At a time when the medical community has been heartened by a decline in risky sexual behavior by teenagers, a different problem has crept up: More adult women are forgoing birth control, a trend that has experts puzzled — and alarmed about a potential rise in unintended pregnancies.
Buried in the government’s latest in-depth analysis of contraceptive use was the finding that the number of women who had sex in the previous three months but did not use birth control rose from 5.2 percent in 1995 to 7.4 percent in 2002. That means that as many as 11 percent of all women are at risk of unintended pregnancy at some point during their childbearing years (ages 15 to 44).
Researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics took pains to point out that the "increase is statistically significant" and that the "apparent change merits further study." Other analysts called the spike a troubling development that translates into at least 4.6 million sexually active women at risk of conceiving a child they had not planned on. [Source]
Oooooh scary language. Women during childbearing years actually at risk of bearing a child.
Although unintended pregnancies can be welcome surprises, the danger from a public health and societal standpoint is that many of the women are financially or psychologically unprepared for parenthood at that point in their lives.
Now pregnancy is a danger to public health and society. What a twisted viewpoint, but a necessary consequence of the contraceptive/abortion mentality.
"Pregnancy is not a disease. . . . The women making these choices are making a conscious choice. They are not stupid," said Leslee J. Unruh, president of the Abstinence Clearinghouse. "Women don’t want to use birth control because of the side effects. And a lot of men refuse to use a condom."
It would have been more interesting if the study had provided reasons for the decline in the usage of contraceptives. They are such advocates for contraception that they automatically assumed that the answer is a failure of education. Their mindset is such that people couldn’t possibly want to use less contraception or are more open to larger families. I don’t know if this is the case, though it is a possible answer that they overlook.
Family planning is a "fiscally conservative policy," countered Jensen of the Women’s Health Research Unit. For every $1 spent on contraceptive services, he said, $3 is saved in other government programs such as Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, welfare and education.
Wow just think how much money we would save if we eliminated more pesky children. Start by limiting one child to family and then directly licensing who can be a parent (Something Margaret Sanger advocated). After all with this mentality every child could be a possible burden on society so wouldn’t it be much better if only wealthy people were allowed to have children?
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Amazing. Even Chairman Mao, one of history’s most horrific mass-murderers, knew better than this. He used to say, to advisors who urged mandatory family-size limits, that every mouth came with two hands attached. Mao was a monster, but he wasn’t an idiot.
A Threat to the Secular Eucharist
The Washington Post’s Ceci Connolly is fretting that, as Jeff Miller puts it, more women “during childbearing years are actually at risk of bearing a child.” Connolly reaches the heart of the cultural matter in this paragraph: Although unintended pregn…
I found this odd, too. They see less contraceptive use and assume that women are doing this unthinkingly… how condescending. It never seems that they consider that women might deliberately be trying to get pregnant.
I mean, if I know of sexually active people who have been using birth control of some sort (whether NFP, condoms, or hormones) and then stopped all methods (as opposed to simply switching), I would assume the people were trying to have a baby.
For crying out loud, isn’t it possible that at least 7.4% of women having sex, at any given time, want to get pregnant? The article says that the interviewers spent about an hour and a half with each interviewee…. so why didn’t they ask =why= a person used or did not use contraception? How many questions did they ask, anyway, that took so long?
Referring to the post about Mao, one thing the current powers in the world seem to forget…in the calculus of power, population is a very big factor.