in particular, Long-Acting, Reversible Contraception, which is a hot topic at the moment). Knowing that, I think it's important to be careful about lending weight to that rhetoric.
So you're saying they shouldn't do it on a LARC?
based around quasi-eugenicist ideas
So maybe this is how you get the Republican party on board with funding family planning.
There is both a long history of, and significant funding for contraception/family planning which is based around quasi-eugenicist ideas,
This is pretty much literally "And you know who else was a vegetarian???" and we mock that argument for a reason.
This is pretty much literally "And you know who else was a vegetarian???" and we mock that argument for a reason.
Not exactly. I don't care about Margaret Sanger's ideas, for example, but it's a a contemporary concern. I know somebody who's done work in the area and left meetings with funders thinking, "I'm glad that they're giving us money, but I'm concerned that their primary motivation may be wanting fewer poor and brown people to have kids."
Let me dig up some links.
We were sterilizing imprisoned women with sketchy documentation of informed consent as recently as 2010.
Example: Project Prevention
Project Prevention says their main goal is to promote awareness of the dangers of using drugs during pregnancy. They are better known, however, for paying drug addicts cash for volunteering for long-term birth control, including sterilization. The organization offers US$300 (£200 in the UK) to each participant. The New York Times reports that the organization initially offered more money to women who chose tubal ligations and men who chose vasectomies than to those who chose long-term birth control like intrauterine devices, but criticism forced them to adopt a flat rate. To receive the money, clients have to show evidence they have been arrested on a drug-related offence, or provide a doctor's certificate saying they use drugs, and further evidence is needed confirming that the birth-control procedure has taken place.[6] The organization keeps statistics on its activities through survey forms that all participants fill out, before any procedure is completed. ...
The organization has used slogans such as "Don't let pregnancy get in the way of your crack habit" and "She has her Daddy's eyes and her Mommy's heroin addiction". In interviews Harris said "We don't allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children", and that "we campaign to neuter dogs and yet we allow women to have 10 or 12 kids that they can't take care of". On the television news program 60 Minutes II Harris was asked about these comments and said, "Well, you know my son that goes to Stanford said 'mom, please don't ever say that again,' but it's the truth, they don't just have one and two babies, they have litters."
Now, I don't think people on the left (broadly) are likely to work with somebody who is that explicit about their perspective, but it is because of organizations like that that there is an increasing concern with reproductive justice.
Today, the mainstream reproductive rights movement has failed to confront liberals' promotion of birth control as a way to save taxpayer money spent on unintended, welfare-dependent children. For example, the New York Times, Slate, and the American Journal of Public Health recently published articles recommending increased use of provider-controlled long-acting contraceptives among low-income populations in order to reduce poverty, high school drop-out rates, and Medicaid costs. The troubling legacy of the U.S. biologist Paul R. Ehrlich is also perpetuated today by some environmentalists like Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth) and the Sierra Club's Global Population and Environment Program, which continue to see birth control as a way of addressing global "overpopulation." Framing birth control as a cost-reducing and problem-solving measure masks its potential for racial and class bias and coercion, as well as the systemic and structural reasons for social inequities.
See also, "Reproductive Justice Concerns Surround Long-Acting Contraception Methods"
However, healthcare providers need to consider concerns about coercion and how LARCs have been promoted to certain demographics. Higgins urges providers to "keep in mind is the ways in which our socially disadvantaged clients, particularly women of color, have endured legacies of social injustice that will affect the way they experience LARC promotion."
As Higgins also points out, these concerns are not new. Twenty years ago, significant concerns were raised about coercive use of the Norplant contraceptive implant to control the reproduction of low-income women of color. This 1994 ACLU piece outlines some of the issues:In several states, judges have given women convicted of child abuse or drug use during pregnancy a "choice" between using Norplant or serving time in jail. In 1991, 1992, and 1993, legislators in more than a dozen states introduced measures that, had they passed, would have coerced women to use Norplant. Some of these bills would have offered financial incentives to women on welfare to induce them to use Norplant. Other legislation would have required women receiving public assistance either to use Norplant or lose their benefits. Some bills would have forced women convicted of child abuse or drug use during pregnancy to have Norplant implanted.
Many women may also remember that after Norplant's initial popularity, troubles arose when women attempted to have the implants removed. For instance, state Medicaid policies funded implantation but not the costly removal, disproportionately affecting poor women and women of color.
In addition to these concerns, notes Higgins, Norplant "was aggressively marketed to poor women and women of color, especially to young, urban, African American and Latina girls." (Read more at INCITE!, which notes that methods such as Norplant have a history of being "disproportionately promoted to women of color, indigenous women, women with disabilities, and women on federal assistance.")
Thanks Minivet.
I don't have great familiarity with the history, but all of my links were just things I found with a couple minutes of searching.
And that's in California prisons. Who knows about other states, fed.
It strikes me that there is a very important moral difference between "I am doing this because I think poor foreign women should have fewer children" and "I am doing this because I think poor foreign women should have as many children as they want". Consent is absolutely at the heart of this issue and a significant share of children currently being born are not being born to consenting mothers. Rolling "educate women and make FPS available" in with the history of forced sterilisation seems to be to be missing this point.
And, yes, it is true that in this context this will also mean lower carbon emissions.
But that doesn't undermine the moral argument. Lots of the suggestions in Drawdown have got other good reasons to do them as well as reducing carbon emissions. Clean cooking stoves will improve indoor air quality (the fourth biggest cause of morbidity in the world AIMHMHB). Silvipasture reduces flooding risk and improves animal welfare. Electric cars don't produce PM10 and NOX.
Clean cooking stoves will improve indoor air quality
Last night, I went to my usual bar as I am beginning to have free time again. Their deep fryer has been out of order for a couple of weeks (there's a fire code issue preventing a fix). And the air inside the bar is noticeably better, even though the bar allows smoking.
It strikes me that there is a very important moral difference between "I am doing this because I think poor foreign women should have fewer children" and "I am doing this because I think poor foreign women should have as many children as they want". Consent is absolutely at the heart of this issue
Yes, that was the point I was trying to make in the OP ("It's one thing to go into a project thinking that, with greater autonomy and access to resources people will chose to have fewer children. It's very different to push family planning programs with the goal of getting people to have fewer children.")
Rolling "educate women and make FPS available" in with the history of forced sterilisation seems to be to be missing this point.
I disagree. I absolutely think that it's possible to pursue education and FPS in a way that's respectful of consent, and that there are organizations doing that now. I also think it's important to be aware of and foreground concerns about consent because there is a real risk about people not being concerned with the distinction.
Lots of the suggestions in Drawdown have got other good reasons to do them as well as reducing carbon emissions.
Of course. While I haven't read the book my initial response is positive, and I intended the OP to be largely supportive (with an important caveat, but not one which should be taken to discredit the project).
Got to run, but I'll check back in a while.
So, we had a long not particularly pleasant thread in a similar vein (context was California water problems) 8 years ago. Dsquared featured prominently expanding in various forceful ways on his Prime Directive of social engineering "Seek not the answer to your economic and engineering problems in someone else's pants".
In Comment 868 Walt Someguy summed it up: Reading this thread has convinced me that we, as a species, are doomed.
But different time, different blog (in the "you can't comment on the same blog twice" sense) and of course the world is much brighter, happier place these days as well.
Link to the OP. But of course as always, the action is in the comments.
Maybe we should revisit everything.
"SWPL, Funnier or Less Funny in the Age of Trump?"
I went to the thread in 13 and searched for my name to see if I said anything, and instead came up with this from Cala which I must not have seen at the time:
(heebie's baby seems to have been unplanned but wanted; my sister-in-law's was the same; the same would hold true were I to find myself pregnant.)
Nope, we were trying to get pregnant. (For context, we weren't married and didn't get married until Hawaii was 6 months old.) We wanted to get done having babies ASAP for BRCA surgery reasons.
That said, I do think the issues here are absolutely the critical ones confronting humanity. But the population thing is likely something that should not be front and center ... even though it is.
I will repost a nostrum I brought up in that thread.
Gradual and humane reduction of the size of the human population, limiting of wasteful per capita consumption among the rich to allow room for increased consumption by the poor, use of more environmentally benign technologies and increased equity among and within nations will all be required.
But if anything should be cut from that it would probably be "reduction of the size of the human population" (or maybe might better to change to "reduction of the growth rate of human population"--which has been happening bigly.)
When people ask me if we're done, I like to say, "The stable has left the barn."
Nope, we were trying to get pregnant.
And one of you actually succeeded!
There's a weird interaction on the question of whether the goal is reproductive autonomy for women or fewer children/lower population, because in practice, education and reproductive autonomy for women have been historically pretty much guaranteed to result in fewer children. So someone who wants policies that will slow or reverse population growth absolutely doesn't need to do anything coercive: policies that we'd all approve of for their own sake will work.
That doesn't mean that reproductive coercion isn't something to watch out for and guard against, but someone who literally wants fewer children born doesn't need any rights-violating policies to get to that goal pretty reliably.
At which point, say you've got someone who says "I have all the ordinary liberty concerns of a Western liberal, but my primary worries are environmental and I want the population to drop." Her environmental goals aren't in direct conflict with any liberty concerns, I don't think. They could be, but in the world as it is, policy action to reduce birthrates, even if the purpose is to reduce birthrates doesn't require coercion.
It seems gross to say "we were trying to get me pregnant" but if it's clearer that way,...
21: Yeah, that gives it a Handmaid's Tale vibe.
Like, in the US, if you make long acting reversible contraception freely available to teenagers, the teen pregnancy rate drops. Even if the public health goal is to reduce the number of babies born to teenagers, rather than to increase teenage reproductive autonomy regardless of the effect on the birthrate, the method of providing LARC seems to me to be in practice non-coercive and to be an actual increase in reproductive autonomy. At which point I'm sort of fine with not worrying too much about the ultimate goals of the policy-makers, until their actions are in conflict with something I care about.
21: Yes, sorry, there doesn't seem to be a good way to put it. "I was trying to get pregnant" doesn't quite work either because you both wanted it to happen.
20 is right: this degenerates into a very jesuitical sort of argument about double effect and so on. And as I mentioned above, the point that there is an absolutely colossal amount of forced unwanted pregnancy happening right now tends to go unmentioned, or at least not explicitly acknowledged.
I was teasing you back, Aje, but IRL I just get really explicit about the sperm and birth canal to avoid any confusion.
"We were trying to avoid having any free time."
Boy did that work out nicely for us.
Marginally on topic after 21- I was writing my self evaluation and somehow the spellchecker didn't catch the typo of remain -> reamin. I'm pretty sure I didn't add that to the custom dictionary.
"We were trying to get somebody pregnant and the barista wouldn't even let us finish the questions."
Looks like a super-interesting book, thanks for the link.
16 and 20 both seem about right to me FWIW, theorizing about behavior of an informed and sane polity seems like a pleasant diversion.
13. I still believe that D-squared proved my point (that non-coercive birth control is the cheapest way to accomplish environmental goals) by the calculations he intended to disprove them. I still resent being called Hitler in that thread.
Everything I've seen since then has confirmed my understanding that non-coercive birth control is the cheapest way to accomplish environmental goals. especially GHG reductions.
Most importantly: fuck D-squared; I'm glad he's gone.
9/10. The double effect thing should be sought for where it can be found, as it enormously strengthens arguments. I read this afternoon that between 40 and 50 thousand avoidable premature deaths in the UK annually can be attributed to NO2 and PM2.5 particulates (lower estimate, Royal College of Physicians, higher Dept. of Environment; equivalent estimate for US c. 200k).
Now, elimination of PM2.5 must surely help limit global warming, but surely it's a far easier sell if you also make it about not killing people at twice the rate of American military deaths in WWII.
Spacing!
(in the recent comments)
32: The problem in this case is that people react to population control, as a double effect of increased reproductive autonomy, as discrediting rather than strengthening. The argument goes "Racist eugenicists want to keep the wrong people from having children; therefore any policy that sees a reduction in the number of children being born as a benefit is likely to be a stalking horse for racist eugenics; therefore, even if we support reproductive autonomy, anyone who supports it in part because population control is a desirable double effect is very plausibly covering up racist eugenicist goals."
I think it's a bad argument, but it seems persuasive to a lot of people.
I had started a cranky reply, and then I saw that megan had commented and I certainly don't want to re-fight the previous thread. So, let me start from the top.
my understanding that non-coercive birth control is the cheapest way to accomplish environmental goals. especially GHG reductions.
I agree with this statement almost completely. I have concerns, but I think this is broadly speaking true. That said, when LB writes, "[I]n the world as it is, policy action to reduce birthrates, even if the purpose is to reduce birthrates doesn't require coercion. ... the method of providing LARC seems to me to be in practice non-coercive and to be an actual increase in reproductive autonomy"
I'm curious what your evidence for that position is? I don't disagree that, on balance, LARC promotion is a increase in autonomy, but I still think it's important to at least keep an eye on the negative side of the balance as well as the positive. For example see this summary of a survey of LARC experts who, generally, said that there is room for significant benefits from increased LARC usage but also said that it was important to be sensitive to concerns about coercion. For example.
But respondents were split on whether to incentivize doctors and nurses to provide LARC to patients. One respondent likened the practice to other areas of medicine, writing, "We know from providers and their interactions with pharma[ceutical] companies that something as small as a free pen does influence them to dispense medication that may not be in line with the patient's best interests. Doing this with LARC will have the same effect and will turn women off of LARC and us." There was a clear gender divide here. Two-thirds of men surveyed supported the idea of health plans and funding agencies setting higher LARC placement goals, compared to 30 percent of women surveyed. Similarly, 43 percent of men, but just 16 percent of women, supported the use of financial incentives for providers to place LARC.
I think actual racist eugenicists don't support birth control very much because they worry that the educated white women will use it and everybody else won't.
35 written without seeing 34, which makes me cranky again.
32: The problem in this case is that people react to population control, as a double effect of increased reproductive autonomy, as discrediting rather than strengthening. The argument goes "Racist eugenicists want to keep the wrong people from having children; therefore any policy that sees a reduction in the number of children being born as a benefit is likely to be a stalking horse for racist eugenics; therefore, even if we support reproductive autonomy, anyone who supports it in part because population control is a desirable double effect is very plausibly covering up racist eugenicist goals."
Who, exactly, is making that argument? That sounds a little bit like a right-wing attack on Planned Parenthood, and is not, I think, the standard Reproductive Justice line.
Won't somebody think of the racist eugenicists?
For example, let's look at the last paragraph from 5.2 (emphasis mine)
In January 2015, the leaders of five black reproductive justice organizations launched a national initiative called In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda to mobilize black women, initially highlighting three key policy issues: abortion rights and access, contraceptive equity, and comprehensive sex education. The initiative plays off black women's unique strategic position: they have a long legacy of grassroots organizing for reproductive justice and they are the most progressive voting block in the nation's electorate. Reproductive justice initiatives spearheaded by women of color are important, not because they allot these women a marginalized voice within the same losing reproductive rights agenda, but because they let women of color lead a reproductive justice movement that can win.
I can't read the article you linked -- paywall. But here's something from the Guttmacher Institute on the same topic. Which comes down to, in sum, that yes, there have definitely been legislators who have tried to institute provision of LARC in a coercive way to members of disfavored social groups (people on welfare, or who have had abortions), but that the only actual cases where this seems to have happened is a couple of judges making sentencing decisions about a few individual women -- awful, but affecting very small numbers, and
IOW, sure, there are people who are going to try to use LARC coercively, but our current level of resistance to that sort of thing seems to be enough. Vigilance should be maintained, but we're in an acceptable place on that front at the moment. I don't see an argument that making LARC easily and cheaply available to women who want it is likely to in itself be a slippery slope to coercion.
37: I'm mostly remembering the old thread linked in 13.
Hopefully we can all agree on universal free education including sex ed, hot and cold running condoms, etc.
But here's something from the Guttmacher Institute on the same topic. Which comes down to, in sum, that yes, there have definitely been legislators who have tried to institute provision of LARC in a coercive way to members of disfavored social groups (people on welfare, or who have had abortions), but that the only actual cases where this seems to have happened is a couple of judges making sentencing decisions about a few individual women -- awful, but affecting very small numbers, and
I don't read that article as being quite as sanguine as you do. For example, this isn't specifically about LARC but seems quite coercive:
(In the context of the fight over welfare reform in the mid-1990s, this approach paved the way for a debate over so-called family caps, which are policies aimed at limiting welfare payments to families with more than a designated number of children or who have additional children while receiving welfare payments. Family caps remain in effect in several states today.24 California's family cap policy takes a unique approach--exempting a woman who has an additional birth due to contraceptive failure; specifically, the woman must provide written verification that she was using a LARC method at the time, or that she or her partner had been sterilized.)
[More on family caps]
And the conclusion of the article, which I entirely agree with, is optimistic but doesn't quite go as far as you do in saying, " Vigilance should be maintained, but we're in an acceptable place on that front at the moment." (emphasis mine)
In sharp contrast to events of past decades, today's conversation is motivated primarily by providers and advocates wanting individual women to have unfettered access to the extremely effective methods now available, as opposed to serving some perceived greater social good. The questions on the table now are much more nuanced and complex, and certainly no less important. Given the historical examples of women not having received the information they needed to make free and informed choices, what is the best way for practitioners to convey that some methods are more effective than others, while still ensuring that women are given the full information they need to make decisions about what is most appropriate for them? Because financial incentives have been inappropriately used to influence women's choices in the past, how can payment systems that financially reward providers when more women opt for the most effective methods, such as LARCs, be structured to avoid undermining the quality of the information and range of choices women receive? This is a conversation that the reproductive health field--united as it is in its unshakeable commitment to the basic human right of individuals to make personal choices about childbearing freely and without coercion--should welcome.
I don't think we're far apart; but I do think that if you're claiming that the concerns of reproductive justice advocates are sufficiently incorporated into the current policy and discussions that they don't need to be given any additional attention then I disagree.
Their deep fryer has been out of order for a couple of weeks (there's a fire code issue preventing a fix). And the air inside the bar is noticeably better, even though the bar allows smoking.
I'm guessing that the fire code issue has to do with the exhaust hood not working correctly. So the interesting comparison will be how the air quality is once the hood is meeting code and the fryer is in action.
If not, hold an egg up to absorb the fumes.
Sure, family caps on welfare are coercive and lousy, but they are neither a policy of providing birth control nor presented as a population control measure -- the idea is to save money on welfare payments, rather than to reduce population generally. I'm not sure what the connection is to policies that are trying to get environmental benefits by encouraging the demographic transition.
Basically, what I think is that we should keep on being attentive to reproductive justice, but that people are overly leery about assuming that any policy hoping to bring about a decline in population growth rates is likely to be coercive and unjust. But this is a difference in emphasis, if anything.
family caps on welfare
Technically, that should be "diaphragms on TANF."
Basically, what I think is that we should keep on being attentive to reproductive justice, but that people are overly leery about assuming that any policy hoping to bring about a decline in population growth rates is likely to be coercive and unjust. But this is a difference in emphasis, if anything.
Right. I was thinking about my feelings about the interview linked in the OP and, ultimately, all that I'd like to see is a sentence or two about how this is an area where there's enormous room for benefits but, given the sensitivity of the topic, it's vitally important the the programs be carried out with an emphasis on reproductive justice (or autonomy).
That's really all I was looking for. If that sentence had been in there, I wouldn't have had alarm bells go off when I read it. But I don't think that I'm just asking for it as a shibboleth; I actually think it's an important point which deserves mention.
Also, as a side argument, when you say, "the idea [of family caps] is to save money on welfare payments, rather than to reduce population generally." I'm not sure you can make that distinction so cleanly. From the "more" link
... Indeed, of all of our country's discriminatory policies, family caps are one of the few that actualizes this prejudice into policy, and in the process, it echoes some the ugliest chapters of our past.
Twenty years ago, House Republicans issued their Contract with America, ... The third item on their policy list was the Personal Responsibility Act, which would "discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased [benefits] for additional children while on welfare ... to promote individual personal responsibility."
...
State caps began to appear in the early 1990s, with New Jersey and Arkansas adopting caps in 1992 and 1994, respectively. In 1995, true to their promise, House Republicans passed a welfare reform bill with mandatory family caps. In the Senate, however, Democrats joined with moderate Republicans to defeat the caps over the objection of Majority Leader Bob Dole, who warned, "If we don't deal with out-of-wedlock births, then we're really not dealing with welfare reform." He continued: "The crisis in our country must be faced. Thirty percent of America's children today are born out of wedlock. ... Families must face more directly whether they are ready to care for the children they bring into this world."
The key word in what I said is 'generally'. The goal of family caps is to save welfare payments by discouraging births to people whose families have received welfare. That is by definition invidiously targeted against a disfavored social group -- you don't need to uncover anything to find the discriminatory motive, it's right there.
That doesn't seem to me to speak to the issue of whether when someone says "I'd like to provide birth control access generally, both because it's a social good in itself and because reducing population growth is an environmental benefit", they're likely to be concealing a discriminatory motive.
FWIW, I'm on the board of a birth center that also provides LARC through its GYN care, and the whole org is enthusiastic as hell about it. It's viewed purely as a benefit to our clients. We just added a new IUD that's specifically designed for women who've never given birth, so that we have more appropriate options.
No offense to NickS or to the hundreds of comments from 2009, but it's just really hard for me to see "helping women align their birth outcomes with their preferences is only OK if it means more babies" as anything but concern trolling. "Better to deny a billion women reproductive autonomy than to risk a million somehow being prevented from having babies they want."
That doesn't seem to me to speak to the issue of whether when someone says "I'd like to provide birth control access generally, both because it's a social good in itself and because reducing population growth is an environmental benefit", they're likely to be concealing a discriminatory motive.
Sure, and on some level I'm just asking you to trust something which I can only relay second-hand: that I've talked to somebody who supports LARC programs, has worked on them, and has also been involved in some fundraising for them and has felt like some of the funders make them distinctly uncomfortable.
I agree that there's no necessary connection but, for me, hearing that story is enough for me to feel like reproductive justice concerns are a live issue.
No offense to NickS or to the hundreds of comments from 2009, but it's just really hard for me to see "helping women align their birth outcomes with their preferences is only OK if it means more babies" as anything but concern trolling. "Better to deny a billion women reproductive autonomy than to risk a million somehow being prevented from having babies they want."
I think that's a really uncharitable summary. I wouldn't agree with either of the statements that you've put in quotation marks there.
I also don't think you're on the wrong side of the issue, but it does trouble me how quickly people (in this thread) move to trivialize RJ concerns.
hearing that story is enough for me to feel like reproductive justice concerns are a live issue... it does trouble me how quickly people (in this thread) move to trivialize RJ concerns.
We're making each other bristle here. But if I'm one of the people who you see as trivializing reproductive justice, can you tell me what more you would like me to say such that you would think that I wasn't? I don't think I intend to trivialize those issues, so I can't think of anything you'd be likely to want to hear that I'd disagree with.
There are a bunch of places in the US where African Americans view medical decisionmaking with some suspicion. I actually don't know much about how Planned Parenthood gets along with both national AA organizations and local ones. I know a little about Baltimore, where JHU has strained relationships with its mostly black neighbors.
Not to shut down anyone's right to disagree here, but the proximal conflict in the US is preserving the status quo I think. Improving access to education and medical care in poor countries where the US has a lot of influence seems like one way to go, but fat chance because DJT. Here's a map, look at Cuba.
One more comment, and then I should try to pull myself out of the thread. I just went back and re-read the OP to see if it looked like I was trying to use RJ as a cudgel to dismiss the book, and I really don't think I was. I had both a positive reaction to the book (and to Paul Hawken in general), and a concern about the way the interview framed the issue. I think the OP captured that and I wouldn't have necessarily expected that the the whole thread would become about RJ.
That said, I'm obviously responsible for much of the comment thread, so perhaps it's just me.
On preview, I see that LB just commented, and I'm happy to have a chance to respond.
But if I'm one of the people who you see as trivializing reproductive justice, can you tell me what more you would like me to say such that you would think that I wasn't?
It may just be context. In the flow of the thread it felt like you were agreeing with ajay who started off by saying,
This is pretty much literally "And you know who else was a vegetarian???" and we mock that argument for a reason.
That seemed fairly explicitly trivializing. Having just responded to that, I reacted negatively to, "That doesn't mean that reproductive coercion isn't something to watch out for and guard against, but someone who literally wants fewer children born doesn't need any rights-violating policies to get to that goal pretty reliably. " Which I took to imply, "and therefore there's no reason to assume that people would be inclined towards violating rights." Again, I agree that the vast majority of people working in family planning are not, in fact, violating anybody's rights but I also think there's a significant minority who would, in fact, be fairly cavalier about those questions without some external pressure.
Does that make sense for where I was coming from?
I guess I'm literally Hitler here, because I'm perfectly fine with discouraging people who can't (or won't) take care of their kids from reproducing. The harm done to the individual encouraged not to reproduce does not seem to me larger than the harm done to the neglected child. Not by a long shot. How you implement that in public policy without getting coercive is a whole 'nother question.
A little bit. Pretty much, I think the initial post is either confused or something I disagree with. That is, I don't think it's wrong to want population growth to decrease for environmental reasons, and I don't think it's wrong to pursue policies that for the purpose of lowering the birth rate. If you do think either of those things are wrong, we straightforwardly disagree.
I think reproductive justice becomes an issue when policies relating to reproduction are either coercive or discriminatory, but not in the absence of coercion and discrimination. Which leaves me unable to agree with this:
It's one thing to go into a project thinking that, with greater autonomy and access to resources people will chose to have fewer children. It's very different to push family planning programs with the goal of getting people to have fewer children.
I think if you have a goal of having people to have fewer children, and you pursue that goal by making contraception freely available to women who want it and encouraging education and social autonomy for women, the goal is not unjust in itself and does not make the policies unjust. While coercion and discrimination are both bad, and things we should be vigilant about, I want to keep concerns about them from interfering with otherwise good policies until we have some evidence that they are actually a live issue with those policies.
Re-reading the thread again, and I'll make one more comment. I do still object to:
Ajay: there is an absolutely colossal amount of forced unwanted pregnancy happening right now tends to go unmentioned, or at least not explicitly acknowledged.
LB: [a lot of people are persuaded that, "... therefore any policy that sees a reduction in the number of children being born as a benefit is likely to be a stalking horse for racist eugenics; therefore, even if we support reproductive autonomy, anyone who supports it in part because population control is a desirable double effect is very plausibly covering up racist eugenicist goals"
JRoth: ... concern trolling. "Better to deny a billion women reproductive autonomy than to risk a million somehow being prevented from having babies they want."
I disagree that people interested in RJ are inclined to not mention the problems with forced pregnancy or that they would agree with either of the positions that LB or JRoth present. I would join any of you in arguing against all of those positions, I'm just unsure who it is that is defending them and I bristle at the implication that I am doing so.
For mine, read the old linked thread for the reactions Megan got.
I think if you have a goal of having people to have fewer children, and you pursue that goal by making contraception freely available to women who want it and encouraging education and social autonomy for women, the goal is not unjust in itself and does not make the policies unjust.
Can I offer a possible truce. I'm willing to agree with that statement 100%. I would appreciate it if you could take another look at the bits that I quoted in 58 and see if you understand why those annoyed me.
That seems like too easy of a consensus and dodging hard choices. What about making contraception freely available to women who want it, encouraging education and social autonomy for women, and requiring all day care providers to hire only wolves?
I'd go for that. I mean, we had our kids raised by wolves intentionally, but I don't see why it shouldn't be a broadly based norm.
For mine, read the old linked thread for the reactions Megan got.
Hmmm, I don't think that's a good idea.
I do take that as a fair point. My memory of the thread it that it was long, heated, and that I remember agreeing with some of the pushback that Megan got, but thinking that much of it went way too far. I don't think there's anything to gain by pulling quotes from the thread and re-arguing them.
But yes, I do take your point that you aren't entirely constructing a straw-man. I still don't think I was wrong to bristle at the comment but that does help me understand why you were arguing with a position that I wasn't defending.
Yeah, what 59 said. For better or worse, I didn't comment on this thread before skimming (OK, looking up my own) comments from that one. And the breadth of commenters holding a position strongly resembling the allegedly strawman one cited here tells me that this isn't a local version of nutpicking. For reasons biological and social and religio-cultural, there seems to be a strong prejudice against anything that might reduce reproduction rates, even though it's impossible to argue that increasing human population is a fucking disaster.
64: I don't think it's pro-high-birthrate ideology, even implicit, I'm pretty sure people who say they're worried about reproductive justice really are worried about reproductive justice. I just think that for some reason there's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction that any policy intended to lower birthrates needs to be treated with a whole lot of suspicion on justice grounds regardless of how innocuous it appears.
The Partially Voluntary Human Extinction Movement isn't helping.
I'm not going back and re-reading the old thread which I stayed out of because, honestly, I agree with both sides. I think efforts to lower population could have significant ecological benefit and I also think it's important to be careful proceeding down that path.
A couple thoughts:
This comment thread has been annoying for me. At the same time I mostly stay out of the annoying threads on unfogged and can't feel too disturbed by this one. It's certainly not even close to being as frustrating as the linked thread was. FWIW, I'm not angry, I'm just cranky.
It's just difficult to try to have a conversation with somebody and realize that they're actually shouting over your shoulder at somebody standing behind you. 65 is a decent example because I really can't tell if LB is referring to me when she writes, "I just think that for some reason there's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction that any policy intended to lower birthrates needs to be treated with a whole lot of suspicion on justice grounds regardless of how innocuous it appears."
I don't think my reaction in this case is a knee-jerk one; I'm open to having that conversation, but I can't tell whether I should be defending myself here or not.
I also note that one of LB's first comments in the other thread is:
commendable as those policies are, and effective as they seem to be in reducing birthrates, I still get squeamish talking about deliberately taking action with the intent of reducing population in poorer countries. That doesn't make it a bad idea necessarily, it just seems very difficult to talk about.
Seeing that I'm even more convinced that we are basically in agreement. That is a stronger than what I was trying to say in the OP (I wasn't saying that they shouldn't talk about it, just saying, per 35, that it would be a good idea to include a sentence or two acknowledging the concerns).
This thread probably has more average words per comment than any thread I've seen in a few years.
I'm perfectly fine with discouraging people who can't (or won't) take care of their kids from reproducing. The harm done to the individual encouraged not to reproduce does not seem to me larger than the harm done to the neglected child. Not by a long shot.
In my professional opinion it's not even close. If I won the lottery I'd throw a million at "cash rewards for junkie birth control" in a heartbeat.
How is "There is both a long history of, and significant funding for contraception/family planning which is based around quasi-eugenicist ideas," not "It's just difficult to try to have a conversation with somebody and realize that they're actually shouting over your shoulder at somebody standing behind you"
"I just think that for some reason there's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction that any policy intended to lower birthrates needs to be treated with a whole lot of suspicion on justice grounds regardless of how innocuous it appears."
FWIW, this is absolutely my knee-jerk reaction, and I haven't really made any effort to change it. Partly that comes out of my own experience of nice middle-class white women who when they think they are in a safe place will let loose some appalling things (not as crass as "litter" but definitely in the same ballpark). But mostly it's about my increasing believe that if you (women) want people to "trust women," then you (white women) have to "trust black women" and other POC about what they report is their experience and their values and priorities. And many of the WOC I interact with have healthy skepticism/mistrust of even well-intentioned public health interventions.
None of which is to say that you can't make tools available for people to freely consent to using. But I'm really reallly reaaaaaallllllllly wary of any kind of incentives, particularly for health-care providers.
67: I was talking about you -- sorry about being unclear. Look at the passage I quoted from your original post in 57. I don't think you believe that it's wrong to provide wanted birth control and education for girls even if the intent is to lower the birthrate by that means; you said as much in 60. But when you originally framed the issue, you said: It's very different to push family planning programs with the goal of getting people to have fewer children. I can't read 'very different' in that context as anything other than presumptively wrong or at least very suspicious. That sort of inflated suspicion is what I was thinking of as a knee-jerk reaction.
68: Definitely, we should trust people of color with experiences or opinions about bad public health interventions. But I think that where there's a public health intervention that there is good reason to think will do good (non-coercive provision of birth control), it's possible to overdo pre-emptive suspicion where there isn't anyone providing a particularized basis for it.
But I think that where there's a public health intervention that there is good reason to think will do good (non-coercive provision of birth control), it's possible to overdo pre-emptive suspicion where there isn't anyone providing a particularized basis for it.
Key part bolded. I don't regard programs that incentivize public health professionals to prescribe contraception as "non-coercive" even if they don't directly coerce the recipients of said birth control.
If we're just talking about making birth control free and easy to get, sure. But that's not how I interpreted the issue as framed by the OP.
What's the program with the incentives you're objecting to? I mean, paying a public health worker a salary to work in a family planning clinic is an incentive to prescribe contraception, but that's not what you're talking about, I assume.
Huh, I retract 33. The spacing in the recent comments for this post has looked odd on my phone all day but looks find on a regular computer now. Must be the line break placement.
The hypotheticals in the survey? That seemed a little indefinite to have a strong opinion about. But I do agree that health professionals shouldn't have financial incentives to consider anything but the best interests of their patients.
Trying to decide if I am sorry for bringing the specter of that thread into this one.
And it is an area where I find myself massively conflicted and frustrated and unable to express my views even remotely coherently. Like so many things at the intersection of biology and society.
Everyone please blame me for everything.
If we're just talking about making birth control free and easy to get, sure. But that's not how I interpreted the issue as framed by the OP.
For the record, I think that both Paul Hawken and David Roberts would have something like that in mind (I haven't clicked through to look for details, but I would expect they would be imagining and would support something non-coercive).
However, I still say that I'd feel more comfortable if they'd put in a sentence or two to that effect. Because, they aren't the people designing or funding the programs. The reason to write a book like that is, presumably to influence policy makers by both shifting the framing of the issue and also encouraging them to support certain types of policies.
So I think it's worth acknowledging people's concerns for a couple of reasons.
(1) those concerns shape the landscape of debate. If their number 1 intervention was nuclear, I would expect them to have at least a sentence or two mentioning waste and or safety concerns (because those are the sorts of things that one worries about when advocating for nuclear power). In this case I think RJ is an important enough aspect of discussing family planning programs that it deserves a mention.
(2) Going back to the idea that other people will, presumably, be implementing these programs, RJ concerns are important. I just looked up stories about NGO's providing contraceptives in India and, happily, it looks like there aren't many complaints and that they are doing a good job. I also saw this story from last month which notes.
For decades, India has put controversial sterilisation drives at the heart of its efforts to combat population growth. But last year, the country's top court ordered the government to close sterilisation camps within three years, following the deaths of hundreds of mainly poor rural women. The operations were carried out in unsafe conditions, with bribes used to persuade rural women to submit to sterilisation.
While women will still be able to undergo sterilisation, the camps run by state governments or local NGOs will be illegal. The supreme court judgment raised a wider hope that India would move away from family planning policies that place the onus on women, and provide a broader range of contraception.
But new research indicates that the country has a long way to go. The first National Family Health Survey in a decade shows that a third of married women between the age of 15 and 49 relied on the fact that they were sterilised to prevent pregnancy. There has been a drop in overall contraception use from 56% in 2006 to 53% last year.
I don't think anybody here would support "sterilization camps" but apparently that was the policy of the Indian government. I just use that as an example to show that the concerns of reproductive justice advocates are not abstract or hypothetical.
But, again, I don't think that's what Hawken is supporting, I just think an important part of the landscape that deserve mention.
How many plastic surgeons should be licensed to practice w in that case?
NickS, you presumably have not actually read the book. How do you know it doesn't address these concerns?
And many of the WOC I interact with have healthy skepticism/mistrust of even well-intentioned public health interventions.
I already posted the thing about the measles outbreak among Somali Minnesotans, I think. That mistrust didn't turn out to be very healthy.
Weren't the Somali measles victims in Minnesota reported as being autism-vaccine believers? (The adults anyway.)
Yes. Vaccines are a well-intentioned public health intervention, and they were displaying healthy scepticism and mistrust of it.
I thought the story was that American anti-vaccine believers targeted the Somali immigrant community with anti-vaccine propaganda and were horrifyingly successful with it. So, the outbreak was among Somali immigrants, but the impetus for the false belief was all American-citizen Wakefield fans.
Yes, that's right - I was using it as an example of how a basic attitude of not trusting public health interventions (for whatever reason) doesn't generally merit the description "healthy". And, yes, I know there have been horrible abuses over the years, disproportionately among POC, before anyone leaps in, but there have also been things like successful campaigns against polio and diphtheria and so on, which are (or rather were) also disproportionately common among POC.
They tested the first polio vaccines in Lawrenceville, which is now full of hipsters. Coincidence? I think not.
Anyway, I'm not sure polio was disproportionately common among POC, at least not in its scary forms. Before people started washing their hands and not letting babies play in raw sewage, polio immunity was usually acquired in infancy (the disease isn't nearly so debilitating in infants). Polio scared people because it hit the older kids and young adults among the well-off set.
I know nothing about diphtheria except that I think it killed Abraham Lincoln's mom making me wonder if it wasn't created by a Confederate time traveler who failed to go back far enough in time.
Polio's been active in developing countries more recently than hers. I worked with a teacher in Samoa who was a survivor.
I had a college professor who everybody said was paralyzed by polio. But nobody ever asked him, so I don't know for sure.
One of my favorite high school teachers was a guy named Jock who had a withered leg from Polio. This kid thought he could get away with dissing the guy because Jock couldn't chase the kid. So when Jock told the kid to come here for a talking-to the kid just turned and started to jog away. Jock took one of his crutches and threw it like a javelin, nailing the kid right in the upper back. People tended not to fuck with Jock due to his propensity for hitting people with his crutches. To people who favor the time out method I'm sure he seems like a monster, but getting hit by Jock's crutches was something of a rite of passage for the boys. He never hit girls.
I'm not sure polio was disproportionately common among POC
Pretty sure it was - IIRC the last countries to have polio cases were Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was wiped out in majority-white countries long before that, by immunisation and by better sanitation. Go far enough back and, sure, probably everyone got it at similar rates.
Yes, it was wiped out last in those countries. But, if you go back to when the big effort was made to cure polio, I think middle to upper class white people got it in disproportionate numbers and I think that's why the money went to polio research back in the day.
Better sanitation actually doesn't wipe out polio, at least not the kind of polio that requires you to throw crutches at children. Better sanitation is close to a requirement for getting that type of polio.
There's a map of current polio cases here. Five reported cases so far this year, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Jammu and Kashmir. Not coincidentally, this is where the Taliban has been engaged in a violent anti-vaccination campaign.
By way of comparison, in 1952 the United States had over 50,000 cases of polio and a lower population than Pakistan has now. The last countries where polio still exists are a marker of political violence and instability of the kind Ume links to, not where the disease was worst.
I guess they also have a healthy scepticism/mistrust of public health interventions.
(According to the link, it's actually because they like using their own people as hostages):
According to Gul Bahadur, the vaccination campaign should be suspended until the United States ceased drone strikes in the Waziristan region. Gul Bahadur's fatwa pamphlet, printed in Urdu, was distributed on June 16, in Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan, and threatened anyone involved in the polio vaccination campaign in the troubled region. "We announce a ban on polio vaccination campaign from today," the pamphlet read. "Anybody who disrespects this order will not have the right to complain about any loss or harm."[26] According to the pamphlet, "till such time the continuous attack of the drones is not stopped in Waziristan, the restriction on polio drops will remain imposed...
There's a PokéStop just down the street commemorating the creation of the polio vaccine.
I realized while thinking about this in the night that my whole parental birth control plan hinges on coercing WOC into using LARC. I'd like to get the girls covered before they're old enough to make all decisions for themselves and I've already used coparenting therapy to talk Lee into agreeing to let me make the decision with their doctor. I'm the only one with strong preferences at this point at least.
Well, at this point, ChildrenOC. Once they're WOC they'll be entitled to make their own decisions.
I'm counting on my family history of an extended period of adolescent awkwardness.
Failed with my kids. They both ended up inexplicably charming and attractive, despite both parents. So I wouldn't rely on it.
Yep, which is where "reversible" comes in. At least one of them has a living relative who was forcibly sterilized and I don't know what choices their own mothers might have made with better sexual health educations and options. There are always going to be people who guess they'll be able to handle more than they actually can in planning for children, which I sure see in foster/adoptive families as well as in foster children's families of origin.
Are you saying LB should make her kids boorish and ugly?
Since this thread is alive again . . .
NickS, you presumably have not actually read the book. How do you know it doesn't address these concerns?
Obviously, this thread didn't go the way that I hoped that it would. Honestly, part of why my responses yesterday were a little scatter-shot was that I consistently thought that we were just one comment away from saying, "comity" and so I was just trying to bat the ball back while I waited for that to happen.
But, obviously, I didn't do a very good job, and may have misread the argument, but this gives me a chance to go back and take it from the top.
As I expected, I don't have to go to the book, when I click from the interview to the page on their website I see exactly the sort of comment that I was thinking about.
Honoring the dignity of women and children through family planning is not about governments forcing the birth rate down (or up, through natalist policies). Nor is it about those in rich countries, where emissions are highest, telling people elsewhere to stop having children. When family planning focuses on healthcare provision and meeting women's expressed needs, empowerment, equality, and well-being are the result; the benefits to the planet are side effects.
I was struck by the fact that they didn't gesture in that direction in the interview, but I don't think I have any fundamental disagreement, and I would expect the book to be good.
Having said that, that I'd characterize my position going into this thread as having three elements:
1) I strongly support family planning programs and would want for all forms of contraception and abortion to be available at low cost to as many people as possible. I also think the sentiments in that paragraph are good and that programs should try to act in accordance with them.
2) I also think the sentiments in that paragraph are good and that programs should try to act in accordance with them, and that it's important and meaningful to affirm that.
3) Because there are, at the very least, fairly recent historical examples of people doing badly on that score.
I just took for granted that everybody here agreed with those beliefs. But, as the thread proceeded, I felt like what we were arguing about was point (3). I still thought that (1) & (2) were points of agreement, and that the point of dispute was about whether there were enough real-world examples to justify some skepticism. I may or may not have convinced anybody, but almost all of my arguments were just devoted to looking up examples to demonstrate point (3).
And that, I suppose, would be my answer to F about why I didn't think I was just shouting over people's shoulders. I am aware that there are people who disagree with (1) and there are also people who agree with (1), but don't really care or value (2). I wasn't really trying to argue with those positions, I just wanted to note, as a factual matter that they exist, and that they are the context in which I read the interview and thought, huh, they skip over something that I think is important.
I think the disagreement comes down to the difference between some skepticism and too much skepticism. If you lead by saying that it's wrong to have a goal of reducing the birthrate regardless of whether your methods are a good thing in themselves, which I think you did, you're going to draw a lot of disagreement, which you also did. This is pretty unambiguous:
I too hope that reducing poverty and increasing access to contraception will reduce population growth. I don't like the idea of making that an explicit goal and/or the number one hope for reducing carbon.
And it's not just saying that if that's your goal, you need to be careful about reproductive justice, it's straightforwardly saying that you don't like the reduction of population growth as an explicit goal full stop.
After the discussion, I don't think you're committed to that position. But you seem to not get that that's the clearly stated position people were reacting to throughout the thread.
Why can't they be like we were, awkward in every way.
What's the matter with kids today?
Comity! If you thought my position was, "it's wrong to have a goal of reducing the birthrate regardless of whether your methods are a good thing in themselves" I can understand why you were bristling, and I'm happy to say that is not what I think.
I can also understand why the OP could be read in that way, and why you would catch on the sentence that you quoted.
I had thought that what I was saying was close to what ajay wrote in 8 ("It strikes me that there is a very important moral difference between 'I am doing this because I think poor foreign women should have fewer children' and 'I am doing this because I think poor foreign women should have as many children as they want'.") I thought that was mostly equivalent to my statement, but I'm happy to sign on to that as a better phrasing.
Yay!
I will say that this is an example of the value of quoting the statement that you are responding to.
When you say, "But you seem to not get that that's the clearly stated position people were reacting to throughout the thread." that's quite true. I didn't think that was the position I was taking. Even when I re-read the OP that sentence hadn't jumped out at me, because I was reading it knowing what I intended. But seeing your explanation, I can understand your interpretation.
But how will we get to comment #868?
We could mention that Ebola is apparently back.
I flipped through the book from the OP in a bookstore today. Lots of glossy color photos, not much that looked as quantitative as I was hoping to see. It didn't entice me to buy it, at least today.