<p>Who is trying to “prevent people from not getting pregnant?” They are quite free to use whatever prevention methods they choose. </p>
<p>The argument about “preventing unwanted pregnancies” has a nice, noble ring to it, but the reality is that this just cannot be done. Half of all pregnancies are unintended, even though 99% of sexually active women have used contraceptives at some point. How many families do you know who have exactly the number of children they wanted, exactly at the time that they wanted them? Precious few, from my experience, even though most of us live among highly educated, affluent peers who can afford every possible medical intervention to prevent or achieve pregnancy. </p>
<p>Again, there is no crisis of “access” to contraceptives. Even the CDC could not identify access as an issue in its extensive 2009 study of contraception. Of all the reasons for non-use of contraception in cases of unwanted pregnancy, lack of access doesn’t even make the CDC’s list; almost half of women assumed they couldn’t get pregnant (44 percent), didn’t mind getting pregnant (23 percent), didn’t plan to have sex (14 percent), or worried about the side effects of birth control (16 percent).</p>
<p>The mandate is a non-solution to a non-problem.</p>
<p>We don’t, from anything you have said, zoos. But claremarie says if better birth control, or more available birth control, had been available, then maybe Barack Obama and Steve Jobs wouldn’t have been born. I concede that’s probably true. She then concludes that women shouldn’t use contraception, lest we prevent the next genius from being born. And I am not willing to make that step.</p>
<p>According to my cousin, who lived in Sweden, she had to go outside the country to adopt a baby, because there are virtually no unwanted pregnancies carried to term there. I guess that is how they do it.</p>
<p>They have lower rates of abortion as well. It’s done by providing excellent education and easy access to birth control. For example, 4% of Swedish teens get pregnant compared with 20%+ here in the United States. </p>
<p>Here in “abstinence only sex-ed” Texas, the government is bound and determined to make sure as many teens as possible wind up with unwanted pregnancies.</p>
<p>Easy access to abortion doesn’t prevent unintended pregnancies, so that can’t be the explanation for Sweden having fewer unintended pregnancies. There are fewer unwanted pregnancies carried to term in Sweden largely because there are fewer unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Sweden has a lower abortion rate than the US.</p>
<p>And however sorry I am for infertile couples, I don’t see that we owe them a national policy of encouraging unwanted births and discouraging abortion. In fact, I find that justification for that policy nauseating. Poor single women are not baby factories for infertile couples.</p>
<p>CF, I completely agree. We dealt with infertility for over a decade, it was horrible. We were so lucky to have the one child that we did! </p>
<p>But never did I wish an unplanned pregnancy on another woman. I know how it feels when the pregnancy test says the opposite of what you want it to say.</p>
<p>I get tired of people using European countries as a bellweather for our progress. Sweden is the size of California with a relatively homogenous population the size of LA.</p>
<p>I get tired of people in the United States being unwilling to learn from other countries.</p>
<p>No, we’re not Sweden in so many ways. But we can learn from countries that are doing so much better by women than we are. </p>
<p>I mean, really, our unplanned pregnancy rate is ridiculous and our abortion rate stems directly from it. We could be doing so much better by women and we’re not. There’s just no excuse.</p>
<p>Ok, I tried to learn. According to my cursory internet research, 1 in 4 Swedish pregnancies end in abortion; 23% of American pregnancies end in abortion.</p>
<p>I was wrong about the abortion rates in the US and Sweden. The recent US rate I found online was 22.8% of pregnancies; Sweden’s was 25.x%. Sorry no link-- too hard on the iPad-- but the numbers are easy to Google, which means I have no excuse for getting it wrong the first time by lazily using data from 1999.</p>
<p>In Sweden abortions are legal, without governmental hoops and hurdles and Free. Seems that free and uncomplicated access to safe legal abortion does not sky rocket the abortion rate. </p>
<p>Also, in Sweden the number of children is now a function of the income level of the woman. The more she earns the larger number of children she has. The studies credit this to government mandated child care and other pro-woman, pro-children measures.</p>
<p>Sounds like the free abortion programs when added to other pro-women, pro-children governmental programs results in women basing child bearing decisions on their ability to financially support a child.</p>
<p>“But claremarie says if better birth control, or more available birth control, had been available, then maybe Barack Obama and Steve Jobs wouldn’t have been born.”</p>
<p>No, don’t think I made that argument.</p>
<p>What I did point out is that “unwanted pregnancies” often have positive outcomes – for the child, his (or an adoptive) family, and society. Therefore, I question whether the grim but sacred goal of “reducing unwanted pregnancies” is worth sacrificing the religious freedom of employers. And I also question whether the mandate is actually well-tailored to achieve that goal. All evidence would appear to be to the contrary. It is, however, well-tailored to achieve certain political goals by tossing some bones to certain key demographic groups; i.e., the women who are already using (and paying, at least in part, for) birth control but delighted that their employers will now pick up the tab.</p>
<p>OK, claremarie, let’s get back to the “religious freedom” argument that is so important to you. Who should have religious freedom? Why should you have the religious freedom not to have employees be able to obtain contraception from their Catholic employers, but Quakers don’t have the religious freedom not to pay for wars through their income taxes? I’m sure you’d agree that Quakers have a genuine religious belief in their pacifism. So, what distinguishes the two cases?</p>
<p>I also wonder about an Amish employer (yes, they exist) who doesn’t want to pay Social Security taxes for his employees because SS violates his religious principles. Right now, the law is pretty clear that it’s just too bad for the employer – if you pay people to work, you have to pay their SS whether you find it morally objectionable or not. Should that be changed?</p>