Abortion & Contraception: What if They Really Were Private?
Saturday March 29, 2008
Both abortion and contraception take place in a semi-public manner because they must be procured in public. Even contraception, which is used in the privacy of one's own home, must be purchased in public and is advertised in public. The public aspects cause the involvement of others in a public manner, making control and even restrictions easier. What if this could all change? Abortion and contraception are defended on the basis of privacy, so what if they really were completely private?
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Comments
In the US, religions in and of themselves have relatively little to no power to regulate the commerce of people outside their membership (i.e. the general public). To regulate the economy, for instance restricting contraceptive products, they need to act through the power of government. As a libertarian, this for me just goes to show the difference between the conservative/neocon ideal of “free markets” vs. the libertarian, academic, or “dictionary” definition. Many conservatives pay lip service to free markets, but support restrictions on it when they believe their political or religious ideology is at stake.
A “separation of economy and state,” similar in concept to church-state separation, would tend to keep gov’t involvement in the economy (beyond obvious safety issues) to a minimum, thus (and more importantly) also minimizing the effect on the economy from those who influence gov’t.
But enough of my free-market proselytizing.
A good article.
I certainly agree that religions have little to no power to regulate the economy; regulation through the power of the government, though, is not the only way that a group can do something like restrict access to contraceptives.
Take, for example, the efforts to get pharmacists the right to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. Once this is established, it could become more difficult for pharmacists in some places to continue filling such prescriptions even if they wanted to. In a small community with a very determined, activist cadre of religious busy-bodies, access to contraception could be virtually eliminated, regardless of the personal preferences of the pharmacists themselves. We only have to look at the pressure tactics directed against abortion clinics and even the homes of employees of abortion clinics to get a taste of what pharmacists might have to endure.
I should hasten to add that these are all legal tactics. Protesting the policies and actions of a business you believe is behaving unethically is legal and proper. I wouldn’t want to see that eliminated. It can, however, have the same effect as economic regulation. Young girls can’t necessarily get themselves to another town where contraceptives are still (but for how long?) available.
The ability of many to obtain abortions is already effectively eliminated simply because access has been effectively eliminated — not through government regulation, but through private and legal intimidation. The same can happen with other things, if we let it.
I’m glad you like the article…
I came over from Pharyngula to read what you had to say. Thanks for a good article. I do think that “privatization” of contraception and very early-term abortion will be increasingly possible (and even likely) in the future. Once that advances far enough, it will become impossible to ban or even control effectively. I wrote a post called The end of abortion, which is anything but a prediction of victory for the “pro-life” side.
Abortion and contraception should remain as they are-the right of every individual to have access to both. As far as I am concerned christianity, in fact all religions should have no say in this matter. I find that those religions which attempt to prevent abortion and contraception in order to protect the unborn give succour and support to those who have no problem murdering those children who are born and have the misfortune to be born in the Lebanon, Palestine or Iraq. There, Bush and his evangelical friends think it is perfectly okay for the Israeli fascists to murder their opponents children with impunity by dropping cluster bombs on them. Bush and his evangelical fascist friends are nothing but war-criminals.
“Both contraception and abortion should be safe, private matters outside the powers of the government to prevent simply because some religious dogmas forbid them. Unfortunately, too many religious believers refuse to accept any restrictions on the authority of their religious dogmas — they are convinced that because their dogmas are divinely ordained rather than human created (like the law), then their dogmas take precedent over everything else.”
Actually, they are also convinced that abortion is murder. You must understand that to the average person that wants abortion criminalized, an abortion and some kinds of contraception are morally equivalent to axe-murdering a little kid. Nobody would defend the later on the basis of privacy. I still don’t understand what this view has to do with religious dogma.
If I’m not mistaken, it has to do with adultery. I think the xians think that access to contraception and birth control encourages sex outside of marriage, makes it easier to do it and to avoid any adverse consequences therefrom, and therefore contributes to the general decine in morals. In their view, adultery comprises any form of sexual activity outside of marriage.