the Canadian border do exactly this. I think it's more common
with dental procedures than most medical issues, but I've heard of people
getting non-emergency surgery done.

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)

~~~
mistermann
> A comparable procedure in a US hospital would be billed at nearly an order
> of magnitude higher

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.

~~~
lern_too_spel
The reason it's much cheaper in Canada is collective bargaining through the
single payer. The hospitals can't charge exorbitant markups for those
procedures and take the profit because the single payer knows how much it
actually costs and will make it _just_ worth their while.

~~~
aidenn0
For at least certain things Medicare and Medicaid is _forbidden by law_ to use
it's position to bargain for lower prices.

