Human Nature: Science, Technology, and Life.

Napping, Sex, and Abstinence

Which is more important: food, sleep, or sex? My instinct is to go with sleep, on the grounds that if you try to avoid all three, sleep is the one that will overtake you first. It's the one you need most. If that's true—and if we know that it's unreasonable and dangerous to insist that people abstain from sex—then isn't it stupid to expect pilots to abstain from sleep?

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Abortion Reduction: Two Critiques

I would be more enthusiastic about a compromise proposal that including increases in [welfare] spending *if* the the pro-abortion-rights side were actually compromising. But ... that side is, generally speaking, not giving anything up. Indeed, they are asking pro-lifers to agree that it is "compromise" to accept the roll-back of the gains they have secured. What is happening, instead, is that many of us who are pro-life are being asked to accept a legal—indeed, a constitutional—regime in which citizens are disabled from meaningfully regulating (as opposed to financially disincentivizing) abortion. ...

That would be a fair objection, if the pro-lifers supporting the bill were indeed accepting abortion's legality. But they aren't. Read their statements. Several of them make clear that they're going to keep right on working to outlaw abortion. They're supporting this bill anyway, because they think it will help the bottom line: fewer abortions.

Second, Charles Camosy, one of the bill's pro-life endorsers, has elaborated on his objections to its contraceptive provisions. In a post at Commonweal, he writes:

I wonder what people think about pro-lifers (and particularly Catholic pro-lifers) compromising their views on contraception to support a bill like this? I was asked to giving a supporting statement (in particular because, not surprisingly, they found themselves in need [of] pro-life Catholic moral theologians), but I had about a difficult, three-day-long e-mail conversation with the person who asked me before I gave one. I don't think the contraceptive provisions of the bill will lessen the abortion rate (in fact, they may [make] it worse in promoting as a ‘solution' a mentality which continues to perpetuate the moral and actual divide between sex and procreation and thus, to a large extent, the logic of abortion), but because (1) there was so much other good stuff in this bill and (2) it is a major step in building common ground and beginning to find a way out of this horrific mess of a culture war, I decided to offer provisional support while making my making my reservations known.

At the American Catholic, a commenter expresses a similar concern:

[I]f one seeks to increase the amount of sex that people who think they are currently unable to support a child have (which is what the pushing of "safe sex" amounts to) the failure rate of popular means of contraception will inevitably result in an increase in the number of unplanned pregnancies ...

I respect these concerns, but the data don't support them. To repeat:

On average, contraception lowers your odds of pregnancy by a factor of seven. If you're capable of having seven times as much sex, congratulations. The rest of us will get pregnant less often, not more. ...
Among [low-income] women, the percentage using contraception declined from 1995 to 2002. As predicted by contraception opponents, the rate of sexual activity also declined, though only slightly. Even better, from a pro-life standpoint, when these women got pregnant unintentionally, the percentage who chose abortion fell. Less contraception, less sex, more women choosing life. So, the abortion rate among these women went down, right? Wrong. It went up. The decline in contraception overwhelmed the decline in sexual activity, resulting in a higher rate of unintended pregnancy. And the increase in unintended pregnancy overwhelmed the increase in women choosing life, resulting in more abortions. From a pro-life standpoint, trading contraception for abstinence and a "culture of life" was a net loss.

Critics of the contraceptive approach to abortion reduction are right that contraceptive availability, by itself, doesn't guarantee a decline in unintended pregnancy. That's because contraception doesn't work unless people use it. But that isn't an argument against contraception. It's an argument for teaching and preaching its use. And yes, that's a more realistic goal than abstinence.

A Pro-Life Culture of Death

Ultimately, the militants don't care what's in the abortion-reduction bill. The mere fact that some pro-choicers support it is, by their reckoning, grounds to oppose it. NRLC Legislative Director Doug Johnson scoffs that the bill was drafted "under the direction of [a] career pro-abortion activist" (Rachel Laser of Third Way) and her congressional "sock puppet" (Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio), who's trying to hide "his close collaborative relationship [with] key pro-abortion groups." Never mind that Laser has put in years of work, antagonized her friends, and risked her career as a pro-choicer for Johnson's cause. Never mind that Ryan has stood up for unborn life, vote after vote after vote after vote, in a party committed to legal and publicly funded abortion. Any pro-lifer who collaborates with pro-choicers is a traitor, any pro-life bill involving a pro-choicer is a "scam," and any Catholic who supports such a bill is a "fake" Catholic. Common ground is impossible. In the name of life, we must fight to the death.

More here.