What is it about our elite culture that is so fixated on contraception? Over at Public Discourse, Greg Pfundstein and Meghan Grizzle report on the latest decision by the Gates Foundation to put more than $4 billion behind efforts to expand the use of contraceptives worldwide.
As they point out, increases in general education and economic development are strongly correlated to family planning, not the availability of contraceptive technology. But our age loves the idea that life’s difficulties can be solved by technology. Democracy? The internet and cell phones will provide it. Women’s health and empowerment? The Pill will do the trick.
July 18th, 2012 | 2:37 pm
i have a friend who believes enthusiastically that gene therapy will one day cure “violent crime.” he’s also looking forward to living for 500 years.
July 18th, 2012 | 4:40 pm
Anyone who reads, “Pregnancy is the biggest killer of teenage girls worldwide, with one million dying or suffering serious injury, infection or disease due to pregnancy or childbirth every year,” to mean, or even imply, that pregnancy kills a million teenage girls a year needs to go back to school. It’s not the way I would have conveyed the information, but it is not deceptive.
I suppose if one is opposed to contraception, one has a right to complain how Gates Foundation money is spent. But I don’t think anyone has a right to complain how it is not spent. It’s basically all Bill and Melinda Gates’s (and Warren Buffett’s) money. They don’t have to give it away at all. And if they wanted to spend billions beautifying the nation’s highways, or rescuing stray dogs, or saving the redwoods, nobody has a right to complain about what they are not spending it on.
Save the Children gets four stars (the highest rating) from Charity Navigator.
July 18th, 2012 | 5:10 pm
@David Nickol,
Actually, the $4.6 billion comes not from the Gates Foundation but from governments. Every dollar they spend on contraception is a dollar they do not spend on health, education, etc.
I think it is quite disingenuous of them to lump 50,000 deaths in with 950,000 injuries. That definitely looks like they are trying to make the number of deaths seem larger. Otherwise why would they not separate the two figures? If the point is that pregnancy is the biggest killer, it makes sense to include the number of actual deaths as a separate statistic.
July 18th, 2012 | 5:52 pm
I believe their fixation is directly related to their tendency to blame conservatives for their policy failures.
If their Great Idea didn’t work because conservatives somehow blocked or sabotaged it, then defeating social conservatives is the way to make all their policies start working properly. When everyone agrees with their beliefs and values, then all the ideas and policies that have mysteriously not worked as planned will no longer be sabotaged – and should start working again.
July 18th, 2012 | 6:19 pm
I thought Obama said it is not really Bill and Melinda Gates’s money, but rather it’s our money since we are the ones who really made it.
In which case, I will take mine in tens and twenties.
July 18th, 2012 | 7:32 pm
But, education does not provide for effective family planning without access to contraception. That access is what Melinda Gates is putting her money behind as one the greatest humanitarian actions in history.
July 18th, 2012 | 8:15 pm
I think it is quite disingenuous of them to lump 50,000 deaths in with 950,000 injuries.
Meghan Grizzle,
The headline to the press release is Save the Children Says Pregnancy Kills or Injures One Million Girls a Year. How hard is it to figure out that “kills or injures” doesn’t mean “kills”? And are 950,000 injuries unimportant because the mothers survived?
July 19th, 2012 | 12:57 am
>As they point out, increases in general education and economic development are strongly correlated to family planning, not the availability of contraceptive technology.
Do the studies say that education and economic development are all that are required for family planning, that access to contraceptives plays no part?
Or do they simply suggest that access to contraceptives without education and economic development is much less effective?
What do you mean specifically when you say, “As they point out”?
To what numbers are you referring?
And what questions are you asking?
July 19th, 2012 | 3:12 am
I’m curious about where you think the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is being remiss.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/programs/Pages/global-policy-advocacy.aspx
They seem to care about food, education, economic development, health care (through, among other things, access to education).
They seem to be doing their homework.
If you weren’t worried about a specific tradition based on a belief in Yahweh, would you be as critical?
July 19th, 2012 | 7:32 am
“… we should also work to defend and protect, and indeed empower, those women whom Melinda Gates wishes to subject to her idea that contraception is their single most important unmet need (…)The Family Planning Summit, which coincided with World Population Day, may not have used this rhetoric, but the simple fact is that women and men ultimately want to bring children into the world. Not all the contraception on earth will change that. Rather than try to prevent them from doing so, we should work to ensure they can do so safely.”
I am glad the authors note and respect the difference in foreign cultures.
I predict that all these do-gooders with their money and secular Western values will be viewed by the recipients of their aid in the same light as the colonial and missionary imperialists of yesteryear. They want to change other cultures. They mean well, and they know best.
July 19th, 2012 | 1:06 pm
This just in: Eating and drinking kills millions each year.
I wonder if Melinda Gates will go on a crusade to end this horrible scrouge.
July 19th, 2012 | 1:33 pm
If the Gates spent money to pick up litter on the highways and had a big PR campaign on how they are making our roads safer, then we can complain about where they are not spending their money. If they came out and just said they want less dark skinned carbon footprints threatening to want cheap computers like us, then yes, we have no right to complain, at least about PR spin. But where does the cheap labor come from to mine the 50 some odd minerals we need to make a computer?
This statement from them clearly doesn’t delineate the difference: “Pregnancy is the biggest killer of teenage girls worldwide, with one million dying or suffering serious injury, infection or disease due to pregnancy or childbirth every year.” It is misleading and written to alarm.
Contraception in the hands of fundamentalist muslim men will be used to further subjugate women in a hyper-rigorist sense. Thanks Melinda!
July 19th, 2012 | 6:49 pm
If the Gates spent money to pick up litter on the highways and had a big PR campaign on how they are making our roads safer, then we can complain about where they are not spending their money.
While they’re welcome to spend their own money, if they’re going to spend it in destructive ways, we have not only the right but even a social obligation to criticize.
While I do not think birth control should be illegal, to promote it under false pretenses, as the Gates are doing, is a destructive act.
There is not only no evidence to support the idea that birth control can “fix” social problems; there is in fact evidence suggesting the opposite.
Everyone has the right to spend their own money their own way, but when rich people take it into their heads to use entire populations, then it’s not wrong to speak up on behalf of the people being used, or to question the effect such policies will have on the common good. Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you can use entire nations full of other human beings any way you like.
July 19th, 2012 | 11:17 pm
>There is not only no evidence to support the idea that birth control can “fix” social problems; there is in fact evidence suggesting the opposite.
I would like to see that evidence. Providing family planning and access to contraception is hugely beneficial to the wellbeing of women and their families.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/09/opinion/gates-contraception-families/index.html
>but when rich people take it into their heads to use entire populations, then it’s not wrong to speak up on behalf of the people being used,
They are not using populations. They are providing education and access to contraception to women who seem to desperately want and need it. They are not imposing contraception. They are giving these women choices.
>or to question the effect such policies will have on the common good.
Can you provide some examples where such policies have had a negative effect on the “common good”?
>While I do not think birth control should be illegal, to promote it under false pretenses, as the Gates are doing, is a destructive act.
What false pretenses do you mean? Please explain.
July 20th, 2012 | 6:07 am
JT
“This just in: Eating and drinking kills millions each year.
I wonder if Melinda Gates will go on a crusade to end this horrible scrouge.”
When women cannot space pregnancies out, eating and drinking can indeed become problematic. Particularly in places where famine and drought are frequent and resources are limited.
July 20th, 2012 | 8:40 am
TXW
Fertility rates are already collapsing in the Islamic world.
In Iran, the total fertility rate for the period 1980-1985 was a respectable 6.54 live births per woman. In the period 1995-2000, it had fallen to 2.62, just above replacement levels and for the period 2005-2010 it had fallen to 1.77 if this trend continues, by mid-century, one-third of Iran’s population will be dependent elderly.
Throughout the Islamic world, total fertility rates are in inverse proportion to rates of literacy and urbanisation.
Susan asked
“Can you provide some examples where such policies have had a negative effect on the “common good”?”
Well, I can show where a sluggish birth did so A hundred years ago, France’s stagnant population and Germany’s growing one convinced not only Déroulède and the War Party, but the General Staff that they needed a war with Germany as soon as possible, if they were to have any chance of recovering the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, occupied by Germany in 1871.
Similarly, if Iran really does have imperial ambitions in the region, it had better fight its wars in this generation, before the decline in young men of military age sets in (and before its oil supplies run out)
July 20th, 2012 | 11:28 am
Pfundstein and Grizzle- “…whose very real and legitimate desire for children has not been met; whose economic opportunities have not been improved a whit. For this woman, Melinda Gates has one message: “Here’s twenty bucks; don’t have babies.””
MG quoted in the Guardian UK. “She said that when she and her husband first set up their foundation 18 years ago, they had originally focused on family planning but had then shifted their agenda to providing vaccines after realising that childhood mortality was the top issue, and that women would not choose to have fewer children until they were sure their children would survive childhood. “But once we saw that was happening, we could take family planning back on,” she said.
Pfundstein and Grizzle entirely misrepresent Melinda Gates’s understanding and compassion in these matters. In so doing they have possibly earned the mistrust of the remaining 18% of Catholic women who do not use contraception
July 20th, 2012 | 3:06 pm
The issue is not about Gates. Its about understanding what it means to be human. As humans we come from a long line of ancestors who were interested in mating and having kids. Its built into our genetic code. Actually its built into the genetic code of all living things. The desire to procreate however soometimes goes against our desire to live a life with a few kids (or none). Now thanks to scientific research we have a good way to reconcile these contradictory desires through insuring that all offspring are desired from an intellectual decision of people who are ready and able to look after their children.
That is an amazing scientific breakthrough that we can all appreciate.
Even if we belong to a religous group that frowns on such practice we can appreciate that this is extremely useful for those who dont have the same beliefs.
July 20th, 2012 | 3:24 pm
Public discourse ‘Every dollar that these governments of developing countries in particular commit to contraception is a dollar they are not spending on education, basic health care, and other basic unmet needs of their populations.’
This badly misrepresents the point of contraception. It is comparing the existance of unwanted babies against improved education. Hardly a very moral comparison.
The common problem addressed by both in Family planning and contraception is unwanted pregnancies and unwanted children. Family planning is notoriously unreliable and as a reult it should be this that is phased out.
In any case by reducing the population growth with an effective approach (contraception) it automatically leaves a greater amount of money for education etc.
NB The excessive population growth is due to the birth of unwanted children
July 20th, 2012 | 3:34 pm
Michael PS said (Fertility rates are already collapsing in the Islamic world.)
This is true because of a substantial increase in contraception use.
You cannot have too much contraception. In countries where contraceptioon is freely available parents have the number of children the want and WHEN they want.
You will note that the fertility rate in France is the highest in europe. As you know France was one of the first use contraception.
July 21st, 2012 | 6:43 am
You cannot have too much contraception. In countries where contraceptioon is freely available parents have the number of children the want and WHEN they want.
That might be true, if we were talking about foolproof forms of contraception.
But since such a thing is not yet invented, the reality is that contraception actually increases, rather than decreasing, unintended pregnancy.
This is because contraception encourages a false sense of security – leading people to have more sex. Most forms of contraception are anywhere from 76% to 98% reliable when used correctly (significantly less reliable when used imperfectly), so every hundred sex acts leads to a couple of pregnancies.
It’s also worth noting that most contraceptives involve chemicals that are just now being revealed as far less harmless than was once assumed. Odd that the same people who are so terrified of pesticides in their food are the one most enamored of slathering spermicides all over the world.
July 21st, 2012 | 8:35 am
Narib
The Total Fertility Rate in Metropolitan France is 2.1 By country of origin, for women born in Algeria, it is rather lower at 1.78. For women born in Morocco, it is higherl at 3.28. For those born in Tunisia, it is 2.73. Compare this with women born in Sub-Saharan Africa – 5.89
For women born in Metropolitan France, regardless of ethnicity, it is 2, which is just below replacement, given that slightly more boys than girls are born and not all will survive to puberty.
July 21st, 2012 | 5:24 pm
Blake- “contraception encourages a false sense of security – leading people to have more sex. Most forms of contraception are anywhere from 76% to 98% reliable when used correctly (significantly less reliable when used imperfectly), so every hundred sex acts leads to a couple of pregnancies.”
Depo Provera is 99.7% effective under ideal conditions and 97% under typical use conditions. Condoms are suggested as a supplement for added STD protection lifting pregnancy risk back into the fractional percentage failure range.
Blake failed to complete the maths of contraception as an aphrodisiac. Intercourse would have to increase >400% in the example of condom use alone and >10,000% in my example of recommended (but typical) Depo-Provera shots plus condom use, to undo any population reduction effect.
Most wives are familiar with that alternative to the headache gambit for an untroubled night’s sleep, the condom gambit. Condoms are not enticing but used by serious minded, sensible people as a least worst option.
Necessary numbers were also omitted over the comparative risks of chemical contraception and those of unwanted (adverse condition) pregnancies.
The comment remains empty of usable evidence as presented.
July 21st, 2012 | 6:12 pm
I must confess, Depo-Provera alone might well be likely to increase frequency of sex as Blake suggests. Setting aside concerns over the efficacy of birth control (as the numbers suggest we can) we must surely applaud this side effect of increased sex? This paper* shows that sex frequency enhances relationship stability (fidelity). The effect is actually most pronounced in unmarried couples. This surely all makes for a better more stable (and more resourced) family home.
* http://paa2007.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=71772
July 21st, 2012 | 6:46 pm
“And are 950,000 injuries unimportant because the mothers survived?’
Some of them are. Properly repaired episiotomies and separated abdominal muscles are pretty unimportant. Take it from me.
What we don’t know is how many of those injuries are such unimportant ones, so we have no sense of proportion — which is the problem with the initial report of “one million killed or injured” as well. It’s not that anyone should assume that they were all deaths (and I agree that the friend who leapt to that conclusion was not thinking carefully), it’s that it’s uninformative and guaranteed to be misleading not to distinguish between killed, seriously injured, moderately injured, and trivially injured, when you’re trying to communicate how large of a problem something is.
July 21st, 2012 | 8:38 pm
“Properly repaired episiotomies and separated abdominal muscles are pretty unimportant. Take it from me.”
Pentamom, you’re not from Africa are you? At a guess your per (adult) capita expenditure on healthcare is between $3,500 (Europe) to $7,000 (US). In Sub-Saharan Africa it is $127 with huge local variations. These “repairs” will often simply not happen. By the simple expedient of not causing the harm two times out of three, say, with one third of the births, those paltry resources can now be expended on two thirds fewer children who now represent a much surer and much better invested bet.
By doing the intelligent thing resources can work doubly hard for us.
July 23rd, 2012 | 9:42 am
we must surely applaud this side effect of increased sex? This paper* shows that sex frequency enhances relationship stability (fidelity). The effect is actually most pronounced in unmarried couples. This surely all makes for a better more stable (and more resourced) family home.
Except that you’re forgetting to count the negative consequences.
If we assume that more sex equals greater relationship stability, that’s a net positive.
Although as far as unmarried people, remember that studies have also shown that people who wait until they are married to have sex tend to be happier people and tend to have happier marriages. But let’s assume the point, for the sake of argument.
What makes you think all the increased sex will be between committed couples? As opposed to infidelity – which hurts relationships, even when the cheated-on spouse doesn’t find out.
Of course, with increased infidelity there’s also increased sexually transmitted diseases – which kill people in third world nations.
And, of course, the moral hazard problem resulting in unwanted pregnancies.
The desire to believe that irresponsible behavior can lead to greater happiness is tempting. But I think we all know it’s bunk.
More sex ed and more free birth control hasn’t resulted in greater happiness here at home, and it’s not going to abroad, either. It hasn’t made our relationships stronger, nor has it eliminated unintended pregnancy. We’ve been giving the stuff out for forty years – if birth control was going to work miracles, shouldn’t those miracle have happened by now?
July 23rd, 2012 | 7:55 pm
Blake-
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070318/26sex.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17190185
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_pregnancy
Note the disgraceful state of the US and contrast Germany, Holland, Scandinavia where the best comprehensive sex ed and family planning is provided.
“Knowing” whats right and actually having the facts when it comes to the safety and well being of your children is something of a moral fork in the road for me. I’ll choose the evidence and the safer moral path.
I trust you can find the statistics for this-
“What makes you think all the increased sex will be between committed couples? As opposed to infidelity – which hurts relationships, even when the cheated-on spouse doesn’t find out.
Of course, with increased infidelity there’s also increased sexually transmitted diseases – which kill people in third world nations.”
Responsible people (the moral majority) will refrain from sex rather than make their partner go through the torment of excessive numbers of under resourced child births. This puts an unfair strain on their relationship. The immoral minority (the men at least) won’t care a fig about contraception one way or the other.
This is as sound a made up anecdote as your own. Give us the facts.
July 23rd, 2012 | 8:29 pm
I trust you can find the statistics for this-
I don’t see why I should bother – smells like (red) herring to me.
July 24th, 2012 | 2:44 am
Blake-
“I don’t see why I should bother – smells like (red) herring to me.”
Not my red herring. You proposed that adulterers would cause more harm with having increased sex. You proposed that increased sex due to contraceptive use would yield higher STD rates. (I must point out though that the contraceptive program in mind will include decent sex ed and the urge to always use condoms for STD control.)
I think my hypothesis for behaviours is at least as credible as yours, but if you want to put real evidence on the table as I have sought to do on every occasion here……well….that would be nice.
July 24th, 2012 | 3:30 pm
The availability of effective contraception is key to the advancement of quality of life for the poorest segment of world population. Hans Rosling has been studying the impacts of population distributing for many decades, and presents his clear results in this recent TED video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html
July 24th, 2012 | 7:55 pm
“I don’t see why I should bother – smells like (red) herring to me.”
Not my red herring. You proposed that adulterers would cause more harm with having increased sex.
Another red herring. You make the crazy claim that if more people are having sex, then relationships will be “better” because more sex equals more happiness – then when someone points out the flaw in your argument (what makes you think all that increased sex will be between committed couples?) you spring up with an, “Aha! PROVE IT!”
I am not interested in proving an irrelevant side claim that has no bearing on anything, except indirectly. I am interested in the original question – whether there is any reason to believe birth control has any net positive effects.
The fact that you have to avoid that argument in favor of distractions suggests to me that my original argument was correct. If there were any net positive effects to be had from birth control, there would be evidence – instead, for every promise made by the pro-birth control crowd, we see that our own society has gotten much worse rather than better in the forty years since birth control became freely available, and such evidence as exists supports the idea that the problems associated with birth control (and “sexual revolution” thinking in general) outweigh any advantages.
July 24th, 2012 | 7:56 pm
The availability of effective contraception is key to the advancement of quality of life for the poorest segment of world population. Hans Rosling has been studying the impacts of population distributing for many decades, and presents his clear results in this recent TED video:
I would be interested in this argument, if you’d care to summarize it.
July 24th, 2012 | 7:58 pm
Depo Provera is 99.7% effective under ideal conditions and 97% under typical use conditions.
So for every hundred sex acts, it wouldn’t be two pregnancies – it’d be three.
Of course, that doesn’t change the real problem: in the US, most girls who end up with unwanted pregnancies have access to contraception. Yet they end up pregnant anyway.
July 25th, 2012 | 2:07 am
>in the US, most girls who end up with unwanted pregnancies have access to contraception
And I’m willing to bet that most girls who don’t end up with unwanted pregrancies also have access to contraception. And to education.
When you use a word like “most”, I almost get the impression that you’re interested in the statistics. But you don’t seem to want to be bothered with something as pesky as evidence.
July 25th, 2012 | 4:09 am
Blake-
“You make the crazy claim that if more people are having sex, then relationships will be “better” because more sex equals more happiness – then when someone points out the flaw in your argument (what makes you think all that increased sex will be between committed couples?)”
I pointed to a paper (which I hope you read) showing that in couples increased sex correlated with increased fidelity. You said something to the effect (and please adjust this if needed the specifics are important) that those prone to infidelity will find more opportunity for infidelity too. I asked for numbers. I suggested that the moral ones were the majority, behaved responsibly, and put their relationship under the (now) needless pressure of abstinence. I further suggested that the immoral minority (the men at least) would behave recklessly under any circumstance. I could further pose the question what are the drivers for men (mostly) seeking sex outside of a relationship?
To be clear I am asking you to consider a computation of net harms by this action of providing excellent (well funded, researched and managed sex ed and contraception). I don’t want to hide from ANY of the incidental harms. My considered opinion on the adultery issue is that in the short term there may be a modest increase springing from currently broken or breaking relationships under dire financial stress and unsustainable family responsibilities. BUT in the longer term this well spring of despair will be stemmed.
Invoking the “sexual revolution” is useful here. Some disastrous mistakes were made in the name of sexual liberation. Key was losing sight of absolute primacy to our need for strong relationships. But some countries got it right pretty quickly. The northern European countries could see the good bits and the bad bits much more clearly than others, and build on it. We can see this in the links I posted earlier on teen pregnancy. (The statistics on abortion show equally the virtues of those countries.)
To get this right takes a sustained cultural commitment over decades. These countries keep getting it right. Mere availability of contraception in an environment where contraception is spuriously denigrated for incidental and trivial reasons will continue to founder and have misery multiply.
July 25th, 2012 | 4:22 am
Apologies to Blake for the wayward English in the previous piece. It escaped too soon.
Quine-
The Hans Rosling TED talk is admirable in complementing the Gates Foundation strategy. It explains with great clarity why the focus is on child survival rates. Using this metric is surely the way to maximise happiness and well being for all.
July 25th, 2012 | 1:56 pm
Blake: “I would be interested in this argument, if you’d care to summarize it.”
Did you watch the presentation?
July 25th, 2012 | 5:34 pm
@Blake,
You say: “I am interested in the original question – whether there is any reason to believe birth control has any net positive effects.”
How about: “whether there is any reason to believe no birth control has any net positive effects.”
How would that be honestly answered?
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