First, don't get me wrong--I support the right to choose, for a number of reasons and some unfortunate things I saw growing up. I'm not against women's rights here.
I'll observe that being pregnant does not preclude you from participating in an information economy or from working at a desk--I haven't tried that, personally, so I may be wrong. I would love to hear about how pregnancy negatively impacts information workers.
I do have issue with the "fully half" population--you can't simply suggest that all of the women are trying to conceive all the time. This seems to be intellectually dishonest.
Anyways, note that we've successfully fought for abortion rights for decades now, and trends seem to suggest that, despite the alarming ignorance of some of the population and congressmen, we will continue to do so.
SOPA (and the Patriot Act, and PIPA, and so on) represent a new threat to civil liberties and the economy (I would be unsurprised to find out that there is more money in user-generated content than birth control). We owe it to ourselves and our children to try and mitigate this threat now before it becomes an issue later.
> I'll observe that being pregnant does not preclude you from participating in an information economy or from working at a desk--I haven't tried that, personally, so I may be wrong. I would love to hear about how pregnancy negatively impacts information workers.
My wife is at 9 months now. She could barely get through her finals during her first trimester. Second trimester was fine, but third trimester she has been completely exhausted. She's also chock-full of hormones that make her extremely emotional and make it hard to focus (and she is one of the most coldly rational people you'll ever meet).
> I do have issue with the "fully half" population--you can't simply suggest that all of the women are trying to conceive all the time. This seems to be intellectually dishonest.
Pretty much every woman will be sexually active through most of her life, and will be able to get pregnant for several decades of her life. While only some percentage are actually trying to conceive at any time, failure rates with contraception are substantial even when they aren't.
Also, you can't just look at the cost of pregnancy. Adoption isn't a catch-all solution in a world without abortion. Remember orphanages? That's what we had before abortions. The adoption system can absorb most unplanned babies now, but only because most unplanned pregnancies aren't carried to term. And adoption can be a huge emotional burden that along with family pressure forces women to keep their babies. Having a simple first trimester abortion is a completely different ordeal than carrying a baby to term and giving it away. As I said above, I'm pretty sure my wife would rather be waterboarded than go through a pregnancy she didn't want. And once motherhood is in the picture, the dollars-and-cents cost is astronomical. When you put a dollar figure on the direct and opportunity costs of being a mother, they're mind-boggling.
It's worth mentioning that carrying a baby to term has serious health risks -- gestational diabetes, heart problems, etc. It can leave the mother bedridden for the last months of the pregnancy. It can change the mother's body completely and irreversably. It is likely to necessitate abdominal surgery (caesarian). Here's a nice take on this:
Congratulations to you and your wife! I hope she feels better after delivery.
I'm curious where you stand on sterilization--if there is no desire to conceive, it might provide a more reliable form of birth control than the alternatives.
Thank you for the information about how pregnancy impacts student life. I had meant "precludes" in the strictest "not physically impossible" sense, but clearly there are side-effects that make life harder even if you can show up to work.
At least in my personal experience in the US, it is nigh on impossible to find someone that will sterilize a younger, childless woman. I have tried to inquire about it in my past (I'm 23 now) and every attempt to even discuss it with people that are otherwise open to discussion about most anything (e.g. Planned Parenthood) have been stonewalled.
I haven't seriously considered it and was approaching it more from a curiosity point of view, but the reaction I got was mindblowing. You are pretty much interrogated about and judged on why you're asking about it even if the doctor has no intention to perform any such procedure on you ("it's for your own good"), and sometimes it doesn't even matter that you already have kids. One of my friends has even gone to multiple doctors to find one that would tie her tubes despite having 3 kids in a marriage going on 15 years and problems with most forms of birth control. (I have no idea how men fare in this regard.)
The other unfortunate thing is that there's still no 100% effectiveness with almost all methods of sterilization: worst case it's no better than near perfect use of the pill, best case it's just slightly better than IUDs/implants - it's a matter of arguing whether one or a couple of 9s go after 99%. The only real benefit is that it's a do-it-once-and-forget type of thing as well as something men can do, unlike IUDs that need replaced every x years or similar that are only for women.
And my 2c to politics: I don't think abortion is an edge case as it ties into a greater freedom of reproductive choice for women that make up half the US population before we even get started on how this affects their partners and families. Obama is not incorrect in saying that this is an economic and also crucial issue, as even everyday things like easy access to birth control (one less stressor for me and my partner! thank you!) are being assaulted by the super far extremist right. How serious they are shall remain to be seen (and on a state level it seems pretty serious), but as a woman I am scared shitless by the idea that a presidential candidate is included in that group of people.
This is not to say that SOPA and many, many other issues aren't also important, but absolute single-issue voting doesn't help anyone in any regard because there are plenty of non-tested, extremist, and pointlessly single minded people that support SOPA. There just is no such thing as a candidate that represents everything I care about the way I want, so I choose the one that I feel will do the least damage across more issues.
I haven't tried that, personally, so I may be wrong. I would love to hear about how pregnancy negatively impacts information workers.
I can think of a number of negative impacts - for example I would imagine that being pregnant with a rapist's baby might cause any number of psychological (and even physiological) issues that might make concentration and work difficult. Pregnancy itself results an a number of discomforts including bloating, hemorrhoids, bleeding, nausea, and back pain that might make work difficult.
And that doesn't take into account pregnancy complications like eclampsia.
That's absolutely a valid point. In that position I'm unsure I'd be interested in carrying it to term, certainly. Again, I completely support access to abortion, and I don't agree with the bullshit additional hurdles pro-lifers want to put on it (must inform parents, take ultrasound, etc.).
I'm worried that we've managed to conflate "Vote out the SOAP folks for being clearly wrong on this" with "Vote in the pro-lifers". I don't think that's a fair interpretation of the issue.
edit: Changed nutjobs reference to something more reasonable.
I'll observe that being pregnant does not preclude you from participating in an information economy or from working at a desk--I haven't tried that, personally, so I may be wrong. I would love to hear about how pregnancy negatively impacts information workers.
I do have issue with the "fully half" population--you can't simply suggest that all of the women are trying to conceive all the time. This seems to be intellectually dishonest.
Anyways, note that we've successfully fought for abortion rights for decades now, and trends seem to suggest that, despite the alarming ignorance of some of the population and congressmen, we will continue to do so.
SOPA (and the Patriot Act, and PIPA, and so on) represent a new threat to civil liberties and the economy (I would be unsurprised to find out that there is more money in user-generated content than birth control). We owe it to ourselves and our children to try and mitigate this threat now before it becomes an issue later.