I don't think that the arrest itself was obviously wrong, though of course preventing her from taking the second dose of the plan B was horrible.
For a juvenile warrant, I'd say that the arrest may be in accordance with existing policy—and obviously I don't have the full set of facts here—but throwing a rape victim who was likely neither a threat to anybody nor a flight risk in the pokey for two days is pretty plainly wrong.
But yeah, it's the Plan B bit that makes me feel a little sick.
Y'all need to do something about those bastards. Seriously.
It makes your country look like a medieval theocracy, or an anarcho-capitalist madhouse.
Since early November 2000, I've been saying that we should give Florida back to Spain. I don't care if we get our money back. Seriously -- think of all the problems this would solve. And I'm sure the EU would have better luck making something out of the place than we have had.
No one seems to be getting on the bandwagon, though.
Re 4:
And how odd that those two possibilities - medieval theocracy or anarcho-capitalist madhouse - should look so very indistinguishable.
re: 5
We'd send a crack squad of gay socialist priests in to sort 'em out.
Think of the upside. Her lawyer should be able to get the city of Tampa to pay for the rest of her schooling through her residency and buy her a condo too.
For sure, something needs to be done about the religious opt-out for treatments 'cause it's spreading. I've developed a strong belief that God wants all sorts of people (cellphone users, SUV drivers, loud stereo oweners) to bleed to death after auto accidents.
Something sounds fishy. I'm not sure how much discretion the police would have, but 'failure to pay restitution'.... doesn't that mean something like 'didn't pay a speeding ticket'? Do they normally run criminal background checks on people who report rapes?
It's possible it just showed up as 'outstanding warrant' when they ran her ID, but yeesh.
Jail's medical supervisor should find a job where she doesn't have to practice medicine.
Crap. The rest of that comment should have read: The amount was over $4500, so I'm guessing property damage or something.
Or maybe she was just driving really, really fast.
Do they normally run criminal background checks on people who report rapes?
They run them pretty much for any encounter beyond asking where the nearest Starbucks is. If you give them ID they'll run it.
4:That's because it's an anarcho-capitalist madhouse.
5: I'm totally with you on this one CC. Do you need help with organizing? Letter writing?
Spain already has the Basques and ETA. You really think they'd willingly take a bunch of gun-totin' Florida swampcrackers?
She didn't get pregnant, did she? That would be a case to throw in the face of the wingnuts. Snow in Florida and all, you know.
16: Probably not.
Still. Husband X told me at UnfoggeDCon that Singapore is the only country to have ever become independent as a result of being thrown out of its parent country. I thought it was a shame that more countries haven't followed this pattern. It would make a nice precedent for the US.
You can't give Florida back to Spain; I've been saving it for a Jewish refuge of last resort.
News report 2050: "Fighting continued in Miami today between Jews and Cubans, both of whom claim the city as their rightful homeland."
She didn't get pregnant, did she?
She just got out of jail yesterday. Still a bit early to tell. Odds are against it, though, for any single act of intercourse.
"We may need to revisit our policy."
You may also need to consider going and fucking yourself, before boiling your head, and possibly fucking off and dying.
That is all.
As a former New Yorker who is now a swampcracker, I don't want to be given back to Spain. On second thought, maybe Spain has a better justice system. Gotta think about this one.
Oh, cripes. And regardless of the Plan B stuff, did they really have to put her in jail for something non-violent, whatever the actual merits of it were, when she'd just been raped? They couldn't have held onto it for a week or so, after getting her home address?
She didn't get pregnant, did she? That would be a case to throw in the face of the wingnuts. Snow in Florida and all, you know.
What? A case where the state was forced by activist judges to induce a 0th-trimester abortion, and one heroic doctor made sure the pregnancy could continue? I see no reason the wingnuts would be unhappy.
Apart from the awfulness of this case, there's still (shockingly) a general problem with the way many police departments handle sexual assault cases. At a certain institution of higher learning I'm familiar with, sexual assaults generally go unreported to the local PD because the local PD has been spectacularly bad at handling them, in a "you're sure you weren't asking for it?" sort of way. The institution itself does a pretty good job, from what I can tell, but the police end of things is lousy. It's incredibly frustrating: the perception among the student body is that these crimes won't be prosecuted, and that just increases the risks.
In Britain conviction rates for alleged rapes have been steadily dropping since the 1970s and now stand at less than 6% of reported cases.
That's particularly shocking since police treatment of sexual assault victims at that time was notoriously bad. The handling of victims by investigating officers may be more sensitive these days but conviction rates continue to drop.
At a certain institution of higher learning I'm familiar with, sexual assaults generally go unreported to the local PD because the local PD has been spectacularly bad at handling them, in a "you're sure you weren't asking for it?" sort of way. The institution itself does a pretty good job, from what I can tell, but the police end of things is lousy.
Huh. My impression of higher educational institutions generally (with no specific reference to Labs U. intended at all) is that reporting a sexual assault to the college rather than to the local police department is very likely to get it swept under the rug, or at least treated as a matter for administrative discipline rather than a criminal matter. Maybe Labs U. is an exception.
28 is my impression, too. It's usually handled internally, with a lot of 'are you sure you want to ruin this young man's life?', and often it results in the rapist getting tossed out of college.
Often, there isn't enough evidence to make anything more than an administrative punishment stick anyway (girl showered, his word against hers), but I suspect in my black cynical heart that the real reason for handling it internally is so that the public crime report handed out to alumni can show zero sexual assaults involving students reported to the Smallville PD.
25- The snow in Florida reference was to some politician who said that there doesn't need to be a rape exception for abortion, because pregnancy resulting from rape is as rare as "snow in Florida". If this were a situation where a person not only got pregnant from rape but also because the state refused to let her take birth control, it's a pretty good case for why abortion needs to be legal- no matter how responsible you are someone can still f*** you.
the perception among the student body is that these crimes won't be prosecuted, and that just increases the risks.
Indeed. And if you arrest rape victims for outstanding warrants--whatever kind of warrant it is--then you also reduce the possibility of prosecutions. A woman with a fucked-up life who gets raped--which isn't all that unlikely--is going to be less likely to report if she knows that it might lead to her arrest (putting aside, of course, the question of whether people with fucked-up lives report crimes anyway. Probably mostly they don't, partly for reasons like this).
Honestly, if you can give people amnesty for testifying, there really ought to be some kind of agreement that victims of (violent?) crime are immune from arrest/prosecution in relation to reporting their crime. Like a Miranda act thing.
In Britain conviction rates for alleged rapes have been steadily dropping since the 1970s and now stand at less than 6% of reported cases.
I'd like to think that this is because there are far more reported cases where convictions are hard to prove--e.g., date rape situations.
30: Arguably, if pharmacists would just get it through their thick skulls that Plan B isn't an abortificant....
It prevents ovulation, right? Even if you're using the fucked up 'moment of conception' definition of pregnancy, if there is no egg, there is no conception.
Ire: 32
It's certainly true that there are more cases reported that wouldn't have been reported in the past -- so detectives are no longer just being referred the most obvious cases [violent attacks by strangers, for example] -- and that may explain the bulk of the drop in convictions. But I've also read that the decrease in convictions isn't solely explained by increased reporting.
And personally, I'd sack every single pharmacist who refused to dispense contraception [or any other medication licensed and sanctions by the appropriate control agency]...
It prevents ovulation, right?
Best they can tell. It may also prevent fertilization of an already released egg, and prevents implantation of a fertilized egg. If you're already pregnant, it won't do anything.
Right. Or, to be absolutely precise because the people who are confused have some excuse -- reading the labels would confuse you: the mechanism by which Plan B is designed to work is suppressing ovulation, but researchers have speculated that it is possible that it might also make cervical mucus less hospitable (which would also prevent conception) and might decrease the possibility of implantation if the prior two mechanisms don't work (which would be post-conception). So there's speculation that in some small percentage of cases there might be a post-conception effect, but there's no actual data supporting it.
33- But in doing so it wastes seed. Every sperm is sacred and all that.
I'd sack every single pharmacist
Me too, but in the case of a prisoner being denied prescribed medication, I'd advocate prosecution and coming down with the fullest extent of the law I could manage. For my money, it's tantamount to performing medical experiments on prisoners without consent.
35, 36: My understanding is that the "may decrease possibility of implantation" thing is one of those "we can't prove otherwise" things--but that, like LB says, there's no actual data for this. In lay terms, it doesn't happen. It just keeps you from popping an egg for a few days until the sperm die.
Yeah, I should have had two instances of "may" up there.
Reported rates have gone up fairly sharply, according to the Home Office. So either a) actual rates have gone up and prosecutorial efficiency has gone down, which is difficult to believe given i) advances in forensic science such as DNA testing and ii) more female-friendly attitudes in the police (whether they are good enough now or not, it's difficult to believe they are worse now than in 1977);
or b) as you suggest, actual rates have stayed the same and victims are now reporting more 'hard to prosecute' cases which they would previously have kept quiet about.
35,36,39: That was my understanding, as Plan B is pretty much just a big dose of birth control pills. They advertise the pill as preventing pregnancy three ways! (suppressing ovulation, thinning the lining, something about the mucus), but only the first one is substantiated, in that they're sure the pill thins the uterine lining but aren't really sure whether the fertilized egg would just latch on anyway.
I thought it was that what thins the uterine lining is a hormonal result of the non-ovulation -- that they don't have any evidence that it thins the uterine lining in cycles where you ovulate despite the pill. But I'm talking over my head at this point; I'm really not sure.
Every sperm is sacred and all that.
How *is* one supposed to deal with that? After many decades, the place is cluttered with mason jars and lacking shelf space. Cryogenics is expensive and the washing machine is just plain brutality w/ harsh chemicals and all.
Right, I think. They know the lining thins. That's pretty easy to verify. They don't know if the lining thins less if you ovulate, and they don't know if you ovulate with a thin lining, whether or not it could implant. (I'm sort of suspecting yes.)
b gets it pretty much right. The religious community thinks Plan B (and even the plain ol' Pill) are abortifacient because there's a chance, not proven, but not disproven, that it prevents implantation. Generally they think that "life begins at conception" (ie fertilization) and that by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting, what you actually have there is an abortion.
But usually they don't explain it quite so clearly, they just assert that the Pill/Plan B cause abortions, so stay away.
fwiw, my boyfriend and I are leaning-"pro-life" (although I think the only reasonable public policy is the pro-choice policy, along with ramping up access to bc and sex ed) but when we examined the evidence about the Pill (and by extension Plan B, since it's basically a super-Pill), we decided there's so little risk of ovulation happening anyway, much less ovulation and fertilization and attempted implantation -- and that the estimated rate of spontaneous abortion at precisely that point in the process (failed implantation) in just the natural course of a woman's cycle is so high -- that it makes little sense for us to continue doubling up with condoms out of fear of inducing an "abortion" (by the religious right's definition, which I don't entirely agree with).
The rhythm method that the Catholic church teaches probably induces more abortions-by-that-definition than the Pill or Plan B ever will.
Not to mention that something like half of all fertilized ova don't implant anyway.
47: Further, the Catholic church argues that birth control of any kind is bad, because it messes with God's Plan. AKA Nature, if you swing eco-hippy instead of repressed Catholic. For them, the idea isn't just that life begins at conception, it's that there's some Big Pattern in which some lives that were Intended to Be get snuffed out before they even have a chance to start b/c people sinfully exercise their free will.
Or some shit like that.
Which is why pretty much every Catholic I know cheerfully ignores those rules.
47- the Catholic "rhythm method" isn't about preventing "abortions" (although I don't see how it's preventing a fertilized egg from doing anything, even under the definition you use), it's about not having sexual intercourse without being open to at least the possibility of pregnancy.
Back when I was religious, I believed that the unborn child's soul went back to the premortal existence to wait for a more promising opportunity to get a body. Under that belief, abortion seems almost like a really positive thing to do under certain circumstances, which means I must be diverging in some important way from Official LDS Church Theology.
51: Someone did a paper on that in the last year or so, and maybe Becks posted on it? The idea was that if you're using the rhythm method, you are increasing the chance that you will concieve at the very beginning or end of your fertile period, rather than squarely in the middle, and you will thus be more likely to fertilize eggs that don't stick. If the non-carrying to term of a fertilized egg is something you really want to avoid, other methods of birth control are superior to the rhythm method.
I'm not independently certain that the 'more likely to fertilize eggs that don't stick' part of the argument follows from the science, but it's an interesting argument.
51: Right, but what she's pointing out is that if you have sex in the few days before or after the "avoidance" period, you're actually more likely to fertilize an old egg, or commit fertilization under suboptimal conditions, and therefore more likely to shed the fertilized ovum. I think it's something like that--I can't remember the exact logic of the "rhythm method = more mini miscarriages," but it's along those lines..
51: because the argument in the church (that I grew up in, anyway -- an evangelical church, so I can only speak for that subculture, not for anyone in the Catholic church) is that if you, the woman, willingly do anything that stops the process of pregnancy from fertilization onward, you are responsible for the life that never came to be.
The popularity of the rhythm method is because you're only choosing what days to have sex, not ingesting any chemicals or having any deliberate surgery, so (as per 48) whatever happens is God's Will. It's a "natural" way. But it still likely results in more spontaneous abortion (by the best estimates we have now, anyway) than any chemical-or-otherwise contraception.
53/54: I don't know whether it's right or not, but I certainly woudln't argue with the miscarriage argument -- I remember when it was posted here. It sounds plausible. I don't think that can fairly be called an abortion, without stretching the word quite a bit.
The compromise solution is, of course, sodomy.
Further to 51: The deal is, if the science of the argument works out, that the goal of birth control while 'not having sex without being open to pregnancy' served by the rhythm method is in tension with 'not causing fertilized eggs not to be carried to term'. If the latter is an important evil, then people should either use more effective birth control or they should not have sex other than during their fertile periods when trying to get pregnant.
You know, Amanda's comments make me sort of realize something. I wonder if the preference for "natural" bc like rhythm or NFP over pills and so forth isn't actually about the likelihood of shedding fertilized eggs at all--that is, isn't about the ovum or blastocyst or fetus at all--but is actually about a deep religious suspicion of the exercise of will.
I know it's common to say that pro-life views are "really" about controlling women, and I think that's often the case; but what I'm thinking now is that the specific religious preference for "nature" over "artifice" isn't about preferring (for women?) a *lack* of control/free will.
I mean, if you choose when to have sex, that's an act of will, too; but there seems to me that the avoiding sex while ovulating plan kind of implicitly assumes that for the woman involved, sex *isn't* so much an act of will as it is an act of submitting?
Just kinda musing aloud.
If the non-carrying to term of a fertilized egg is something you really want to avoid, other methods of birth control are superior to the rhythm method.
That's not the argument against contraception, though. It's not that 'whenever you have sex, you have a responsibility to make sure that you get pregnant if you ovulate' it's 'if you're having sex, be open to the possibility that a baby could result.'
If you don't have sex, then nothing follows from that except that you're not getting laid. If you time when you have sex to avoid having a baby, you're still open to it when you do have sex, and again, nothing follows from not having sex.
This is very quick, but you don't want the long version. But it's not about maximizing the number of successful implantations.
Yeah, it's not really about the fetus; it's about the woman's soul. More and more I'm thinking this "thou shalt not exercise free will, bitch" thing is logically consistent (in a weird way). Eve, Mary with the whole "thy will, not mine" thing...
Following this line of conversation, too, a throwaway thought -- I'm surprised that I haven't seen the church more up in arms about IUDs, considering what their actual stated purpose is.
61: I meant "may it be done to me according to your word," not the "your will not mine" thing, which is (Adam corrects me) Christ in Gethsemane. Though that phrase is awfully significant, come to think of it.
62: Indeed, I've always wondered about that myself. Maybe because an IUD is essentially a passive form of bc.
61: Eh, it's a nice musing, but free will is too important everywhere else in Catholic theology for it to become suddenly taboo here. It's not about the woman's soul or her free will, it's about the nature of the ideal sexual relationship and what it should look like. Basically, babies are a hazard of sex but a generally good thing all around; if you're not willing to accept the risk of having a baby, then you shouldn't be having sex. (Man or the woman.) And if you are, then you're not really thinking of your partner as someone who you're making a life with and really just using the other person for pleasure. Using people is bad, so hence no contraception.
The argument is wrong, but it's not about restricting free will or tampering with Nature. (Catholics are generally okay with science and tampering with nature, generally.)
But it's not about maximizing the number of successful implantations.
But isn't maximizing the number of successful implantations per fertilization a big deal? For someone who considers the possible post-fertilization implantation effect of Plan B a big deal, it's because they consider it an abortion, and immoral for that reason. How could that be a problem while intentionally acting in a manner that is highly likely to bring about the miscarriage of fertilized eggs isn't?
It's not the same issue as not using contraception because you should be open to pregnancy, but it seems as if it should be an importantly competing consideration.
59, 61, 63: I have the impression that people opposed to contraception would say that you had it exactly right in that it's about submission to God's will, but would disagree that it's gendered.
No intentional separation of the unitive and the procreative functions! Or else you're just using your partner, rather than respecting his or her true humanity! Derived somehow from Aquinas! Q.E.D.
My roommate (a doctor) raised this point regarding his (and my) Catholic school upbringing: there's the natural, and there's the artifice. Which is more insulting to God, using some crude device (artifice) or using your intellect (natural)? Wouldn't God be sad that we're trying to outsmart him by planning around our cycles rather than just fumbling around with barriers and chemcials?
What's the Catholic position on non-vaginal intercourse sex? Is a couple with a rich, full, complex sex life that doesn't involve vaginal penetration separating 'the unitive and the procreative functions'? This is an area where I never felt like I understood the principles behind the theology.
66: Well, but it's gendered in the sense that men's role in conception is explicitly an act of will; whereas women's role lies in some fuzzy zone between will (having sex, let's say--though it's also kind of a duty) and not-will (ovulating, conceiving). Both people have sex, but only the woman conceives. And doing so isn't something she can control, except through artificial means.
65: Of course that's the general understanding. But precisely because free will is so important, it strikes me as being kind of significant that here, where there are obvious issues of will involved, we suddenly shift away from it to this weird thing about how the "ideal" relationship is supposed to look. I'm not aware of any other area in which the church is as involved in prescribing the exact relationship between action, intent, and effect so narrowly.
66- I think the problem here may be conflating Protestant and Catholic teachings. There's no (good) reason for a Protestant who loves BC pills to oppose Plan B. Agreed, and your arguments ought to convince such a person. Catholic "rhythm methods" aren't really motivated by the same considerations, and so criticizing those on the basis of their post-fertilization effects isn't really meaningful. If you're broader point is that no Catholic who, despite his or her personal beliefs, thinks birth control ought to be generally legal and available, ought to be opposed to Plan B, well, I'd agree. It's silly.
69- a little murky, as in not-quite-explicit in the catechism, so you can find some disagerement, but the vast majority of commentators say Bad!-Bad!-Bad! And really, it's a little hard to extend the explicit teachings and reach any other conclusion.
LB's last comment could not have been more appropriately numbered.
Actually, I was being more snide about the rhythm method (again, accepting the science of the 'more miscarriages' theory, which I can't really evaluate for myself) -- I agree with you completely about Plan B. With the rhythm method, there are two separate moral considerations: (1) having sex when you're not open to pregnancy is bad; (2) bringing about the death of zygotes is bad. The snide argument is that while the rhythm method looks good under moral consideration (1), it looks pretty lousy under moral consideration (2) -- you may stay open to pregnancy, but you kill a bunch of zygotes.
I think I've linked to this before, although I can't recall when exactly.
I'm not aware of any other area in which the church is as involved in prescribing the exact relationship between action, intent, and effect so narrowly.
Oh goodness. It's all over the damn place. Sins of omissions, contraception, euthanasia, killing vs. letting die. Basically, it's a massive trolley problem, but with medieval theologians working on it.
There's also at least in my home parish, a long tradition of homilies praising Mary for choosing to say yes. For what it's worth, I think she's an agent in this one; if she tells the angel Gabriel to fuck off, off he fucks.
How could that be a problem while intentionally acting in a manner that is highly likely to bring about the miscarriage of fertilized eggs isn't?
Double-effect to the rescue! First case: we have sex, we take Plan B, we intend to excuse ourselves from the consequences of having sex. Second case: we have sex, the time isn't optimal, the pregnancy doesn't take. But we didn't do anything to try to interfere with the pregnancy other than not having sex at the perfectly optimal time, but there's no duty to maximize fertility.
Is a couple with a rich, full, complex sex life that doesn't involve vaginal penetration separating 'the unitive and the procreative functions'?
Yes. This is probably a reason why rules about sex should not be designed by celibates.
Mary says yes, but she does so in a very passive construction. I think that's relevant.
76 before 74, but you've got it. Moral consideration 2) isn't what Catholicism is using when it talks about contraception. No duty to maximize fertility or save sperm, despite the Monty Python song.
I have no idea what the Protestant versions of this are, but I think they mostly lean 2).
But the rest of what you're saying, yes, good point. Maybe what I'm thinking about isn't the church per se as much as it is the intersection of church teaching with popular culture. We pay a lot more attention to the sex teachings than we do to things like sins of omission. Though euthanasia's gaining ground.
75 is of course not authoritative. Here are two more fun reads, if you're genuinely curious.
"59
You know, Amanda's comments make me sort of realize something. I wonder if the preference for "natural" bc like rhythm or NFP over pills and so forth isn't actually about the likelihood of shedding fertilized eggs at all--that is, isn't about the ovum or blastocyst or fetus at all--but is actually about a deep religious suspicion of the exercise of will.
I know it's common to say that pro-life views are "really" about controlling women, and I think that's often the case; but what I'm thinking now is that the specific religious preference for "nature" over "artifice" isn't about preferring (for women?) a *lack* of control/free will.
I mean, if you choose when to have sex, that's an act of will, too; but there seems to me that the avoiding sex while ovulating plan kind of implicitly assumes that for the woman involved, sex *isn't* so much an act of will as it is an act of submitting?
Just kinda musing aloud."
This sounds like the distinction of "its murder to knock off an old person for their kidney to save your kids life, but its perfectly ok to not hand the old person her medicine when its just out of reach, and as a consequence, she dies and you save your kid." which mostly people i have talk about with seem to adhere to, but i think its completely batshit insane.
Yeah, part of the confusion is probably my fault -- I'm coming from a Protestant background, where 2 is the primary consideration, while 1 is sometimes-but-not-always there, but secondary when it is. There is no singular Protestant doctrine on this, of course, but my general impression is they're OK with sex-for-pleasure within a marital relationship, but when it comes to sex-that-might-result-in-pregnancy you'd better not do anything to interfere with the natural process.
Fwiw, the Catholic rhythm method does have some significant popularity in Protestant circles, which is why I brought it up -- but I wasn't meaning to equate the views of the two.
Yeah. Catholic philosophy is ridiculously consistent, because when you hand things to philosophers and let them bash it out for hundreds of years, you tend to get coherent systems. The focus on contraception and sex? The latter just plain sexist culture reinforced by theology. At some point you really want to jump up and down and scream you men aren't supposed to be having sex, either, lay off the ovaries talk.
The former, well, how long's it been since a Catholic invented the pill?
Brock, you're Catholic, right? How much of the pre-wedding stuff is going to be an old priest talking about the rules of sex while I try to keep my fiancé from smirking?
Just remember, Cala, if he asks you what fellatio is, he's probably just angling for one.
84: I converted as an adult, post-marriage, so don't know firsthand, but I'm told it varies tremendously by parish. Some require couples to attend full six-session courses on NFP (in which case the answer would: a lot), others just give you a book and hope you'll read it, others may not even do that. I'd say ask someone who's been married in your parish, if you know any. If not, I think you'll just have to roll the dice.
Did the "he" in 85 refer to Cala's priest, Cala's fiance, or me?
It's enough to make me become Episcopalian, this bureaucracy.
Until this moment, pdf, I did not understand the true meaning of "angling for something".
Just for the sake of completeness, I wanted to note that Mysterious College or University X has, at least at present, some good people involved in its efforts to minimize sexual assault, and, as far as I can tell, it's doing some good things. On the other hand, the student perception is that in the past there was a lot of sweeping under the rug. I don't know the truth about this, and I also assume that what looks from the outside like sweeping something under the rug might be, from the inside, (and just for example) giving fair warning about bad policing to a young woman deciding whether or not to go forward with criminal procedures.
Again, no specific reflection on MCoUX -- if I ever knew where it was, I've forgotten. But this: what looks from the outside like sweeping something under the rug might be, from the inside, (and just for example) giving fair warning about bad policing to a young woman deciding whether or not to go forward with criminal procedures.
disturbs me.
Given what I understand to be the typical relationship between most institutions of higher education and their local government, MCoUX is probably a pretty powerful local player. There's a difference between 'giving fair warning' to a rape victim that local policing is hostile to rape victims and saying 'if you want to press charges, we'll send Dean McProvost down with you for support -- we think it's important for the CollegeVille cops to know how seriously we take this.' I'd read the former as 'Please don't go to the cops, it won't do you any good and no one wants you to' and I'd think the latter isn't terribly onerous for MCoUX, and is likely to be effective.
But that was just an example, and I don't know what MCoUX's actual practices are -- they could be closer to the latter than the former.
Most protestants I know who are categorically opposed to birth control are opposed because the Bible says that "children are a blessing from God" which means you should want more of them. So using birth control within marriage is less of a sin, and more of a robbing yourself of the full goodness with which God wants to reward you.
As for Plan B, I think most protestants who are opposed think:
a) Life begins at conception
b) Conception happens during sex
When you point out that point b is factually incorrect people get confused, but aren't really willing to let go of "sex = pregnancy."
Most protestants I know who are categorically opposed to birth control are opposed because the Bible says that "children are a blessing from God" which means you should want more of them.
Most protestants you know who are categorically opposed to birth control would appear to be idiots.
84: IME, the pre-marriage stuff was pretty good. We laughed some at the more obvious questions, e.g., "I am afraid of my fiance always/never/sometimes," but the questions we answered were good ones, and the focus was on communication skills and how do you deal with areas in which you disagree? A worthwhile exercise, though of course who knows what your parish is going to do.
"children are a blessing from God"
Even blessings from God have thresholds of diminishing returns.
No comments on 75 or 80? Boo. Surely these sorts of statements deserve to be aired more broadly:
"If oral sex is OK, then are anal sex or nasal sex also OK?"
"While I am not sure exactly what "phone sex" is, clearly it is inseparable from the vice of lust."
"The intentions of oral stimulation, especially when it becomes habitual, should be closely monitored..."
"When human beings reduce sex to something accomplished with one part of the body instead of the whole body, it seems clear that they are the ones who are guilty of restricting sexual freedom, not the Catholic Church."
-----
I confess I hadn't previously considered the problem of nasal sex. (And no I don't want a link now, Apo.)
Okay, but it would have been impressive.
96: That's exactly my counterargument. But, apparently they count themselves blessed in their 8 and 10 person families. The argument "no, you're really miserable even though you *think* you're happy" is not a very convincing one.
I know a number of people with really big families who are very happy with it. Always tired and stressed and strapped for cash, but happy nonetheless. Serious question: do you really think kids have diminishing returns? Those of you with multiples: do you like/enjoy (I won't say love) second kids less than the first, and thrid less than the second? I'm not sure I know anyone who feels that way, although meaybe they're just not being honest.
There's always going to be the Jude the Obscure ("Becaus we are to meny") point for anyone, beyond which additional children become a financial/practical hardship. I think this phrasing:
do you like/enjoy (I won't say love) second kids less than the first, and thrid less than the second?
misstates it, though -- it's more "Were you happier with one than two, were you happier with two than three, and so on." The other way makes it sound like you necessarily love your lastborn least, which doesn't follow from the idea that there are diminishing returns.
But not to sound like a cold-hearted evil person, while I'm sure there are diminishing returns at some point, I certainly haven't hit them at two.
Those of you with multiples: do you like/enjoy (I won't say love) second kids less than the first, and thrid less than the second?
I have four kids. This certainly is not true for me. If there is a stereotype of the dynamic in big families, it is the the kids who get preference are the first-born and the baby.
really think kids have diminishing returns
Well, two is more work than one, but the marginal burden of additional kids is less for each. And when they get older, you can have the older watch the younger ones and go out drinking all night to forget the pain of raising them, so it all works out.
I think the danger point with multiples hits when the 5-year old has to babysit the 2-year old because mommy's busy with the 1-year old and the baby. Not to mention the stress that it puts on a woman to always be pregnant. My point here isn't on reasonable sized families with reasonable spacing, but the no-birth control family is an entirely different sort of family.
Always tired and stressed and strapped for cash
That was what I meant. Not that you love subsequent ones less, just that the entire experience can get draining in a hurry and at times feel like more a test of faith than an unqualified blessing.
(The phrasing in 103 was not meant to be anti-feminist or disparaging of stay-at-home dads. However, in the context of no-birth control families, I don't think there's much of either.)
I'm sure that this is one of those things where everyone is happy with what they have. Logically, even one kid is a major inconvenience and an expense and a pain in the butt, but then you go and have one and the emotional attachment kinda boots logic in the ass.
Although I do think Brock sounds like my mother in law, who when one of her (five) kids would say, sometimes, that maybe she should have had fewer kids, would snap back, "which one of you would you prefer had never been born?!?"
104: Well, the the problem is your lack of faith, not the children, right? I mean, if only you had faith that this was really what God wanted for you, and that God is a loving father who wouldn't give his children a snake, then it must be the right thing to do, right?
What I want to know is how the hell people end up with 10, 11, 12, 13 kids. Honestly, after 3 or 4, who the hell would have time or energy to have sex, ever again?
It's not like having sex necessarily requires that much time or energy.
A terrible life has Brigid O'Shane,
Ten minutes boredom and then nine months pain,
A fortnight's rest, then at it again,
A terrible life has Brigid O'Shane.
(That, of course, was a scurrilous anti-Catholic rhyme remembered from grade-school rather than a serious comment on the sex lives of people opposed to birth control.)
Commenting from work, and so lots of ie and firewall issues as yet unresolved, but the out-of-diapers rule we followed allowed for a lot of effective learned technique—although it was amazing what we forgot in 2 1/2 years— without being exhausted. And that's close enough you can start treating your kids much the same as to permissions, etc. long before they're ten. If you start in your mid-thirties, though, you run out of time pretty quickly for big families.
92: I think we're not really disagreeing about anything substantive. I stress, again, that I have no knowledge of the particular procedures (which is as it should be). All of this stuff is kept secret. On the other hand, from what I've gathered from the grapevine, in at least one case the victim was given the third degree, treated badly, and so on, *by the local authorities* and I think (with all the usual disclaimers) that the counselling staff are perhaps less eager to encourage legal action as a result. You can see how this would be a genuinely hard decision, since, on one hand, the pursuit of justice is critical, but, on the other, the facts on the ground might be such as to make that pursuit not just painful but fruitless.
I would hope that MCoUX is using its local clout to improve sexual assault response in the PD, but I have no idea what's going on in that department.
It is sort of stunning how many kids you'd end up with if you just kept at it. I started at 27, and had my second exactly two years later. On that schedule, and based on family history of fertility, I'd be looking at 7-9 kids. If I'd started at 20, I'd have ended up with 12 or so.
If there is a stereotype of the dynamic in big families, it is the the kids who get preference are the first-born and the baby.
I'm the oldest of four, and this stereotype is at least borne out in my family. I get to be the guinea pig with regard to rules, parental insecurities, but the benefit of being the first to do anything (sports, college, whatever); babycalasis gets the disadvantage of being a rerun and the constant (nonparental) comparisons, but she also has more relaxed and/or exhausted parents and big sisters going to bat for privileges for her.
I think four is better than three; being a middle child was easier on the middle two because there was another middle one.
Thing is, though, once you have four, if they're at all reasonably spaced, you do have built in babysitters. You won't have any money for going out, but in potentia, did you go out, you'd have someone to watch the kids.
No, I realize this--it's obviously how people used to have 10, 13 kids, and realizing it makes it a lot easier to resist the "you've had two abortions?!?" nonsense.
But still, as a matter of flippant comment, the idea of having sex more than once a year after the third or fourth kid kind of boggles the mind.
Our two were two years apart. They entertained each other from the start, which was a great benefit tho' sometimes things went wrong, like when the older one tried to change the baby's very full diaper. Imagine a room after a small IED explodes in a septic tank right underneath.
We had them in our early twenties, when there was plenty of energy and stamina to deal with whatever. I absolutely can't imagine having started in my late thirties or later.
Thinking over it, I'd like to revise 82:
There is no singular Protestant doctrine on this, of course, but my general impression is they're OK with sex-for-pleasure within a marital relationship, but when it comes to sex-that-might-result-in-pregnancy you'd better not do anything to interfere with the natural process.
More accurately, there are some things which the Protestant culture doesn't usually consider a sin, but might if they're looking for something to condemn in a person anyway. Sort of like how some states have no-washing-the-dishes-with-the-windows-open sort of now-irrelevant rules that nobody enforces or really cares about, but if you pissed off the local authorities, you could get nailed for it. A lot of Protestants have an aversion to oral/anal/any-non-vaginal sex as well, but you can bet a significant percentage of Protestants (enough to overlap into the former group) practice it without second thought -- the only time it comes up is when you're looking for a reason to get your hate on for someone else (individual or group).
Then again, I guess this is a pretty much human phenomenon, but sex-for-pleasure struck me as precisely one of those sorts of things in Protestant circles.
Eh, that's the age of most of Sally & Newt's friends parents, and they seem to do fine. Later you have less energy, but more money and more sense -- I think it nets out okay.
Later you have less energy, but more money and more sense
Or if not more sense, at least most people have more patience. And if anything will try your patience, it's kids.
I think the danger point with multiples hits when the 5-year old has to babysit the 2-year old because mommy's busy with the 1-year old and the baby.
Right. At that point, it's not just the parents' choice for their own lives, but their choice for someone else's life. (A "someone else" who is their minor child.) It can be painful to see what happens when the eldest child becomes not just a supportive sibling,* but an actual surrogate parent.
*N.b. I have absolutely nothing against supportive siblings, having been one myself.
It is sort of stunning how many kids you'd end up with if you just kept at it. I started at 27
That's got to be some sort of multiple-birth record.
This is where I admit that I'm not really a Lizard, but some sort of termite queen.
I dunno. Presumably the five-year-old isn't home alone while mom runs to the grocery store, but gets told to watch the baby in the nice, generally otherwise safe room while mom is in the kitchen washing baby food off the ceiling.
Maybe not ideal, but hardly life-threatening.
Presumably the five-year-old isn't home alone while mom runs to the grocery store, but gets told to watch the baby in the nice, generally otherwise safe room while mom is in the kitchen washing baby food off the ceiling.
Depends. I certainly know (grew up in) a family in which older siblings were just expected to be full participants in the life of the family, including being aware of and responding to younger siblings' needs.
But I know of other families where the wear and tear on older siblings, especially older daughters, was very significant. Not just preparing meals sometimes, but regular "adult in the house" responsibility for multiple children for hours at a time, etc.
I don't know. It's not the kind of situation you can make clear rules about. I can think of family arrangements that I, the outsider, thought were deeply unhealthy, but were regarded by the family as highly functional and indeed rewarding. Hard to tell.
if anything will try your patience, it's kids.
Interesting. I didn't expect the kids to do things well or right from the start and I've been told I have the patience level of a rabid wolverine on crack. It's the alleged adults that trigger the urge to find out what their throats taste like.
Anyway, I don't think I'm looking back through a rose-colored retrospectroscope. From what I hear from the ancient single and partnered parents of young kids at the office, the main and continuous complaint seems to be "I'm soooo tired".
But I know of other families where the wear and tear on older siblings, especially older daughters, was very significant.
One uncle and aunt ran their six-child family that way. The chain-of-command bossiness was just sort of loathesome to watch. And all of the girls in that family seem to have issues. (This family also decided to adopt a very troubled foster girl after their youngest child hit middle school. That may have been one blessing too many.)
The sister-in-law whose LDS conversion took had five kids who are absolutely wonderful despite more than their share of hard knocks, but kid-related stresses can't have helped with the maternal mental health issues that produced a lot of those hard knocks.
120: But parenting pretty much by definition involves making choices for your kids' life.
That said, the amount of stuff my sister expects her 11 yo to do to take care of the 2 yo kinda boggles my mind (as does the fact that, paradoxically, she won't leave the 2 yo alone at home with the 11 yo). The older kid seems at times almost like she's not much more than a third hand, and there aren't many thanks offered. Although, I've only got the one kid, so I'm probably just flat wrong on this one.
But parenting pretty much by definition involves making choices for your kids' life.
Silly response: Spoken by the woman who chose not to make an irreversible physical choice about her son's life.
Serious response: There are choices, and there are choices. It's one thing to raise your kids to think twice before dosing every headache with two extra-strength pain pills, and another to forbid blood transfusions. Some choices have more substantive ramifications -- e.g., the young person whose caregiving responsibilities preclude involvement in extracurricular activities that might help them get into college.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
OTOH, I tend to think that if you make a nature/nurture grid, it's only the kids in the difficult nature/incompetent nurture corner that really tend to have a tough time.
130: OK, sloppy wording on my part. But it's tough to find non-loaded language on that issue.
128 -- My kid has friends like that -- the oldest kid winds up like a mini-Mommy to the younger ones and has to bring younger sibs along half the time she's invited anywhere. Sometimes seems like she doesn't get the chance to be a kid -- or develop an identiy of her own (other than bitter, resentful kid, which is an identity she does seem to be growing into... )
Of course, with the right balance, it's probably also a good opportunity to learn about responsibility and being part of the "team."
We're all talking anecdotes, here, but being a partial caregiver for younger siblings (or having more than one sibling) hardly precludes being involved in extracurricular activities or going to a good college. It's all a matter of balance, but I'm really disinclined to see someone with four kids and think 'oh god, they're really compromising the eldest's Ivy League future.'
I'm assuming here we're not making the eight-year-old do the laundry and babysit instead of going to school and doing homework, but making a peanut butter sandwich for the three-year-old instead of finishing Super Monkey Ball.
Super Monkey Ball is so, so awesome, though. Can't the three year old wait?
134, 135: Right, it's so contextual. Very hard to gauge. I'm talking about the situations at the end of the continuum, where it really does seem to be wearing on the child. Not the (long, ordinary) middle part of the continuum, aka *learning to be part of the give-and-take of a family*, which frankly considering my co-workers, some people could have done with a little more of.
Even better to get the three-year-old hooked on Super Monkey Ball.
106: I have friends who have five kids, well over the informal blue-state breeding mandate of two, and I think the biggest problem they have is the grief they get from other people. A mutual friend expressed disapproval of how many kids they have and my reaction was, what, you want them to put a few back?
114: The dynamics were pretty much the same in my family, only there were two of us and we were both favorites, at different times for different reasons. As the older one I got all the firsts, including nearly six years in the spotlight as Best (Only) Grandchild Ever with four very involved grandparents; my brother got to fill the baby role (with all the benefits and drawbacks therein) and got much slack-cutting in general.
Which leads me to Magpie's Family Planning tip of the day: if you find yourself with your only child preparing to go off to kindergarten, and you get all misty-eyed about your baby being all growed up, think twice, because you'll be signing on for TWELVE STRAIGHT YEARS of teenager. Just as I was becoming a human being again, my brother was starting to sprout horns. He got away with as much as he did in his late teens because of either the total years' parenting experience our folks had logged or sheer parental exhaustion, I'm not sure which.
Not directed at any particular comment, but: could we agree that "parent" ought to be used only as a noun? Especially when perfectly good verbs like "rear" are already available.
It is a little strange. Four kids is a lot of kids; three was pretty common where I grew up, but four wasn't the sort of thing that made people think you were some sort of weird alien breeder, a reaction I've encountered a couple of times.
Especially when perfectly good verbs like "rear" are already available.
ATM.
139: On the other hand, having a baby around who still loves you when the teenager is full of angst can be a plus.
Is more-than-two weird outside cities? Because it seems odd to me, but only because I start calculating bedrooms and where you could possibly find an apartment that size. In house country, I would have guessed three for middle of the road normal, and four as not particularly unusual.
See, I think "rear" should only be used as a noun.
Is more-than-two weird outside cities?
In North Carolina, three and four bedroom houses are still affordable.
I'm not sure how much this applies to other blue states, but the unspoken rule here seems to be a mandatory two children for a first marriage. One, and you're denying your child a sibling and s/he'll grow up spoiled and self-centered; three and you must have been sloppy with the birth control; 4+ is just off the charts. More children are ok when they're in "second families" with a respectable gap between the youngest from the first marriage and the oldest from the second, with bonus points if the father is older and claims the new kids as a second chance at doing parenting right. One is ok if the result of fertility treatments, but shouldn't you really have tried harder sooner?
144- no, oddly, IME all those six and seven bedroom houses in the suburbs are full of just two kids (and have instead an exercise room, home-office, media room, guest bedroom, playroom, etc.)
re 147: Isn't it marvelous the wide range of judgements people can pass on you without you realizing it?
The idea of a guest-bedroom still is weird to me. It's a room... and no one goes in it.... unless you have people over? Why would you have people over? The house is crowded enough!
147: Thank you so much for that timely reminder that blue state people also suck. Wouldn't do to go thinking there's hope for humanity or anything.
Both my wife and I come from families of 3 children, and I don't remember thinking anything would be odd about it. On the other hand, the only family in our circle of close friends with 3 have made no secret of the fact that it was a relationship-threatening accident, and led to um, surgery. Maybe all that ZPG agitation in our youths brainwashed us all.
I think the breeding rules started kicking in around the mid-80s or so. Certainly in the 70s large families weren't considered as freakish as they are now.
It's got to have something to do with the fact that college tuition went up 700% between 1980 and 2007.
I have a friend--who isn't even engaged to her boyfriend yet--who calmly proclaimed to me last year that they were going to have one child because she was going to send them to private school from preschool and wouldn't be able to afford that for more than one child.
Well, both my fiancee and I are semi-scared of the very idea of having children at all if there's a 1 in 200 chance (?) of autism. Perhaps adoption then?
It's got to have something to do with the fact that college tuition went up
And the lack of extended family nearby as people moved around from job to job. IMX it pays to be able to out-number the kids on at least a few occasions during the year.
Is there really? That seems so unlikely. Or is that 1 in 200 of autism or autism spectrum, defined loosely? I suppose I could google.
155: not gonna help if you adopt an infant, as autism doesn't manifest itself right away.
Snugglebearymuffin and I have talked about kids, and we want them, and realize that we have no idea how we'd afford to send them to college.
I've always thought that the Democrats should tie the issue of abortion into a bigger one about choice and family size because of some of the arguments like the one in 154. Going along with the Huckabee "I don't believe life ends at birth" message, I think a good message is that they believe people should be able to choose the sizes of their family and that that doesn't just mean having an abortion for an unwanted pregnancy but creating economic opportunity and good schools and providing healthcare for people who want to have a larger family but feel constrained because of economic insecurity. It takes wind out of the "baby-killer" argument and I think there are a lot of people who would be receptive to that message because they feel the number of children they can support is fewer than the number they would have liked to have.
It is, according to people whose job it is to publicize autism and raise money to investigate it. And they cite "prevalence statistics from the National Institutes of Health (2004) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2001)". I don't have time to find the actual statistics, though. Presumably that means "autism-spectrum". But what does that mean?
And it seems like scientific types like us might be more susceptible. And the rate is going up. And so forth.
What is it about autism that so terrifies you? It's a tragic disorder, but not IMO materially worse than a lot of other things that could happen with 0.5% probability. (Which number sounds high to me, as well, but with which I'd not inclined to quibble.)
Cryptic Ned, it might help to get a sense of what other things you have a 1 in 200 chance of having happen, because I find, at least personally, that telling me I have a one-in-two-hundred chance or that [X] doubles your risk doesn't mean much unless I can compare it to other things.
I think you have a higher chance of the birth control pill failing than having an autistic child.
It seems like it would be a particularly disturbing and unsatisfying experience to raise a child with no ability to love others or desire to interact with others. At least in the cases of Down syndrome or purely physical disorders/ailments, there is a mutual love bond involved, although they may present more urgent and expensive problems for the parent.
(this is an immature attitude on my part of course)
(and I may be conflating profound autism, which is less common, with "autism spectrum", whatever that means)
Yeah. Autism spectrum includes a lot of people who, while they have very real and significant problems, are capable of forming emotional relationships.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Neurology/GeneralNeurology/tb/4964
They found that the estimated prevalence for autism spectrum disorders, including autism, Asperger's syndrome, and related conditions, was 500,000 yielding a prevalence rate of 5.8 per 1,000 children, a rate similar to that found in other recent studies.
That's including everything diagnosable, not everything that might actually be significant.
I recall developmental disability numbers being something like 2% of all children. This would include everything from significant hearing/vision loss to severe autism or Downs syndrome or cerebral palsy, though. Down syndrome numbers are higher than 1 in 1000 , so autism numbers in the 1 in 500 to 1 in 200 seem reasonable.
In 166 I meant autism to read `autism spectrum'. What CN calls profound autism probably has numbers close to Down syndrome (which I just looked up as being 1 in 800)
That's including everything diagnosable, not everything that might actually be significant.
That's not so bad.
Frankly I'm just scared of the very idea, and the great recent increase in incidence (or just in diagnoses, hopefully) makes it worse.
149: It's liberating in a way to realize that you'll have to put up with other people's judgments no matter what choices you make about reproduction, so you might as well go ahead and do what you want to anyway.
caregiving responsibilities preclude involvement in extracurricular activities that might help them get into college.
I know what you mean. But having had students who had a lot of those kinds of responsibilities, they're often extremely diligent and conscientous. Which I don't know how to spell. Anyway, I think that in the post-AA world, students who can write intelligent application essays talking about their family responsibilities and what they mean wouldn't really be penalized. Volunteering for Habitat is a worthy activity, but so is helping raise your siblings.
169 is wise and true, and not just about reproduction.
Thetimestampsonthis thread are very odd.
Both of my parents came out of families with four children. On my Dad's side, we think it's because grandma wanted to have a girl, and nobody knows how many more kids she'd have had had if B had not been a girl. My Mom's parents were both only children, and my grandmother was pretty determined that her grandchildren would have cousins.
Here's the Kansas City version of this story.
Re: the original topic of the post -- Planned Parenthood is picking this up and running with it.
Veering slightly off topic, I recall strange faerie tales being discussed on this site, particularly The Goose-Girl. That one does not hold a strangeness-candle to The Juniper Tree, which I was just reading to young Sylvia -- I imagine her dreams tonight will be colorful. By far the weirdest of the Grimm tales we have read so far.