Reply #146: You need to review the medical consequences of your recommendations [View All]

[Ms. Toad]

all of the birth control methods you have suggested can have severe medical consequences.

IUD - I had a particularly nasty bout with PID that came close to preventing me from having children. I didn't get it from an IUD, or even from an STD - but I know what the risks are because I have lived with it, and I would NEVER allow anyone to insert an IUD in my body. Anyone who has had PID (whatever the source) should also not take the morning after pill because of the risk of a tubal pregnancy.

Birth Control pills/Norplant/Morning after Pill - I also have DVT. Aside from being a life threatening condition, it makes me uninsurable. The primary questions they asked when trying to figure out why I was blessed with DVT were whether I smoked or took birth control pills. If I were not personally at increased risk, I might consent to using the morning after pill on a one time basis - but I would never allow anyone to force me to take Norplant or Birth Control pills on an extended basis.

Other methods are less effective - and there is always the risk of pregnancy.

And - as a humanist - what gives you the right to make reproductive decisions for someone merely because they are on state relief programs or welfare? My daughter was on Medicaid for the first 8 years of her life. She was deliberately conceived through donor insemination. Because my spouse and I share a gender, the state refused to recognize our marriage (making it impossible for me to obtain coverage through my spouse because the state does not require insurers to provide "domestic partner" coverage for small companies - even if the company chooses to offer it). The state officially denied our request to create a legal relationship between my spouse and our daughter (which would have given her access to coverage through my spouse). And - my spouse lost the first two jobs she had immediately after our daughter was born due to discrimination, cutting our income to about 1/3 of what we had expected to be living on. We would have purchased private insurance but for (1) being uninsurable in the private market and (2) the outrageously high cost of the state high risk pool. I got by on catastrophic insurance, which covered none of my pre-existing conditions.

You never know why people are on state assistance, whether it is temporary or long term, or whether unexpected circumstances even with the best of planning put them there.

The need for state assistance does mean those who need it are unable to make responsible decisions for themselves. The temporary need for state assistance does not justify an assumption that the state has a financial interest in truncating the family size. In our case, by now I have paid far more in taxes than we received in medical care for our daughter during those 8 years (and we have paid far more than married couples with a similar income - this year I think the penalty associated with refusal to recognize our marriage was around $3000).