Good find. Abortion may be more acceptable now, and people have definitely thrown resources behind making access easier in many ways. How people behave in response to bans and movements is definitely a factor that moderates the effects of more distant and congested access. I wonder, quantitatively, how much the loosening of abortion laws and opening of new clinics in some states counterbalances reduced access effects in others.
The goal of pro-life shouldn't be to minimize abortions. The safest way to do that would be to minimize births, which is the opposite of what pro-life wants.
The problem I have with pro-choice people isn't necessarily that they get abortions, but that they are low fertility and just don't seem to like children and big families all that much. If your average pro-choice person had four kids and aborted one Down syndrome kid along the way that would be fine, but in reality pro-life people are averaging at least an extra kid per woman over pro-choice people. I think peoples view on abortion is basically just a proxy for their views on what kind of status family and children should have.
Pro-life should focus on making people want to have kids, and thus they will voluntarily get fewer abortions. And while it would "be more expensive" in the short run those incentives have to include the middle and upper middle class because its really them we need to have more kids. They may not get abortions, but they are birth controlling themselves into sub replacement TFR.
Two more, complementary approaches to reducing the incidence of abortion:
1. Improving support for women who choose to give birth and raise families.
A number of prominent pro-life women, including Rachel Larimore and Sarah Quinlan, have advocated for changing the culture by better supporting women. As Quinlan writes, "we can reduce the number of abortions by providing sufficient resources and support ... for women and families. And we can stop seeing the fight over abortion as “us versus them” and instead frame it as “us helping them” instead."
There are a number of specific proposals mentioned in Quinlan's piece:
While many men are willing to take more responsibility for preventing unintended pregnancies, male birth control options are basically limited to condoms, vasectomies, and withdrawal (urgh).
Pharmaceutical companies need to be persuaded there's a market, for starters:
And we can support organizations such as the Male Contraceptive Initiative, which "provides funding and advocacy support for the research and development of new methods of non-hormonal, reversible male birth control":
There have been efforts to make an effective male contraceptive that guys would take for many decades. It's NOT going to happen. The side effects are not tolerable.
Females have been more accepting of the lowered quality of life, and need for antidepressants that contraceptive use so often brings.
1. Efforts to make an effective male contraceptive go back decades, at least to the 1970s.
2. Hormonal approaches have so far been unsatisfactory. One notable study published in late 2016 found that the treatment being tested, while appealing to many men in the study who didn't encounter significant side effects, also led to acne and moderate to severe mood swings for some participants:
3. Many men may not have the same incentives that many women have, to tolerate side effects. As the author of the NPR article linked above observed, "When women use a contraceptive, they're balancing the risks of the drug against the risks of getting pregnant. And pregnancy itself carries risks. But these are healthy men — they're not going to suffer any [direct personal health] risks if they get somebody else pregnant."
Perhaps for that reason, currently promising approaches generally use non-hormonal approaches. Broadly speaking, conceptually and from early findings, these may have tolerable or better side effect profiles.
Two early, as-yet promising examples of such non-hormonal approaches – and we're likely to see more of these over time – are:
It's also worth noting that, while male contraceptive research spans some five decades or so, there hasn't been a lot of funding, nor a lot of research carried out, across that period, relative to many other biomedical products.
One key issue: major pharmaceutical companies have been skeptical about whether these products could be profitable; whether their significant R&D costs – given the evident physiological challenges of this problem – would be recouped and then return an adequate ROI, in the face of uncertain demand by men. As Olivia Plana wrote in a 2017 journal article (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5675331/), "The unknown acceptability of male contraception has remained a barrier for research."
Exactly. Low acceptance by men of every option that has come up so far, has stifled new research attempts. And the hydrogel example was developed by a man with a sense of mission since he personally found the foster care system to be problematic. So far no one knows how long the hydrogels will last, and of course there's the possibility of allergy or other physiological responses turning the temporary blockage into a permanent one.
Adding further complication is that the birth control and many other types of offerings from pharma have largely taken self regulation of behavior off the table.
Thoughts on this? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/07/us/abortion-data-bans-laws.html
Good find. Abortion may be more acceptable now, and people have definitely thrown resources behind making access easier in many ways. How people behave in response to bans and movements is definitely a factor that moderates the effects of more distant and congested access. I wonder, quantitatively, how much the loosening of abortion laws and opening of new clinics in some states counterbalances reduced access effects in others.
I think the decision in Dobbs probably had the effect of making abortion more socially acceptable
Agreed. I also think the NY Times' comparison might be bad, since the beginning of COVID coincided with a "Baby Bust" (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-023-00965-x) and abortions and births covary for obvious reasons.
The goal of pro-life shouldn't be to minimize abortions. The safest way to do that would be to minimize births, which is the opposite of what pro-life wants.
The problem I have with pro-choice people isn't necessarily that they get abortions, but that they are low fertility and just don't seem to like children and big families all that much. If your average pro-choice person had four kids and aborted one Down syndrome kid along the way that would be fine, but in reality pro-life people are averaging at least an extra kid per woman over pro-choice people. I think peoples view on abortion is basically just a proxy for their views on what kind of status family and children should have.
Pro-life should focus on making people want to have kids, and thus they will voluntarily get fewer abortions. And while it would "be more expensive" in the short run those incentives have to include the middle and upper middle class because its really them we need to have more kids. They may not get abortions, but they are birth controlling themselves into sub replacement TFR.
Two more, complementary approaches to reducing the incidence of abortion:
1. Improving support for women who choose to give birth and raise families.
A number of prominent pro-life women, including Rachel Larimore and Sarah Quinlan, have advocated for changing the culture by better supporting women. As Quinlan writes, "we can reduce the number of abortions by providing sufficient resources and support ... for women and families. And we can stop seeing the fight over abortion as “us versus them” and instead frame it as “us helping them” instead."
There are a number of specific proposals mentioned in Quinlan's piece:
https://www.thebulwark.com/its-time-for-pro-liifers-to-change-the-culture-on-abortion/
2. Improving birth control for men.
While many men are willing to take more responsibility for preventing unintended pregnancies, male birth control options are basically limited to condoms, vasectomies, and withdrawal (urgh).
Pharmaceutical companies need to be persuaded there's a market, for starters:
https://www.statnews.com/2018/05/11/contraceptives-for-men-pharma/
And we can support organizations such as the Male Contraceptive Initiative, which "provides funding and advocacy support for the research and development of new methods of non-hormonal, reversible male birth control":
https://www.malecontraceptive.org/
There have been efforts to make an effective male contraceptive that guys would take for many decades. It's NOT going to happen. The side effects are not tolerable.
Females have been more accepting of the lowered quality of life, and need for antidepressants that contraceptive use so often brings.
It's definitely the case that:
1. Efforts to make an effective male contraceptive go back decades, at least to the 1970s.
2. Hormonal approaches have so far been unsatisfactory. One notable study published in late 2016 found that the treatment being tested, while appealing to many men in the study who didn't encounter significant side effects, also led to acne and moderate to severe mood swings for some participants:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/03/500549503/male-birth-control-study-killed-after-men-complain-about-side-effects
3. Many men may not have the same incentives that many women have, to tolerate side effects. As the author of the NPR article linked above observed, "When women use a contraceptive, they're balancing the risks of the drug against the risks of getting pregnant. And pregnancy itself carries risks. But these are healthy men — they're not going to suffer any [direct personal health] risks if they get somebody else pregnant."
Perhaps for that reason, currently promising approaches generally use non-hormonal approaches. Broadly speaking, conceptually and from early findings, these may have tolerable or better side effect profiles.
Two early, as-yet promising examples of such non-hormonal approaches – and we're likely to see more of these over time – are:
* Vasagel-based Plan A, https://www.mddionline.com/new-technologies/-plan-a-offers-a-new-option-in-male-birth-control
* YCT-529, https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/news/yourchoice-therapeutics-begins-first-human-trial-male-birth-control-pill
It's also worth noting that, while male contraceptive research spans some five decades or so, there hasn't been a lot of funding, nor a lot of research carried out, across that period, relative to many other biomedical products.
One key issue: major pharmaceutical companies have been skeptical about whether these products could be profitable; whether their significant R&D costs – given the evident physiological challenges of this problem – would be recouped and then return an adequate ROI, in the face of uncertain demand by men. As Olivia Plana wrote in a 2017 journal article (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5675331/), "The unknown acceptability of male contraception has remained a barrier for research."
Exactly. Low acceptance by men of every option that has come up so far, has stifled new research attempts. And the hydrogel example was developed by a man with a sense of mission since he personally found the foster care system to be problematic. So far no one knows how long the hydrogels will last, and of course there's the possibility of allergy or other physiological responses turning the temporary blockage into a permanent one.
Adding further complication is that the birth control and many other types of offerings from pharma have largely taken self regulation of behavior off the table.
Ok. Interesting..what do you suggest we do to raise birth rates?
See here: https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/fertility-in-an-ideal-world