On the last Tuesday Teasers, I encouraged folks to participate in Blog For Choice 2012, the theme of which is “What will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?” Commenter Jenn_smithson wrote in response:
The chosen theme this year has irritated me because in response I ask WHAT prochoice candidates?!! I don’t believe there are ANY for national office. You basically have whack-a-do extremist “prolife” candidates on the right and spineless wish-washy candidates on the left, Seriously, our rights are going to continue being slammed unless someone takes a legitimate, strong stand and who isn’t ashamed to do so. I get so sick and tired of allegedly progressive democrats looking at the ground, pulling at their collars, and/or only able to articulate support of those rights in the case their daughter(s) have an “accident” because they don’t want to help raise any spring break bastard babies.
I think Jenn has just given me the kernel of my own response to this year’s question, which will be putting forward what a true pro-choice candidate would look like.
So help me Harpies: If you could construct an ideal pro-choice politician, what would the talking points be? What rights would they support and how would they articulate their support for those rights? What sort of vision of women, girls, families, and reproductive justice would they put forth? Brainstorm away, and I’ll do my best to distill the conversation into a final post for January 22nd.
Honestly, this may not be the most popular opinion, but here it goes:
If a candidate wants to be considered pro-choice, to me, the first thing I’m going to look at is whether they support policies that make it easier to be a mother. I have known women personally who terminated pregnancies because they said “I can’t afford it” or “I couldn’t leave my job” or something like that. And that’s sad, because some of them did want to be mothers. Even though you could say their ability to end the pregnancies is a pro-choice victory, I can never see it that way. If a woman has an abortion because she lacks support or resources and would otherwise keep the pregnancy except for those reasons, that to me is a failure of the movement. Pro-choice is also providing support to women who want to be parents.
So, to me, to be pro-choice, a candidate needs to support comprehensive maternity leave reform, favor WIC, favor food aid for mothers, favor comprehensive healthcare reform, favor reforming housing laws to make it easier to own a home and stay in your home, favor educational reform to make it easier for women and children to go to school, be invested in promoting preventive and mental health services… you get the idea. That’s the stuff I am going to look at first.
So honestly, I can say that advocating for mothers (or those who want to be mothers) is SO much harder than not advocating for them. My son is wonderful, but he is expensive. If I did not have access to a lot of the resources I have, it would be very hard indeed. But honestly, that is my idea of a pro-choice candidate. personally, that’s why I divide politicians into 3 groups: anti-abortion, pro-abortion and pro-choice.
“My fellow Americans, as of this morning I have exercised extraordinary executive privilege by dissolving the United States Congress and establishing martial law. All private insurance will be nationalized and reorganized and doctors’ medical debt will be socialized to make up for the lower compensation they will receive. Publicly funded parental leave will be instated and an abortion clinic will be available within every 100 miles.
You have made this necessary because as a body politic you are incapable of electing good people.”
@Drahill … I completely agree that a part of making the choice to parent/not parent meaningful, caregiving has to be recognized and materially supported in a way it totally isn’t right now (politically or culturally). We talk “family values” as a culture, and idealize parenting, and treat children like valuable commodities, but very rarely actually show those folks (large and small) respect as human beings.
@Drahill
AWESOME POST.
The end.
@Drahill: well, within reason. I agree with your list. But what if someone wants 10 kids? Where does society’s responsibility end?
I also take issue with your term “pro-abortion.” I don’t believe there’s any such thing. We all know that abortion is often the least bad choice, and no one gets pregnant so she can go get one. Antis use the term “pro-abortion” to describe anyone who wants abortion to be legal and available. It’s not like our position is that we support abortion over childbearing. Pro-choice is still the correct term if you’re only talking about abortion access. We want abortion to be a choice that is available to any woman who wants it.
For me, a pro-choice candidate is one who says that abortion should be available, accessible, and affordable for any woman or girl who wants one. Period. No conditions, no restrictions, no judgments.
I know a couple of people who are Ron Paul supporters, and they will not believe me when I tell them that “state’s rights” is code for “oppressing the powerless”. It’s just beyond belief. He says he’s an anti, and he’s introduced federal legislation to give fetuses legal status (so much for scorning the power of the federal government). So what he’s saying is that he would do nothing to protect the right of women to control our bodies if some state legislature decided to take it away-as they are doing on a regular basis these days.
I agree with Drahill that pro-choice has to come with pro-the ability to make choices to be meaningful, but I’d emphasize different things. For example, pro-comprehensive sex ed (required in public schools, private schools, homeschooling…). Pro-education about contraception and access to contraception. Pro-enthusiastic consent.
@baraqiel co-sign all those “pro-”s!
Wow. I feel honored to have been featured above!
I think one point that I wanted to make but was too irritated and on a roll last time to mak us that I want candidates and officials, particularly, to not use my fundamental human rights like a $10 chip whenever ANY issue comes up which requires compromise. The healthcare debate was a prime example of this. I envision republican and democrat men sitting around a green felt table with cigars and cognac, the democrats make the first bet which is for comprehensive healthcare, the republicans balk at anything that would help someone other than the wealthiest and corporations, and after many rounds of betting the democrats say, ‘alright, to get this thing passed, why don’t we throw in the bodily autonomy of 52% of the population? Super, nice betting with you boys!’
I want a candidate who understands that the right to control my own body is the foundation of all other rights. If the government can ultimately tell me I must remain pregnant when I don’t want to be or that I cannot remain pregnant when I want (and the government that tells me I can’t end a pregnancy is the same government that can later change its position and demand that I abort), then that government has control over me and my life. No matter what right I wish to exercise, if I don’t have the right to control my body (and therefore life and future), nothing else matters and since the government is treating me like a child, they can choose to simply ignore me or put me away if I become unruly. I seriously cannot stress how important it is to have control over your body and destiny. Any candidate who is prochoice needs to not only understand this but needs to articulate it as well. My rights are not a bargaining chip, full stop, and I’m sick of them being treated as though they are.
After that, I would also want the candidate to support paid maternity leave (which so called “prolife” candidates should support as it would lead more women to keep pregnancies but they are usually the ones screaming about “personal responsibility”), health care, education, housing, transportation, environmental and consumer protections, and generally other progressive stances on issues. And I would LOVE a candidate who didn’t act like taxes were a four-letter word. I, personally, would not mind paying more taxes if it meant I could access necessary services that weren’t gutted to be ineffectual.
And DAYCARE! I DEMAND STATE DAYCARE! I don’t have a choice but to work (thanks to wage stagnation, lack of opportunity, and student loans). So my child has to go somewhere while I plug away as a disgustingly low paid state employee. If you want me to be responsible for my family (not to mention that crushing student debt, again) and not be at home collecting assistance, I say you actually give me an incentive to do so by making it an affordable option. Private day cares can STILL exist for those who can afford them but there desperately needs to be assistance for ALL parents should they choose it.
The most basic element of a prochoice candidate that I am looking for, though, is simply the acknowledgement that my right to control my body is essential for me to determine my destiny and because of that, it is not up for negotiation or bargaining. Everything else stems from that understanding and acknowledgement.
MM: The problem I have with saying “well, what if somebody wants 10 kids?” is that it’s an abritrary line. 10 kids would be too many for me – but for somebody else, it’s not. My parents had 5 – and we encountered people who said that was too many! I favor policies that make it possible for any wanted pregnancy to be carried to term and the child given birth to and raised well.
And, oh, I do believe there’s such a thing as pro-abortion. If a candidate will vote to support abortion funding and access but then vote AGAINST laws that expand maternity leave, protect against pregnancy discrimination or crack down on predatory lending, then they’ve voted to make the abortion choice easier but the motherhood choice harder. And pro-choice means making all the choices equally valid and accessible. If it ever popped into my head that I could not have my son, it was not because he was unwanted (he was deeply wanted). It was because I was worried about money, housing, where I was going to get supplies, working and maternity leave. That’s the stuff that was creeping into my head. And those things should NOT be worries.
To me, you can’t be pro-choice if you don’t support mothers and women who want to be mothers. And yes, that includes voting for and putting your weight behind laws that benefit mothers and children. And if you vote against them, in my mind, you’re not pro-choice, because you’re not fighting for all the choices in equal measure. That’s just my two cents.
I agree that maternity and paternity leave, access to food and housing, and all the other issues mentioned above are essential to a well-functioning society that supports every individual’s right to choose whether to abort or carry a child to term. However, I disagree that there is no difference between a candidate who fails to support those necessities but does support abortion rights, and a candidate who wants to criminalize abortion. In one case, the state is actually telling people which choice to make and labeling them as criminals if they make the wrong choice – in the other case, the state is merely facilitating conditions which encourage one option over another.
Sara: I said 3 catagories: anti-abortion (those who seek to ban it), pro-abortion (those who promote abortion access and rights but fail to promote laws and policies that support and protect mothers) and pro-choice (those who support abortion access and pro-parenting policies). Its a fairly clear distinction, in my mind.
Drahill, can you name any legislator who actually votes that way? In my experience, people who vote for abortion access are pretty solid on all its related issues.
The provision of basic health care and a social safety net require us to draw arbitrary lines. They won’t please everyone but they have to be discussed and created. We don’t want to face that in the US, but health care in particular is not a bottomless well. How many rounds of fertility treatments should the taxpayers be required to cover, for instance?
The idea that money should never be a concern with family planning is, to me, specious. Kids are expensive. Even if you have health care and parental leave, there’s clothing and food and all of the attendant costs of having kids, perhaps including college tuition. Do you really believe that housing costs, for example, should be borne by taxpayers?
I believe that housing is a human right. So, to an extent, I believe that a base form of housing is a human right (I’m probably biased on this point, since I work for a public housing agency). I don’t believe housing entitles one to a lovely 4 bedroom home with bamboo flooring. And some homeless people for one reason or another, choose to not use housing. But I think purposefully leaving people on the street is a disgrace for the government. So to some extent, yes, I think that taxes should be used to ensure a base level of housing and care. This stuff gets far easier when I started looking at it through a human rights perspective and not a national or federalist view.
And of course children are expensive. But to me, the valid expenses should be clothing, baby things, if one chooses it, private education. Whether your going to be homeless should not be a worried over expense. Whether your going to starve should not enter into your mind. I have to stretch my dollars pretty far these days. But I do not have to decide whether it’ll be me or my husband who eats today. Financial concerns should be dictated, to me, by things like other family goals, personal goals of the parents, ect. Not decisions concerning things that should be (but are not yet) human rights that no person, parent or not, should have to worry about. I am super uncomfortable when any argument runs into “you have too many children” argument, because it inevitably goes to the question of “well, how many is too many” and whether it is ever appropriate to police reproductive choices. And that’s a place I’m not willing to go much.
As to your first point, I think that that is the difference between many liberals and progressives (and add some conservatives in there). I live in Pennsylvania currently. We had Arlen Specter, who would vote against abortion restrictions but would also vote against progressive initiatives quite often (Specter started as a Democrat, became a Republican, and ended his career as a Democrat again). You also have plenty of Democrats who will use their pro-abortion votes to bolster their cred but will vote with republicans to bolster their poll numbers in red areas. I’m a political junkie – I read the roll call votes each week and try to know every vote that my politicians make. Seriously, do it for a week. The results will shock you.
@Drahill – A quibble: “But to me, the valid expenses should be clothing, baby things, if one chooses it, private education.”
I’m not sure if I’m reading you correctly, but are you saying that you think people should get money from the government to send their kids to private school?
Yeah, I live in PA too, and Spector was never trustworthy. How about someone currently in office? Being a pro-choice voter is not such a popular thing that it will boost poll numbers, it seems to me.
The question isn’t whether we’re policing people’s reproductive choices. The question is who will pay for those choices, and if you expect the taxpayers to cover the costs of a family, they have the right to ask questions about what they’re paying for. What constitutes basic housing for a family of 10 as opposed to a family of 4? And if it’s more space, why should society pay for your choice?
Again, saying that housing is a human right is all well and good, but the money has to come from somewhere. Although I agree that our spending priorities are messed up in the US, it’s not going to happen that we shut down the armed forces, for instance, to provide a better safety net. And we have a publicly funded education system, so suggesting that taxpayers fund your choice to send your kid to a private or parochial school is not reasonable, in my opinion.
I was saying with private education is that is an expense that should fall to the family since it is a private preference, in most cases (like with religious schools). There are expenses that should rightly fall to families. but there are some expenses of simply living that one should not have to sweat.
I’ve worked with plenty of families of 10 who need housing. It’s not rare in the least. We try to put them in a space that would give them adequate space to live. To me, turning them away because of the size of the family would, to me, be policing them. Especially now, because you may have two parents with 8 kids. And they’re low-income, so I feel pretty safe in saying that they probably did not have the means to prevent those 8 kids in the first place. You only GET to reproductive choice when you can assume that choice existed in the first place. So, in a way, they are in that position because of the fucked-up priorities of their society. So, personally, I don’t see a problem with society shouldering part of that cost. When birth control and reproductive control is uniform throughout this country, THEN we can talk about personal responsibility and personal vs. societal costs. Until then, I think it premature.
There are nations in this world that DO manage to provide housing and basic care for all their citizens. the United States has priorities that do not comport with nations that have adopted the human rights model of care. That model accounts for the family size issue by saying that regardless of the family size, a person is entitled to basic care because of their status as human. And that’s as far as it goes. There are lots of nations that are providing decent models for the United States in terms of housing and healthcare. The US’s failure to keep up with progressive nations is not reason to say “well, the government is shit, so you should know better.” Its reason to say “The government is failing us, we need to make it do better.”
And generally, I should note, in those nations that have greater social safety nets, birthrates are a good bit lower than here. Providing that net generally encourages women to advance more, take greater control of their lives and plan children. So I’m not sure where you’re coming from with the idea that providing a strong safety net would result in a population explosion. the data doesn’t see that one through.
In terms of recent politicians who were not staunchly pro-choice in terms of progressive pro-parent policies, I am most familiar with the ones around here. Specter’s views weren’t really transitory – he was fairly consistent in his views on things, he was just untrustworthy politically. As for politicians who support abortion rights but who have not-so-great records with other issues that impact parents, well (forgive me so saying this) Gabrielle Giffords gets criticized a lot for being pro-choice but taking some hard-line positions on immigration issues (which impact the unification of families and impact mothers and children). That would be an example of a politician who supports abortion but also supports policies that harm mothers and families. Generally, the best politicians are in the progressive caucuses – and even most Democrats aren’t in those. I think most liberal politicians like that voters assume that if they’re voting right on abortion rights, they’re voting right on everything else. And it’s often not true. Radical mother bloggers like Mai’a over at Feministe (at least she used to be) and Renee at Womanist Musings do a far better job of making these arguments than I.
Spector’s behavior towards Anita Hill told us all we needed to know about his attitude towards women.
I agree with all the theory you express. Women who have easy and affordable access to BC do tend to have smaller families and more stable economic lives. But that doesn’t answer my basic question about allocation of resources. Even countries with single payer plans have to make decisions about what to cover and what not to. Again, I raise the question about fertility treatments. You seem to be saying that childbearing is a right. But what if you need medical intervention? Fertility treatments are very expensive. Do you think that anyone who wants them should have as many as they want? What if they already have kids? What if they’re post-menopausal?
I just don’t agree that failure of government policy is a reason to excuse irresponsible personal behavior. A kid is the biggest responsibility any of us can take on in our lives. Sure, things happen you don’t plan for. But not taking into account one’s financial and living situations before deciding to get pregnant is doing a disservice to your future kids. People throughout history have understood that kids are a financial drain, and putting off childbearing until you can afford to rear a kid is hardly unusual or oppressive behavior.
MM: I think the issue I have with the argument you’re making is that it’s the argument that often leads to anti-choice arguments. Is having any sex at all irresponsible behavior when your totally not ready for a child? Probably – since one of sex’s pretty natural and foreseeable consequences is pregnancy. It’s not a far jump from there to say “well, if your not ready for children, don’t have sex.” You can take preventive measures all you want, but the risk of pregnancy is always present when you have sex and are of fertile age. So why should we even offer Birth control and abortion services when we could just demand personal responsibility? (And yes, I am being facetious here to make a point). The personal responsibility argument only works in a world where women (and men) have complete control over there reproductive choices and planning. And as we’re both pretty aware, that is not the case now. Do you automatically look at a large family in need of social services and think they’re irresponsible? I don’t, because I know that they more than likely did not have the resources to keep themselves a small family.
And again, I don’t see how because the US is shitty at allocating resources equals a view that we should just accept this crappiness and start emphasizing this “personal responsibility” concept. It means we get pissed and fight the government to make changes to respect human rights.
And I would quibble with your last point that putting off childbearing until financially ready not oppressive. I’d agree with you – if we lived in a society that basically required students who want to live comfortable lives to go into tens of thousands of dollars in debt to obtain decent livings, and required people to work to obtain even baseline healthcare services. My son was not planned, but if we had planned him based around our financial situation, we probably would not have had kids until we were in our late 30s (we’re mid-20s now). That is how long it will take me to pay off my law school debt. So in an ideal world, I’d agree. But financial solvency in the US right now is not easy to obtain – in fact, it can be a fucking pipe dream.
Childbearing as a right is interesting. Under the human rights laws out there now, none of them really address it. Personally, I see the decision to have a child as a personal one (that should be made without concern to the ability to meet basic human rights-centered things like food or housing). In theory, any process to conceive or have a child would be termed healthcare because it is medical in nature. Any decision about covering it would be determined by whether there is a need for the services. Right now, in the US, a big reason why IVF is so demanded is because of what I pointed out above – that the need to be “financially stable” can take decades for some couples and by the time they are ready for children, they need medical intervention to achieve it. In that case, if society is partly to blame for setting up a system that discourages early childbearing, than I think society should bear the cost. seems fair.
You’re right, the personal responsibility argument is a common anti one. The difference is when you ask the question. Encouraging men and women to think about the possible consequences of their actions before they engage in them is a very different thing than punishing them for not doing so after the fact. I don’t judge women who want abortions-I’m a clinic escort, for heaven’s sake! But I do disapprove of deliberate decisions to have kids when you know you can’t afford them. It’s doing a disservice to your kids and demonstrating that you are not ready to be a parent. The idea that you can’t do whatever you want whenever you want to is not oppression-it’s adulthood. You can’t buy a house or a car unless you can show that you can afford those things. But we can bring children into the world without the least thought about how we’re going to support them for several decades.
You offer no evidence for the assertion in your last paragraph about IVF. I could just as readily say that fertility treatments are in demand because women who are giving their attention to their careers delay childbearing. If that’s the case, should the taxpayers be on the hook for endless rounds of treatments? What does “a need for the services” mean? What if I feel that I “need” a nose job?
” Encouraging men and women to think about the possible consequences of their actions before they engage in them is a very different thing than punishing them for not doing so after the fact.”
Ok, so how does this actually work if not after the fact? Do you base the decision about whether to offer housing assistance, WIC, or healthcare to the child on whether or not that child was planned? ‘Oh, I’m sorry Mrs. Smithson, you can’t receive assistance because you answered ‘yes’ to the question of whether this was a planned pregnancy and since it wasn’t just a total surprise, you should have planned better, set aside more money regardless of the fact that you just don’t make enough.’. How do you “encourage” people to “be responsible” at any time BEFORE the choice unless there are such dire consequences after the fact? You can wag your finger at folks all you want to “be responsible” and think ahead but the only way you can ensure that people follow your plan is to enforce consequences after the fact.
This is sounding oddly familiar like the conversation following the ‘Yes we can have babies when we want to’ article from a couple of years ago.
” But I do disapprove of deliberate decisions to have kids when you know you can’t afford them. It’s doing a disservice to your kids and demonstrating that you are not ready to be a parent. ”
What does it mean to “afford” a child or children? Is it okay if people can afford the basic necessities – housing, utilities, food, and medical care? Or do they also need to be able to afford college education? And what if they need a little help now and then like their child has a milk protein allergy and requires special formula that costs nearly $50 a canister which lasts, at best, 6 days? And who gets to ultimately decide whether you fall into the fortunate category of “able” with the privilege of having children or the other category? Who should make that decision if NOT the people wanting to have a child(ren)?
Again, it’s all well and good to want to “encourage” people to consider such an important decision. And as someone who planned to get pregnant, it wasn’t an accident, I can tell you that, much like the decision of whether or not to obtain an abortion, it’s not made on a whim. However, there is a portion of that decision that is purely emotional. I wanted to hav a child, I wanted to increase the love in our lives, I wanted to feel that joy and it has far exceeded any and all expectations. People don’t often have children based solely on whether it’s the most sensible decision. This does not make them (or me) bad parents.
I make just enough to cover the basics. All my calculations prior to getting pregnant and giving birth, were nowhere close to what it actually amounted to. Even with my crappy health insurance, I wasn’t expecting to develop gestational diabetes which drained our savings with the additional testing and ultrasounds, not to mention testing strips. I’ve applied for WIC for his special formula, something else I couldn’t have known he’d need, as well as CHIP for him. In fact, I make so little money as a full time state employee that he actually qualifies for Medicaid. So according to you, are my husband and I bad parents? We decided to have a child that we have had to seek assistance to “afford,” so that makes us bad parents according to your criteria, right? I guess since we planned to have him, just not well enough, we shouldn’t be given any assistance. Sink or swim and have a better plan or just be rich next time, right?
” The idea that you can’t do whatever you want whenever you want to is not oppression-it’s adulthood. ”
And how does this relate to policy decisions? If this was the foundation of government decisions regarding reproduction, then everyone who could not meet some arbitrary standard of being able to “afford” children would be forced to remain on birth control until they could meet that standard, have abortions if they experienced a birth control failure, or be penalized should they keep the pregnancy. That this would effect the poor more than the wealthy is oppression.
There is not a way to control people before the choice is made. You can tell them until you’re blue in the face that you don’t think their decision is the “responsible” or “adult” one but it’s not going to change much. They may think they’re doing well enough to afford it, they may underestimate just how much it costs, or they may, after trying very hard to get their incomes up, just decide to throw caution to the wind because they want to experience having a child. For whatever reason they base the decision on, these are very personal decisions that are often not subject to much government intervention because the government doesn’t own us and cannot make those decisions for us.
So the only thing we can do is decide how we approach people AFTER the decision has been made and in many cases when a child now exists. Do we deny people some housing assistance, WIC, or medical care for the child because they made the choice to have said child without being able to afford things? If so, how does that help that child?
As for the red-herring IVF, there’s no reason to approach it and other elective procedures than we do now and that countries with more inclusive health care do. It is unfortunate that some people cannot get pregnant or bring a pregnancy to term. The ability to have children is not a medical necessity. You are not going to die if you do not reproduce and if you will, then it should be covered for you. Likewise if you need a nose job because it’s medically necessary, then you should have one (and my Mom had an eye lift that insurance covered because it is medically necessary so it can happen that way). Still, whether you really need something for your life and health does not come down to a personal desire based on vanity. You need it, your doctor agrees, then it should be covered. If other countries can do this, so can we.
In the end, the “personal responsibility” mantra has little to no effect prior to the decision being made. It’s only used as justification in our current political climate to stick it to the poor. Don’t want to be homeless? Should have thought about that before you spread your legs. Need special formula for your kid? You should have saved more money before you had that kid. Stop whining about how you’re not paid enough, suck it up buttercup and accept “responsibility.”. BOOTSTRAPS!!!1!! LET THEM EAT BOOTSTRAPS!!!!!
MM: The problem with saying “wait to have kids till you can afford it” is a platitude. And platitudes are real easy to say, real hard to figure out what they actually mean and how they work. What is “ready” to have a child? Being able to meet that child’s basic needs (But then you need to decide if that means with or without something like WIC, Foodstamps, ect.) If it does, you’ve just stated that most people living under the poverty line should not have kids. Is it living debt free? My husband and I are collectively on the hook for debts around $150,000 (and that is all student loans). On paper, we are not anywhere ideal for childbearing. The problem with saying “delay childbearing until you’re ready and financially able” is that it is a vapid term – what is financial stability? What is ready? And why should we codify your definition of it into the law and not Rick Santorum’s? Or Barack Obama’s? Or anybody’s? I keep getting the impression that your of the impression that by passing laws or policies that support mothers, children and families, we’ll somehow be encouraging irresponsible childbearing, when all the data suggests that is not the case. Widespread social spending most often has the effect of decreasing childbearing in nations that pursue these policies. My problem with the argument you’ve presented regarding childbearing is that it seems to posit that widespread policies that protect and support mothers, children and families will cave under the irresponsible childbearing that will happen – and all the data indicates that this is not case and that we could anticipate a reduction in the birthrate. Again, there is a wide distinction between personal belief and government policy. You can personally think that the woman with 10 kids is an irresponsible flake – but what of it? Should she be denied housing, food aid, education because of it? The “personal responsibility” argument, in terms of actual government policy, is generally punitive. It’s code for saying “you acted wrong so now you can’t access aid!” Because I’m not sure your seeing the difference. I mean, I guess the question boils down to, would you support punitive policies against those (and by extension, their families and children) who do not comport to your standards of personal responsibility? If you answer no, your basically agreeing with what I initially said. I mean, I really am trying to get where your coming from, but it’s tricky when your (inadvertently!) trotting out the oldest classist argument for reproductive coercion in the book.
As for IVF, what I meant for the need for the services is that whether societal pressures or influences have pushed women into delaying childbearing (and the evidence I cited came from several surveys on why couples pursue IVF – one of the major ones if because they commit to being “financially stable” before childbearing and by the time they are, they need assistance). And honestly? Your point about “well, women pursue their careers more!” is a little flip. It makes it sound as though women sit down and say “well, I need to advance my career – better schedule that IVF for 15 years down the line!” Trust me, I know couples who have done IVF – if they could get pregnant naturally, they all would. IVF is a nasty procedure no matter how you cut it; couples who wind up in it often were the ones who took society’s dominant message that they should wait till they are stable and ready to have kids, and found stability came too far done the road. There are a myriad of reasons why IVF is expanding, but a major one IS that we now have a society that by and large promotes later in life childbearing. And that supports my point – I believe that if society is partly pushing later in life childbearing, an increase in IVF is foreseeable and thus, society should anticipate bearing the costs. If we had an egalitarian society in which there were no serious hurdles to childbearing at any age, then I think IVF would have to be determined by an analysis of allocation of the resources. If you believe that society has a vested interest in the expansion of it’s members or culture, then society may WANT to cover it – a society like Russia, which is in dire need of a population boost and heavily promotes childbearing among its citizens. A nation like China? Probably would not – it depends on the desires and needs of the society. That to me would be the determining factor.
Right on, Drahill. SRSLY. To all of it.
Jen_smithson is right that this is sounding awfully like the thread that came after my post about women having babies at any age. Which is to say, people will ALWAYS judge women negatively for their childbearing decisions, whether for reasons of maternal age, finances, fertility treatments, delaying childbirth, number of children they have already, etc. If any of us had to have unanimous approval from friends, family, doctors, or society at large before getting pregnant, no children would ever be born in this country.
Someone will always think that you’re making the wrong decision no matter what your decision is, even other feminists. That’s why it’s essential that we keep the church, the state, and everyone else OUT the business of policing women’s uteri.
It doesn’t help the discussion to react as though I was attacking your lives. I’m not. I don’t know you. Having kids is a journey into the unpredictable, and even with the very best planning and financial resources, things can go bad in a heartbeat. Once a kid is born, we as a society owe that child the best we can give it. What I’m saying is that the best society can afford may not be everything the parents want.
I should have made a distinction between private actions and public policy. Baraqiel is right when she says that we don’t educate our kids properly around sexual and life-planning decisions. Classes that use a baby doll to demonstrate what it’s like to have an infant are a start. But we need to help them think about their own wishes and desires for their lives and how to achieve those, how to plan and enforce a budget and a savings plan, how to negotiate with sex partners, how to use BC and EC…we just fail at all of that. Sure, parents have the primary responsibility in these areas, but more reinforcement is better, and not all parents are ready or willing to have those ongoing discussions.
We can’t expect kids to make informed choice without information. And I think that that information should include questions about choices and responsibilities. I’m not saying that everyone will come up with the same answers, or that they should. But to me, having a kid is the single most serious decision a person can make. We ask kids to think a lot more about college choices than childbearing ones, it seems to me. We want our kids to grow up to be responsible adults, and wouldn’t part of that be helping kids think about whether and/or when to become parents? Kids should grow up with a sense of responsibility to themselves, their loved ones, their communities, and their planet. How we act out those responsibilities is up to the individual.
But all that is a whole different thing than public policy. I’m totally with Becky-up to a point. Our choices about childbearing should be ours and no one else’s. BUT. Once you start asking outside entities to pay for your choices, you are going to lose some control. It’s true with loans, grants, and scholarships, and it’s true of government-funded programs of all sorts. No government can afford to pay for everything everyone wants or thinks they need, even if it’s the most progressive country on earth. Every country that provides single-payer health care rations that health care. They have to. So what I’m asking is how do we as a society make the difficult decisions that we have to make? Do we pay for 40 rounds of IVF for couple A if that means there’s no money left for couple B? Or for housing for someone’s 10th child when another person would like to have her first?
I am in no way saying that we should punish parents or kids by withholding funds and services they need to have a humane standard of living. What I’m asking is how we make the financial decisions that are a necessary part of doing that. We can cut corporate subsidies and trim the military and tax the rich and all that stuff that I’m in favor of, but that still won’t be enough to give everyone everything that would give them an optimal life. I don’t hear Drahill or Jenn explaining how we allocate resources that are not infinite. To pretend that they are is to do those in need a terrible disservice.
Okay, here’s the thing about “why should we pay for IVF?” that really frosts my feminist cookies.
Women who need fertility treatments need them because their reproductive systems (or their partner’s) don’t work the way they should. It is a disability when our bodies do not do the things they are supposed to do, for whatever reason; the vast majority of women who have fertility treatments are of natural childbearing age and, medically speaking, SHOULD be able to conceive or carry a pregnancy to term.
If we were talking about a condition where any other system—endocrine, neurological, gastro-intestinal, cardio-vascular, etc—required medical treatment to make it do what should, we would not be having this discussion. We would not be saying: “Why should insurance/national health have to pay for your treatments? Your condition isn’t life-threatening. Just deal with it.” (Or maybe some of us would, but those people would be assholes.)
And yet, I hear constantly that people don’t think insurers should cover the cost of treating a woman’s sub-functioning reproductive system the way the medical establishment treats every other biological system because having children “isn’t necessary.” It’s just another example of the misogynist attitude that women don’t actually have the right to make informed decisions about medical care for their reproductive systems; they only get that privilege if it’s agreed upon and given by others.
“It doesn’t help the discussion to react as though I was attacking your lives. I’m not. I don’t know you.”
And yet when you write crap like, “But I do disapprove of deliberate decisions to have kids when you know you can’t afford them. It’s doing a disservice to your kids and demonstrating that you are not ready to be a parent.” You’re describing my husband and I and asserting that we are bad parents. We ABSOLUTELY meet your criteria of not “affording” a child and yet going ahead with that decision. You may not know me from Eve but you still felt justified in judging people like me. It’s just a coincidence that someone you called “irresponsible” and “not ready to be a parent” just happened to actually be on this board to reply to it.
“No government can afford to pay for everything everyone wants or thinks they need, even if it’s the most progressive country on earth.”
No government has tried. More to the point though, this is a straw man. No one has argued, AT ALL, that the government is supposed to become a Santa Claus and meet all wants. I don’t want or expect the government to meet my “wants.” I expect the government to meet my basic needs if I cannot – clean water, safe housing, health care, basic nutrition, education.
“Every country that provides single-payer health care rations that health care.”
OMG – let’s all clutch our pearls at “rationing” health care. Rationing doesn’t mean that your basic needs are not met. And, what’s more, is that when you have national health care, it tends to drive costs down because the government has a vested interest in health care being affordable. Suddenly, health insurance and pharmaceutical companies don’t set the market up for the wealthiest.
“Do we pay for 40 rounds of IVF for couple A if that means there’s no money left for couple B?”
Since you’re the only one who has argued that national health care would equal IVF treatments for all and that they would be just as expensive as they are in our market driven environment, why don’t you go ahead and set the limits. /end eyeroll. Your entire IVF tangent has been a red herring.
“Or for housing for someone’s 10th child when another person would like to have her first?”
First, families who decide to have 10 children are EXTREMELY rare. If they need housing assistance, that’s fine, they should be able to access the housing that they need without losing their shirts over it. Having said that, if you have 9 children in an apartment/house, it is not that difficult to add a 10th. As long as you have somewhere to put a crib/bassinet/bed, that’s all that’s needed. And it can go anywhere, a closet, hallway, next to mom and dad’s bed, heck I’ve even seen people set aside the dining nook for the new baby. It’s not necessary to add another wing onto this hypothetical house for this extremely hypothetical family. As for the other person, is she at risk of homelessness without the assistance? If so, then she should be given assistance. You’re trying to set up a false dichotomy that simply does not exist in reality. In reality, a larger family does not mean that a smaller family is going to be booted to the streets because housing people costs largely the same from family to family. It costs the same to house a family of 4-6 as it does to house a family of 2 (down here, at any rate and that’s because the apartment complex we work with only has 2 bedroom units which we’ve still managed to house “large” families in).
“We can cut corporate subsidies and trim the military and tax the rich and all that stuff that I’m in favor of, but that still won’t be enough to give everyone everything that would give them an optimal life.”
Straw man. No one is arguing for an “optimal” life. Further, you do not know that it would not be enough to provide basic levels of care and assistance because again, it’s not been done here. We could enforce corporate tax rates and close their loopholes which currently allow exorbitantly wealthy companies to get away with paying no taxes. We could enforce better oversight over military spending, particularly with contracts, while cutting military spending. We could return tax rates on the wealthiest 1% to the level it was in the 40′s and 50′s. All of this would result in an enormous surplus.
“I don’t hear Drahill or Jenn explaining how we allocate resources that are not infinite. To pretend that they are is to do those in need a terrible disservice.”
Begging the question. Prove they are finite. Increasing tax revenue in order to promote general welfare has the effect of further increasing tax revenue. If I did not have heinous student loans and if all of my health care had been covered during my pregnancy, I would have more money to spend on consumer goods and services thus bolstering the economy as well as increasing tax revenue. Hell, I would have actually been able to get people gifts for Christmas which I was not able to afford. And if I didn’t have student loans, I might actually be able to afford a humble home of my own which would help the housing industry as well as increase the local tax base.
The only disservice we do to people in need is to pretend that we don’t actually have the money to help them as well as convince them that they don’t deserve help because they should have thought about their choices a little harder before they made them.
“Once a kid is born, we as a society owe that child the best we can give it. What I’m saying is that the best society can afford may not be everything the parents want.”
And no one has argued that parents should get everything that they want. We have been arguing that parents, and non-parents too, should have what they absolutely need. Further, we’re not equating grown adults to four year olds who think they “need” every toy on the shelf. But, by all means, continue constructing straw men if they make you feel better.
@Becky Sharper who wrote, “they only get that privilege if it’s agreed upon and given by others.”
I had never actually thought about the issue in this way and from this perspective. Now that I have, I think you’re absolutely right. And that last sentence is particularly powerful. Thank you for my new perspective.
I’ve been lurking most of this thread and listening to the conversation unfold; thanks, all of you — and I’ll be sure to use direct quotes and link back to this conversation in whatever “Blog for Choice” post finally comes out of this.
I definitely come down more on the side of those who are arguing we should place external limits on peoples’ reproduction because of limited resources. Michelle Goldberg’s book The Means of Reproduction has a really good analysis of the problems with public policy and law that seek to limit population growth (globally, nationally, by individual family) because of resource issues. Basically, she suggests it’s a straw woman argument (as others on this thread suggest) because the number of people who will want families with many children are proportionally small compared to the general population. Data from multiple studies, in multiple geographic regions, suggest that when women have the ability to limit family size, they will choose smaller families. In part because of resources, but also for quality-of-life issues that go beyond financial concerns.
SisterSong also has a couple of publications on this subject available online, for example this one (PDF) by Betsy Hartmann and Elizabeth Barajas-Roman.
@jenn_smithson – I’m trying to mainly stay out of this, but I really chafe at the idea that someone needs to prove resources are finite. Money is a proxy for spending power — while the amount of money in the world is not fixed or necessarily finite, the amount of actual resources certainly is finite. We do not have the ability to provide infinitely increasing amounts of food or space. I’m not trying to get malthusian here but there is actually a limit to how many people can be sustained on this planet and even if we’re not at that limit now, it sure looks like we will be someday in the not-too-distant future.
I’d also like to point out that in health care in particular, there are other finite resources than money. The organ donation system is a very clear example on the extreme end: viable donated organs are *so* rare that people seeking an organ donation are indeed judged pretty harshly on their choices to figure out who should get an organ (and effectively therefore who should die). Yes, money distorts that somewhat, but only somewhat. Apart from developing new technologies (which of course is ongoing), there is no way to make that supply of organs meet the demand. We make a lot of medications in a way that’s pretty slow and laborious and only works in relatively small quantities (not quite as slow or in as small quantities as “one per human body”, but still…). The resources are limited not just because of Big Pharma’s business practices. I am not super-familiar with the details of IVF, so there might be cheaper options, but: one chemical that I found that can act as GnRH antagonist costs $110/mg. That is roughly 2000 times the price of gold. It is not that expensive because of monopolies or bad business practices (although that may contribute somewhat). It’s expensive because it’s really hard to make certain kinds of chemicals, especially at high purities and large quantities. This kind of chemical, it turns out, can also be used to treat cancer.
My only point is that sometimes resources actually are limited and decisions on how to allocate them actually must be made and it’s not *bad* to try to figure out guidelines on how that might happen even if you disagree on what those guidelines should be.
Also out of curiosity I’d like to ask if the participants in this conversation draw a distinction between government actions that intervene to prevent something versus government inaction that does not intervene to allow something.
@anna – Actually, regarding the connection between population and climate change, a lot of analysts in that and related fields use something called the IPAT equation as a framework to talk about how things like population affect environmental impact. Basically the idea is I(mpact) = P(opulation)*A(ffluence)*T(echnology) (so for example, the CO2 emissions from a certain country’s use of automobiles might be the population of the country multiplied by the measure of affluence, in this case how many cars per capita, multiplied by the measure of the technology, such as CO2 output per car-year, to give CO2 output per year). Every IPAT analysis I’ve ever seen has basically been used to say “we really need to work on this technology part because the other two are definitely going to go up”. The numbers are often a little fuzzy as they tend to be with this sort of thing, but it’s an interesting idea to play with, anyway, and a good encapsulation of the kinds of things that factor into calculations of economic impact on the societal scale (as opposed to analyses of a certain technology over its lifecycle, for example, which is more what I do). I generally agree with the arguments put forth in the link you gave, but the fact that population growth is accelerating CO2 emissions isn’t just rhetoric.
Sorry to keep posting, but I wanted to make one more point — in my observations, most countries that provide the sort of baseline Drahill and jen are talking about also employ policies to discourage large family sizes. For example, in Sweden, housing and day care are guaranteed and they have child allowances that go up indefinitely with the number of children you have (or at least, I couldn’t find a limit — although their tables only go up to 6, it seems to mean “6 or more”). However, they also have a taxation structure that *strongly* encourages dual-earner households. In my view, this functionally operates as a discouragement towards very large families because they don’t provide assistance with domestic labor except by a small, relatively new tax credit that is apparently only used by the rich.
Come on, Jenn, read what I said. Health care is already rationed. But consumers have no control over the way it’s done. I support a single payer government provided system, and such a system would force us to have public discussions of things that are now decided by private companies behind closed doors.
Let me pose a somewhat-hypothetical. In Sweden, as I understand it, the safety net is generous and benefits accrue to families regardless of size. But Sweden as a culture encourages both parents to work and to limit family size, and those are reinforced via social and tax policy. Would you consider such a system to be burdensome to parents?
“Once you start asking outside entities to pay for your choices, you are going to lose some control. It’s true with loans, grants, and scholarships, and it’s true of government-funded programs of all sorts. No government can afford to pay for everything everyone wants or thinks they need, even if it’s the most progressive country on earth.”
MM: See, this is where I think I need you to clarify. You seem to be saying that if a parent could not provide the basics for a child without government aid or intervention, then the parent should hold off having children. Does this mean that if you encountered a couple who wanted children but would need to take WIC or state food aid to provide meals for the child, you would oppose their having the child? The problem I personally take with that attitude is that it fails to recognize that poverty in the US is largely not an individual problem. We have system that is set up to keep people in a permanent underclass (hell, we have a system that pushes people INTO the lower classes!). Thus, any time you talk about financial or economic restraints on childbearing, you are talking about restricting the childbearing of an entire class of people whose situation is by and large not of their own doing.
And, let me give you a tip. You can’t talk about childbearing, mothering and stuff in a feminist context and say “well, I’m talking in theory, I’m not attacking you.” This stuff don’t happen in theory – you’re always going to be talking about real live people in these situations, so just, for future reference.
I find Becky’s point about disability fascinating. I think it provides a nice contrast to the argument you made earlier about career delays. I think we tend to think IVF couples are all in their 40s, older and just missed the baby-making train. But Becky raises a good point about “needing” children. Does a person with one leg truly need a prosthetic? Why do some choose that avenue and others continue with wheelchairs or crutches? I think you’d really, really have a define what “need” actually means in this context.
I think your argument about responsibility is still glossing over what I asked before – how should this personal responsibility concept be codified into law? and whose definition should it be? Personally, I’m wary of any concept that can be changed every 4-8 as Democrats and Republicans switch between administrations. The problem with saying people should be taught responsibility is that its a meaningless term. And when you say responsibility, you seem to keep going back to some vague argument that people should not have kids “if they cannot care for them.” But Both Jenn and myself have pressed that what that means, exactly, but we don’t seem to be getting any clarification. And you really don’t seem to be grasping the serious class implications that a statement like that carries (there are bloggers like Renee Martin who have done an excellent job of really tearing into arguments like that).
And honestly, I’m not getting where you’re seeing that society should pay for everything a parent may desire for their children. I’m under no illusions that the government wouldn’t pay for the premium Buggaboo stroller I’d like to buy. Human rights law is pretty well-defined. The United Nations has identified a list of areas and things that you (and I, and everybody else) should be entitled to by virtue of our existing on this planet. Under human rights law, I don’t need to pleas my case for basic safe housing – my humanity entitles me to it. If you believe that, then you believe that your government is obligated to provide these things if you cannot provide them for yourself. And I think part of what you’re believing is that if the government must provide these things, all citizens will utilize them. That’s not the case. Public housing is not fun by any stretch. It’ll meet your basic needs and keep you safe (at least in my city), but it by no means what most families aspire to. The vast majority of the residents do not want to stay there long term. They aspire to move up in status, and they use their time there generally to save, get job training and eventually move on. And like jenn pointed out, you take a pretty bleak view of people – I have never worked with a family in need of housing that went through and said “well I want THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS.” This isn’t “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” Unless you believe that dependency on SOME government resources begets dependence on ALL of them.
As to your question about finite resources, I think Jenn did a fine job addressing that – the US could pull in far more revenue than it currently does, if it chose to enforce corporate taxation and demand billionaires pay a fair share. And honestly? I don’t like the idea of any government attempting to influence the reproductive habits of any person, one way or the other. Firstly because it tends to generally fail (see: China) or because, personally, to me, it’s probably not an appropriate role of government. As previously stated, very few women purposefully choose to have large families. Mostly, this is because pregnancy is hard, labor can suck and because children are draining and demanding even for the best off of families. Most families are small because that is the preference today. Most women with many children today have them due to an inability to prevent or end pregnancies. years ago, large families were the norm because either 1.) it was assumed that most of the children would not reach adulthood or 2.) families relied on labor from their own homes and needed to breed workers, basically. Since both these needs have been removed, humankind (at least in the first world) has naturally moved towards smaller families, and I’ve seen no evidence that widespread social spending would reverse this.
Honestly, I’m having a hard time getting a reading on what you actually think. Jenn and I have both posed some specific questions towards you to try to clarify, and your sorta dancing around the answers. Either I think you really don’t know, or the answers you’re thinking aren’t ones that could be said on a feminist blog.
“Come on, Jenn, read what I said. Health care is already rationed. But consumers have no control over the way it’s done. I support a single payer government provided system, and such a system would force us to have public discussions of things that are now decided by private companies behind closed doors.”
First, come on yourself. Second, If you support a government provided system, then you already know how citizens will make decisions and exert control over the situation – through the democratic process! And if we don’t like the way that’s working, we can try to change it which is really the beauty of our system in the first place.
“Let me pose a somewhat-hypothetical. In Sweden, as I understand it, the safety net is generous and benefits accrue to families regardless of size. But Sweden as a culture encourages both parents to work and to limit family size,”
And our culture doesn’t encourage parents to work and/or limit family size? I can assure you, it does.
” and those are reinforced via social and tax policy.”
Which would be what, exactly?
” Would you consider such a system to be burdensome to parents?”
Have I indicated in ANY of my comments that I would? Really, you’re the one who needs to READ what is actually written instead of skimming and then constructing straw women out of what’s said. From what I know of the Swedish system I say bring it on. In Sweden, granted from my limited knowledge, people are free to make whatever decision they want to make and can reasonably rely on the safety net to make a basic standard of living manageable.
Further, I am certain that no one in Sweden, prior to or during the set up of their system, was thought to be making the argument that they MUST have every single circumstance or hypothetical situation decided upon. I’m certain that they instituted things, some folks had problems with some of them, and eventually the system EVOLVED to be what it is today. I do not see why we cannot do the same.
Drahill wrote, “Honestly, I’m having a hard time getting a reading on what you actually think. Jenn and I have both posed some specific questions towards you to try to clarify, and your sorta dancing around the answers. Either I think you really don’t know, or the answers you’re thinking aren’t ones that could be said on a feminist blog.”
WORD.
The more I think about it, the more confused I become which reminds me, exactly, of how I felt with that “Yes we can have babies” article. Basically, it sounds like MM believes that there should be widespread government provided Public Service Announcements telling certain groups of people that, in the case of this thread, they need to really think before they have children and yet based on the comments of the past article, you can’t put it off forever. To boil down further, it almost sounds like MM would like the government to really tell everyone that they can’t do whatever they want.
That these PSA’s would disporportionately affect poor people doesn’t seem to matter much. Nor the fact that language matters, greatly, and that there’s not a sufficient buffer between what the government essentially says and the policies it employs. So if your government is telling poor people they need to take “responsibility” when they have kids, it typically translates into punitive policies that make it harder to have/raise kids. OR that there is a huge difference between theory and reality.
baraqiel wrote, “@jenn_smithson – I’m trying to mainly stay out of this, but I really chafe at the idea that someone needs to prove resources are finite.”
I asked for proof because of the straw woman employed in MM’s statement.
And, I was speaking only of the government, not environment, etc. Funding for the government, which can be used to benefit the common good, is not necessarily finite. The government deficit is erroneously compared to a family’s budget (in the current culture to propose and support austerity measures) when it doesn’t truly work in the same way. (For a good run down of this, see: http://theforegoneconclusion.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/why-the-federal-budget-is-not-your-household-budget/) To claim that the government has finite resources so we should not have services or should not increase/broaden services is not accurate.
“My only point is that sometimes resources actually are limited and decisions on how to allocate them actually must be made and it’s not *bad* to try to figure out guidelines on how that might happen even if you disagree on what those guidelines should be.”
I don’t disagree with you, I just don’t think we have to have every single outcome or hypothetical figured out immediately and if we don’t have that, then we should just accept “personal responsibility.” It’s hard to get a read on MM’s direction but this is what I’ve felt pressed to provide – an exact and exhaustive plan, covering every red herring, straw woman, and hypothetical that can be created in order to justify spending “our” money on “those” people. I don’t have that plan. As for how we come to those difficult decisions, if the government is providing that service then we do have control over the decisions through voting and other political involvement.
Okay, but seriously, money isn’t a resource. The government could almost always be giving out more money, but there actually are some times when the government cannot give out more resources. Let me give you a concrete example. I live in a city with very high population density. Rental prices are very, very expensive here, most especially right near subway stops. Basically, there are many people who want to live here — more people than there is available housing and since the population density is already so high, the amount of housing can’t increase that much without overwhelming the basic infrastructure of the area.
There is some government-owned public housing. None of it is within easy (say 5-10 min.) walking distance of the subway. No matter how much money the government gives out, they do not have the ability to alter geography to make there be more land within easy walking distance of the subway (for the sake of simplicity, let’s say they can’t build more subway stops in the near area, which turns out to basically be true). Moreover, no matter how much money the government gives out, they can’t provide housing for everyone who wants to live in this area but can’t afford it without actually cutting into the available housing for people who want to live here and *can* afford it. All resources are basically allocated by the government along some system — capitalism is a system of resource allocation. How do you reconcile the value of everyone being guaranteed basic housing with the basic operating principles of a capitalist system when housing is a limited resource in this way? This isn’t some crazy hypothetical or a red herring, this is actually the situation in the city where I live.
Also, regarding Sweden, essentially what happens is that they have a totally individualized taxation system for adults — no joint filing and no marriage benefit — and a very heavy tax burden for everyone, which work together as an incentive towards dual-earner households. So in some sense you can pursue whatever job you want earning whatever you want and you’ll still be guaranteed housing (you’ll be guaranteed housing regardless), but what they really discourage with these policies is someone being a stay-at-home parent. It is much worse, financially, for a couple to have one partner to work earning a high wage than for both partners to work earning a medium wage. So when you said above “I don’t have a choice but to work”, that’s true for a lot of people in Sweden, too, despite their guarantee of housing and state-run daycare. In fact, to some extent, *because* of their guarantee of housing and state-run daycare. By contrast, in Germany, for example, the nation provides daycare but several states offer a subsidy to families for *not* using it, which incentivizes stay-at-home parenting, and they also offer significant tax breaks for joint filing. Of course the systems in these countries have evolved over time, etc., but the main point is that they are crafted carefully to encourage certain family and income structures that the society values and wishes to promote. It is false to suggest that in social democratic countries, the systems of taxation and social welfare are set up to make all choices basically accessible to everyone. They are not. They are set up, just like ours, to promote certain values and goals, although the way this is done and what the values are are different than the case in the US.
Honestly, I think if the US attempted to transition to a more social-spending oriented economy, it would be a lot different from what has happened in Sweden. Firstly, that’s because Sweden has a fairly flat income distribution – there’s very few poor people, but very few wealthy as well. Thus, you get a tax burden that is pretty well distributed and affects most individuals evenly. In the United States, at least in the initial run, you would probably see most of the tax base being comprised of mostly wealthy individuals.
And also, your pointing out that Sweden encourages two-earning families. But I think your showing an example of policies that influence economic behavior, not reproductive behavior (which is the gist of the conversation here). In Sweden, yes, they encourage two-earner families. But they also provide uncapped childcare resources, paid maternity leave and subsidized housing. I think you may be conflating larger families with families that prioritize staying home – which while there is certainly overlap, they are not the same thing. My parents had 5 children (which falls into the larger family range) but we were a two-income home. So forgive me, but I’m not seeing how a nation that deeply subsidizes the costs of childbearing and raising but asks in return for two-earner households is really encouraging small families. Personally, I see the Swedish model as one that really removes itslef from the reproductive decision business. Its “hey, if you have the children, we will help you care for them if need be. You will probably have to work to help subsidize this.” Generally, laws that attempt to influence reproductive decisions try to work through either giving or witholding benefits (like a welfare cap that stops adding additional benefits after a certain number of children). That, to me, if where the problem lies (especially in a place like the US, where reproductive choice cannot be assured). I think it’s more true that small families are becoming the norm due to women’s personal decisions (like not wanting to go through pregnancy and birth numerous times) and life choices.
@Drahill – I addressed that above: “In my view, this functionally operates as a discouragement towards very large families because they don’t provide assistance with domestic labor except by a small, relatively new tax credit that is apparently only used by the rich.”
I think your view of a distinction between economic behavior and reproductive behavior is a little bit simplistic. Obviously I’m not saying that one cannot have a large family and two earners in a household. Rather, policies that encourage two-parent households where both parents have full-time jobs *functionally* discourage very large families, but through limitations on time rather than funds. I think it’s also simplistic to draw a line between women’s personal decisions and life choices and what kind of family structure a country’s taxation system encourages since these two phenomena are often synergistic. In other words, in a well-functioning democracy, the taxation system informs and is informed by the values of the people that also govern their personal decisions.
Also, it’s not like Sweden having a flat income distribution is a coincidence. In the 60s, when they started instituting this sort of social policy, their Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality, 0 is perfect equality, 1 is perfect inequality) was ~0.53 (I had to look this up on JSTOR so forgive me for not citing). For comparison, the US now is ~0.46.
I don’y think the time limitation your hanging your argument on is really functioning the way you think it may. A larger family is totally possible even under time constraints. Again, I think you’re starting to assume things about a lifestyle you probably have little or no exposure to. And I think part of it is probably based upon the presumption that larger families do not generally space their children very far apart, when that may not be the case everywhere (for example, a woman could have her first child at 20 and have a child every five years for the next 20-25 years, she’d wiind up with 5-6 kids, considered large by today’s standards). In fact, in most larger families, lack of time is often a given (that is why a lot of large families prioritize and extensively plan weekends and days off to compensate). That’s why in many larger families, older children will often assume caregiver roles (and please, let us not start on how parents who let their older kids assist with younger ones are bad parents who are are shirking their responsibilities). I just don’t think this time argument your making is going to be the detterent you think it is, especially when most larger planned families anticipate and expect it and plan accordingly.
baraqiel wrote, “Okay, but seriously, money isn’t a resource.”
I disagree. I think it is a resource, particularly in the context of health care in our current system. And if we’re talking about the government paying for healthcare, the government’s ability to pay is not necessarily finite where yours and mine would be.
“Moreover, no matter how much money the government gives out, they can’t provide housing for everyone who wants to live in this area but can’t afford it without actually cutting into the available housing for people who want to live here and *can* afford it.”
Again there is a difference between want and need. I’ve never stated that the government should fill wants. If I lose my job, it should not mean that I face homelessness, hunger, etc. Now whether the government can put me up in housing that I would actually *want* to live in is another discussion altogether. As long as the government can set aside some housing, whether it’s “convenient” or not, or agree to grant money so that some housing can be attained somewhere, that is what I support.
” All resources are basically allocated by the government along some system — capitalism is a system of resource allocation. How do you reconcile the value of everyone being guaranteed basic housing with the basic operating principles of a capitalist system when housing is a limited resource in this way?”
I question the value of capitalism as the only system available to us. Obviously it fails the majority of people so why should it be the default? I know it is what’s available to us at this time but that doesn’t mean that it cannot change or evolve.
“This isn’t some crazy hypothetical or a red herring”
No, the couple wanting 40 rounds of IVF was the red herring.
“It is false to suggest that in social democratic countries, the systems of taxation and social welfare are set up to make all choices basically accessible to everyone. They are not. They are set up, just like ours, to promote certain values and goals, although the way this is done and what the values are are different than the case in the US.”
I haven’t suggested that *all* choices be accessible to everyone. I have asserted that I believe everyone is entitled to a basic living and that if they cannot attain that on their own, then the government can provide that.
The most basic choice is whether/when to have a child(ren). This choice is not one that the government has any control over nor should it. That our society is set up to favor one choice or another, at this time, is the reality. However, I still disagree that the government has any business telling poor or even young people that they should think or wait to have children and that if they don’t heed this “advice,” they should accept “personal responsibility” for that and not seek or expect any assistance.
We’ve all gone on a particularly twisting path during this discussion and I feel that some comments made in the context of health care, specifically, are being attributed to other areas where they were not intended, such as housing.
Again, I don’t disagree that it’s important to try and determine guidelines for how a more inclusive system would work. I disagree that since we don’t have every kink worked out right at this moment, that the work should be abandoned altogether OR that the government should tell poor folks to just suck it up buttercup. Again, it’s been very difficult to keep MM’s musings straight, especially when zie doesn’t answer any questions but just appears to be demanding a full and exhaustive plan on how a more inclusive system would work.
@jenn_smithson
“I disagree. I think it is a resource, particularly in the context of health care in our current system.”
You’re fundamentally incorrect. Money is like a resource in some ways in some contexts. Money is representational of purchasing power. This is a basic operating principle of our economic system.
“Again there is a difference between want and need.”
I think you are being a little disingenuous here. I clearly did not mean to imply a situation in which people “want” to live in this area because they like the weather or the shopping or some such. Perhaps you would use the word “need” when someone is asking for public housing in an area where their children are enrolled in school or where they are already employed (indeed, looking at the application for public housing in my area, they seem to emphasize preference for people who are employed). My point is that in the area where I live, there is actually not enough housing to go around and what you are arguing is either (I’m not sure which) a) that people who cannot afford to pay for housing in this city should be forced to move to another city if they want government housing assistance; or b) that in order to avoid this situation, the government here should provide housing assistance to people who cannot afford housing on their own, at the expense of the availability of housing for those who can afford it on their own.
(This is not even addressing your suggestion that proximity to public transportation is a matter of “convenience” for people who need public housing assistance.)
“I question the value of capitalism as the only system available to us.”
Please allow me to clarify: I am not a capitalist and I am not trying to argue in favor of capitalism or really any other system. All I am trying to say is that resource allocation is one of the major functions of every government and every government must decide on some basic operating principles for how to accomplish this. Many times, those resources are finite in nature (as I mentioned earlier, this is even true in health care!). Again, my only point about this is that sometimes the government must decide how to allocate limited resources of the type that you have identified as necessary for a basic standard of living.
“This choice is not one that the government has any control over nor should it. That our society is set up to favor one choice or another, at this time, is the reality.”
This is basically the meat of my point about Sweden, which i will elaborate on below. All societies are set up to favor some choices over others, especially with regards to the formation of family units, with differing degrees of purposefulness and invasiveness. Societies that guarantee some basic level of welfare are not different in this way. This is because there are many ways to influence the decisions that people make about things such as when to have children *other than* by putting out PSAs and then sanctioning those who disobey.
@Drahill
“I just don’t think this time argument your making is going to be the detterent you think it is, especially when most larger planned families anticipate and expect it and plan accordingly.”
I’m sorry, you have mistaken me. I am not making a predictive or normative argument about how something may work in theory. I am making a descriptive or observational argument about how things actually work in Sweden, which I chose as an example case due to their extensive social welfare program. They have very strong incentives towards having children. Financially, these incentives grow indefinitely with the number of children. However, they do not provide assistance with domestic labor and Sweden’s cultural values emphasize giving due attention to both one’s work and one’s family (http://www.ipss.go.jp/publication/e/jinkomon/pdf/16896401.pdf). The functional disincentive towards large family sizes that this system creates is not related to the level of education that women attain (http://cis.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/Japanese/society/Ifo-workshop0802/gunnar.pdf). Since these policies have been instituted, the number of children per women has not substantially changed.
I want to emphasize the following:
“A larger family is totally possible even under time constraints.”
I am not disagreeing with this point. Obviously it is possible. I am making an observation that the trend that has arisen in Sweden from the interplay of cultural values and government regulations is that people do not want larger families and that the cultural value that they cite when they explain why is one of “responsible parenthood” in which both parents have enough time for their families and their jobs.
“And I think part of it is probably based upon the presumption that larger families do not generally space their children very far apart, when that may not be the case everywhere”
Incidentally, having children close together is actually incentivized in Sweden due to a somewhat complex regulation known as the speed premium.
Ah, but see, I think you just cheated a bit by bringing cultural norms and values into it. You know as well as I do that the cultural landscape of the US is dramatically different than most European nations (especially those with more socialized systems). The US cultural landscape tends to emphasize more time with family, childrearing and attention to the home (particularly in the case of women and mothers). What would work in the Swedish system would not work here, which is my primary issue.
Plus, I would ask – if Swedish culture is such that it itself tends to discourage large families, then why should the Swedish government take it upon itself to make policies that discourage childbearing? I tend to see it more as a natural extension of the culture – the government is not a monolith – its made up of people who grew up in the dominant culture and trend towards certain desires. Policy is naturally going to reflect the culture of the place and people making it. But I still don’t see how these policies are direct evidence of how it is acceptable for a government to attempt to influence childbearing behavior. Its a chicken before the egg question – did the government beget the culture or did the culture beget the government? You can’t know.
I’m of the opinion that a government personally has no legit reason to attempt to influence childbearing. As pointed out before, smaller families are the natural progression of scientific, medical, social and economic progress. Most women will not want many children because simply, it is falling out of favor to endure multiple pregnancies and labors. It’s also related to increased economic opportunities for women. And I also dislike the idea of any government intervention in reproductive decisions because, at the end of the day, it seems okay when the government is tacitly encouraging small families (according to you, at least), but would the same be true for the inverse? Would any feminist support a government that was attempting to push women towards childbearing (like what is happening in Russia, for instance). Such pushing would probably be rightly identified as an attempt at reproductive coercion – so why is the opposite seen as acceptable? The problem is that if you’re willing to let a government go in one direction, eventually you’ll find one going in the opposite – and then your convictions really get tested.
@Drahill – “Ah, but see, I think you just cheated a bit by bringing cultural norms and values into it.”
I had already addressed this, actually: “In other words, in a well-functioning democracy, the taxation system informs and is informed by the values of the people that also govern their personal decisions.”
Even if I hadn’t, this is not a material criticism of my point. It is trivially the case that domestic policies are bent through the lens of cultural values in their implementation. I don’t believe I ever suggested otherwise.
“What would work in the Swedish system would not work here”
Again, I never suggested that it would. To reiterate: I am not making predictions. I am making observations of facts.
“But I still don’t see how these policies are direct evidence of how it is acceptable for a government to attempt to influence childbearing behavior.”
First of all, I hope that I have at least proven to you that the Swedish government does attempt to influence childbearing behavior; and that, more than that, they have succeeded at doing so for the past several decades. This will serve to prove my original point, which is that it is not the case that providing baseline social welfare is incompatible somehow with also “policing reproductive choice” but rather that the two are often quite intertwined.
Second of all, the statement I quoted above is a very odd one to me because the point is so clearly moot. Sweden is only an example — the actual details are not that important. The point is that every government does this. If you consider it for a moment, I hope that you will realize that there is no way to set up a system in which adults act as economic units (this characteristic is shared by both capitalism and socialism) without incentivizing some choices over others, and that includes childbearing choices. Even the choice to direct no policies towards childbearing in particular is a policy choice that will affect childbearing behavior. What you are suggesting is logically impossible.
I never suggested otherwise. What I am suggesting is that decisions about childbearing in Sweden were being made this way prior to implementation of these government polcies and that the policies are made to comport with the majority of the citizens’ prior ideas about family and cultural norms. You were sort of setting up an argument in which governmental policy influence cultural and social behavior, and I am suggesting that it may very well be the reverse – so I don’t quite understand why you are really clinging to this idea that the behavior is being influenced by governmental policy, when there isn’t any solid evidence to suggest it.
Secondly, what I am talking about is whether a government would seek to attach any value-based polcies or judgments to childbearing. We already know that the overwhelming trend, internationally, is towards smaller families. You are taking it as a given that if the government is providing things like healthcare, housing and education access to its citizens, the government is incentivizing the citizens to have children. What I am saying is that that is not the case. Even in nations that provide such social benefits, birth rates are declining. I think where you and I split is that you attribute the decline to the need for such a social safety net to be underwritten by high taxes. My argument is that a dual-earner family is not a de facto discouragement against large families. The discouragment of large families is far more inborn – women don’t have to have many pregnancies anymore, they don’t want to have multiple labors and want to pursue opportunities outside the home. That’s why one of the best predictors of family size is how much relative freedom and liberty a nation gives its women.
Some choices must be incentivized. Nations like Sweden require dual earner households due to the high tax burden. Where I think you’re tripping up is that you keep insisting that reproductive behavior must be incentivized as well – when I am arguing, and the data supports it, that there is little need to worry about childbearing behavior overall, since it is regulated quite well by internal factors and individual preference. Your argument is still sort of implying that if barriers to having children are removed, you’ll end up with a nation of Michelle Duggars. The entire argument has been that most families’ internal preferences are for small families and thus, it is a self-regulating area that the government need not concern itself with.
What we’re fundamentally disagreeing on is the cause and effect. You’re arguing that government policies have a direct effect on child-planning behavior. My argument is that you can’t state with any certainty what causes child-planning behavior – cultural factors (which you conceed exist), personal preference and other motives.
“you are really clinging to this idea that the behavior is being influenced by governmental policy, when there isn’t any solid evidence to suggest it.”
There is indeed solid evidence to suggest that this is the case. I linked two peer-reviewed articles from academic journals that cover this in quite explicit language. I can link many more and several books in addition (for instance, the usefully-titled “Women, Sexuality and the Changing Social Order: The Impact of Government Policies on Reproductive Behavior in Kenya”). This is a widely-studied field.
But that’s somewhat besides the point. In your first post you yourself gave an argument for how such a phenomenon operates:
“I have known women personally who terminated pregnancies because they said “I can’t afford it” or “I couldn’t leave my job” or something like that…So, to me, to be pro-choice, a candidate needs to support comprehensive maternity leave reform, favor WIC, favor food aid for mothers, favor comprehensive healthcare reform, favor reforming housing laws to make it easier to own a home and stay in your home, favor educational reform to make it easier for women and children to go to school, be invested in promoting preventive and mental health services…”
In other words, you stated (and I quite agree) that if government policies provided such assistance as maternity leave, affordable housing, food aid, and so forth, that it would affect the childbearing behavior of at least a portion of the population. Whether or not you call that an “incentive” is semantic. The important thing is that government policies as we have them now make it an unfavorable choice for people in some situations to have children and if these policies were different they could make it a favorable choice. That is government policy directly affecting childbearing behavior.
I am not trying to make some simplistic analysis where policy A will always lead to behavior B regardless of other factors or that the effect of policy will be limitless. That is clearly false. Some government policies fail due to bad implementation or work to cancel one another out or are dwarfed by other effects. Government policies are but one of a number of changing variables that may affect complex choices such as reproductive behavior. However, it is just as clearly false to say that there is no evidence to suggest that government policies affect family sizes and structures.
“You were sort of setting up an argument in which governmental policy influence cultural and social behavior, and I am suggesting that it may very well be the reverse”
Look, this is going to be the third time that I’ve said the two affect one another. I don’t know how much more clearly I can state that. I have never tried to insist that the influence is unidirectional. Again, I am not saying that the government can set a policy that will singlehandedly dictate social behavior, only that government policy influences social behavior.
The more I think about this, the more I think Drahill’s initial proposition was wrong. Pro-choice only means one thing: in favor of abortion access. We all agree that women’s reproductive decisions should be theirs and no one else’s (except as the woman herself decides). But as soon as you start saying that choice includes stuff related to childbearing, you are inviting 3rd parties to express opinions about when and whether it’s okay to have an abortion or go through with a pregnancy. We’ve fallen into that trap here. Whether or not a society makes a social safety net available should not influence women’s right to choose abortion. Otherwise the same society could say to women, “Here’s your safety net, no more abortions for you!”. And none of us want that.
MM: now you’re not making sense. You backed off the argument you were making before when both Jenn and myself pushed you on the personal responsibility angle – you either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer questions about how that stuff actually gets worked into policy or what you actually think personal responsibility is. You wouldn’t answer questions like “should people on welfare have kids?” That’s disconcerting, to say the least, on a feminist blog.
And the term “pro-choice” means supporting women who choose abortion, adoption or parenthood. Full stop. The three are equally valid – none is considered better than the other. But that means that the state should not put up any barriers or hurdles to access ANY of the 3. The private sector in America, along with our current government, puts up significant barriers to abortion access BUT also parenthood access (money, housing, ect.) Part of supporting CHOICE (see, there’s that word again) is making sure that no fundamental hurdles exist anywhere along the path, no matter where it leads. I pointed out that plenty of feminists will go out and pound the pavement for abortion rights, but far fewer will get agitated over laws and polcies that make it harder to become a mother. But in a way, its much harder to ensure parenthood is accessible – because its so damn BIG. No abortion lasts 18 years – its scope in invariably going to be smaller (and that is fine).
And I truly don’t see where you’re getting that increasing the social safety net would invite 3rd party opinions about abortion. The nations will the largest safety nets generally have liberal abortion polcies as well – I can’t recall a nation in modern memory that took the occasion of increased social spending to say “no more abortions for you!” Access to one does not come at the expense of the other. Honestly, I think you’re grasping now because you either don’t want to respond to the questions or your just out of ideas.
So, listen, clearly, if you’re a clinic escort, good for you. But don’t carry around the belief that your helping the other side of the pro-choice cause by doing it. Supporting abortion access is one thing, and supporting parents is another. Clearly, you can do one without doing the other.
Baraqiel: I think we’re getting at two different things. My question is whether is ever proper for the government to attempt to influence childbearing behavior. Multiple governments have attempted to do so, there is no doubt as to that. The second question is whether a government has a duty to attempt to make any laws or regulations as neutral as possible in the face of this.
I personally come from the opinion that the government does not have a vested interest in regulating childbearing and thus, shouldn’t direct any laws towards that end. First, that makes sense since reproduction in humans is trending downwards anyway, so a government is likely not going to have to worry (provided it makes available the means to control reproduction). So if a government’s goal is to lower its population numbers, it likely does not have to worry. If it’s trying to increase its numbers, its likely going to have also increase social spending to provide for the growing numbers. So I am not sure there is any meaningful way a government could incentivize having children.
The second question is the harder one, and that is whether a government has a duty to attempt to make sure that laws are neutral in terms of whether they influence the desire to have children. The Swedish model seems to be set up interms of disincentize vs. incentive. (But then, I’m not entirely sure incentivizing dual earners is discouraging large families, as you admitted to that point). The question of whether a government should be pursuing neutrality in this area is an entirely different one to me.