Every time I post something on my Facebook about abortion, there will inevitably be someone who makes a comment that says something like this, "Don't women know how to use birth control these days? What is wrong with them? With so many birth control options these days, no one should ever have an abortion."
I supposed that is a really common misconception...that birth control reduces the abortion rate. But is that true? Look at this quote from Ann Furedi, the former director of British Pregnancy Advisory Service, Britain's largest abortion provider:
Often, arguments for increased access to contraception and for new contraceptive technologies are built on the assumption that these developments will bring down the abortion rate. The anti-choice movement counter that this does not seem to be the case in practice. Arguably they are right. Access to effective contraception creates an expectation that women can control their fertility and plan their families. Given that expectation, women may be less willing to compromise their plans for the future. In the past, many women reluctantly accepted that an unplanned pregnancy would lead to maternity. Unwanted pregnancies were dutifully, if resentfully, carried to term. In days when sex was expected to carry the risk of pregnancy, an unwanted child was a chance a woman took. Today, we expect sex to be free from that risk and unplanned maternity is not a price we are prepared to pay.
It is clear that women cannot manage their fertility by means of contraception alone.
Contraception lets couples down. A recent survey of more than 2000 women requesting abortions at clinics run by BPAS, Britain’s largest abortion provider, found that almost 60% claim to have been using contraception at the time they became pregnant. Nearly 20% said that they were on the pill. Such findings are comparable to several other smaller studies published during the last decade… It is clear that contraceptives let couples down… The simple truth is that the tens of thousands of women who seek abortion each year are not ignorant of contraception. Rather they have tried to use it, indeed they may have used it, and become pregnant regardless.
Here's a statistic from the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood's research arm. This stat makes Planned Parenthood look terrible, so I can't imagine that this is not accurate. They have absolutely nothing to gain by putting this out there: "More than half of women obtaining abortions in 2000 (54%) had been using a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant."
How is it that abortion supporters understand that birth control does not reduce abortion, yet pro-lifers don't? Birth control was created so that we could separate sex from procreation. How do we not get that, pro-lifers? When you separate the act of sex from babies, of course abortions occur.
Let's look at a quote from Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, famous abortion-supporting feminist: "Until a 'perfect' method of contraception is developed, which will probably never happen, periods of heightened consciousness and extended practice of birth control will inevitably mean a rise in abortions."
In a book written by Petchesky, she comments on the research of demographer and feminist Susan Scrimshaw who linked rising abortions to wide acceptance of the birth-control pill:
But Scrimshaw reminds us that the pill, as a more effective method of reversible contraception that women had ever known, contributed to a climate of expectations that women need not and should not have to fear an unwanted pregnancy. Having a baby when you didn't want to became "unthinkable" for new generations of women, or for older generations in new stages in their lives. This change consciousness undoubtedly contributed to the rising abortions, for women who did not use the pill as well as those who did.
I'm not saying that you should only have sex when you are fertile. But to be perfectly honest, you should only have sex when you are open to life. Because believe it or not, babies are many times a result of sex. And that's the way it was intended to be.
Look at these studies and articles, all showing that as the contraception rate increases, the abortion rate increases.
Bottom line: Contraception does not reduce abortion. You may say, "Well, I'm on birth control for xyz health problem." Okay. I wrote an article specifically for you. You can view that
here.
The great news is that you don't have to use birth control to space your children. Natural Family Planning works and is as effective, and sometimes more effective, than the birth control methods out there. Check out these websites for more information.
The Dark Side of the American Dream
A Most Violent Year (2015, 125 minutes) is the third film from writer-director J.C. Chandor who wrote and directed 2011’s
Margin Callabout a Lehman Brothers-like firm in the early days of the 2008 financial crisis.
Margin Call explored the complex relationships between white collar workers, corporate executives, and the firm’s customers in the face of economic ruin. With
A Most Violent Year, Chandor returns to similar themes. But in this case, he focuses on a privately-owned heating oil business in 1981 New York City made successful by the relentless determination of Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), an immigrant who has clawed his way to the top of his industry through a commitment to salesmanship and slow-and-steady growth.
Morales also faces economic ruin if he cannot complete a purchase of a valuable piece of real estate which will allow him to crush his competition.
Morales prides himself on playing by the rules of the marketplace. That is, he is committed to beating his competition by providing a better service to his customers. The problem is that Morales’s competitors do not have similar hang-ups, and they are more than happy to employ dirty tricks such as violently hijacking Morales’s trucks full of heating oil and stealing their contents.
On top of this, Morales must deal with an aggressive and politically ambitious assistant district attorney, the teamsters union, and other shady figures from organized crime outfits who threaten his business.
In the opening scenes, one of Morales’s drivers, Julian (Elyes Gabel) is badly beaten when his truck is hijacked by unknown thugs. Morales is appalled by this disregard for fair play and tells Julian “these men are cowards. They’re too weak to earn a living or fight with their own hands. They’re too stupid to think of something [legitimate] to do.”
Indeed, the film portrays Morales, who was once a driver himself, as being genuinely concerned for the welfare of his employees. He considers Julian, whom Morales personally drives home from the hospital, to be an excellent employee whose job will be waiting for him when he recovers. But, of course, Morales also knows that he can’t survive if thieves continue to steal his heating oil.
The police find Morales’s truck, with all the oil removed, shortly thereafter. However, the police are of no help whatsoever, and not surprisingly so, since New York City is in the midst of a crime wave and the murder rate is at an all-time high. For Morales, the police are dead weight who do nothing to prevent or prosecute theft. To emphasize this, we then learn that Morales and his company are being investigated by the assistant district attorney for a variety of regulatory infractions (i.e., what libertarians call “non-crimes”) such as “price fixing” and related offenses, including tax evasion. As we soon see, however, it’s unclear as to what exactly Morales is paying taxes for. Morales asks the district attorney for help in stopping the thefts, but as far as he is concerned, he tells Morales, “you’re all stealing from each other, which is a refreshing change from what you’ve been doing to your customers and the taxpayers.” If Morales is going to stop the theft of his oil, he’s clearly on his own.
Meanwhile, the teamsters union (which represents Morales's drivers) is threatening to illegally arm all truck drivers in the face of the hijacking threat. Morales fears that violence may spin out of control and also clearly fears New York’s draconian anti-gun laws which will come down hard on Morales if his drivers are found with handguns. Thus, the drivers remain helpless and the hijackings continue.
Morales’s family even becomes endangered as one of his competitors apparently sends a gunman to terrorize the family in their suburban home. Morales’s wife, who comes from a family with organized crime connections, demands Morales take more decisive action, by which she means actions of ambiguous legality. She threatens to take care of things herself, and notes “you’re not going to like what’ll happen once I get involved.”
Morales does find himself being pulled into the organized crime world more and more. Following the assistant district attorney’s public announcement that Morales is under investigation, he loses his line of credit from the bank and must turn to the New York underworld to find the funding he needs to complete a time-sensitive purchase of a valuable oil-storage facility on the East River. Thanks to the assistant district attorney, he must then beg his own shady competitors for money, and although his entrepreneurial ingenuity is key to the solution, the film hints that ultimately, Morales’s business is saved by the thievery of others.
Thanks to Chandor’s preference for subtlety, this movie is neither preachy nor didactic, so Morales’s moral position is never entirely clear. Is he a nearly-blameless entrepreneur who has merely had the misfortune of being surrounded by people of questionable moral character? Or has Morales played the system all along, and his uprightness is mostly just something he believes in his own mind? What we do know is that A Most Violent Year is a very convincing story of how the so-called American dream has been corrupted by ambitious politicians, unchecked crime, and a state that is impotent except when it comes to prosecuting people who provide the actual goods and services on which society relies. At the same time, the film’s point may be that capitalists and entrepreneurs have willingly participated in the system’s corruption, but if that is the point, it doesn’t obscure the overall quality of this film.
Image source: iStockphoto
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
Los países desdichados
Bloomberg Business reveló recientemente que Venezuela es el país más “miserable” del mundo. La traducción es demasiado literal. En español sería más apropiado decir que es el más “desdichado”.
La aseveración de Bloomberg surge de la aplicación de una simple fórmula acuñada hace más de medio siglo por el economista norteamericano Arthur Okun: se suman el nivel de desempleo y el índice de precios. Con esos elementos se compila el Misery Index.
Venezuela, en efecto, tiene la inflación más alta del planeta, lo que se refleja en el índice de precios, pero su nivel de desempleo es bajo, menos de un 7%, aunque la mayor parte de los puestos de trabajo han surgido en el sector público, dado que miles de empresas han debido cerrar sus puertas por las desquiciadas medidas antieconómicasdel gobierno chavista.
El segundo país en ese Índice de Desdicha es Argentina. A una escala menor, el gran país sudamericano también es víctima de una altísima inflación. Nada nuevo bajo el sol. Lleva décadas de intermitentes malos gobiernos. Como el bandoneón que tanto gusta en aquellos parajes, se expande o contrae frecuentemente. Ahora está en una fase aguda de contracción.
La inflación y el desempleo son dos flagelos que explican la desgracia de una sociedad, pero no son suficientes. Yo agregaría otros ocho factores para construir el decálogo de las desdichas capitales.
El desabastecimiento sería el tercero. Pasarse la vida en una fila esperando para poder comprar algo es una maldición que suele materializarse en los países socialistas de economía centralizada y controles de precios. Los venezolanos ya han descubierto el horror de pelearse a puñetazos por comprar unos pollos o tres rollos de papel higiénico.
El cuarto sería el porcentaje de delitos. Es espantoso vivir con la guardia en alto, encerrado en la propia casa, sometido a un virtual toque de queda porque tan pronto se pone el sol los ladrones, asesinos y violadores salen a cometer sus fechorías. Según el International Crime Index, que computa una docena de graves violaciones de la ley, Venezuela es el segundo país del planeta en número de delitos (84,07). El peor es Sudán del Sur (85,32), un país recién estrenado en medio de una guerra civil. Más de 50 se considera una sociedad peligrosa. Singapur, la menos peligrosa, luce un 17,59.
El quinto es el nivel de corrupción de la administración pública. Como se trata de delitos ocultos, hay que confiar en la opinión general de la gente. La institución dedicada a medir estas percepciones es Transparencia Internacional. De acuerdo con ella, Venezuela es una pocilga. Es el 160º de 175 países escrutados. El peor, con mucho, de Hispanoamérica.
El sexto es la protección y la calidad de la justicia. Si cuando usted tiembla llama a la policía para que lo proteja, es una buena señal. Si cuando la policía se acerca usted tiembla, la situación es muy grave. A la labor de los agentes del orden se agrega la existencia de leyes razonables, jueces justos, procesos rápidos y cero impunidad.
El séptimo es la movilidad social. La posibilidad real de mejorar la calidad de vida por medio del esfuerzo propio. No hay situación más triste que saber que, hagas lo que hagas, tu vida seguirá siendo pobre, y lo más probable es que mañana será peor que hoy.
El octavo es el PIB per cápita. Es decir, la suma del valor de los bienes y servicios producidos por una sociedad durante un año. Se podrá alegar que la repartición es desigual, pero hay una evidente correlación entre el PIB per cápita y la calidad de vida. Como regla general, los 20 países con mayor PIB per cápita del mundo son los que encabezan el Índice de Desarrollo Humano que publica la ONU.
El noveno elemento es la libertad. Aunque no se menciona, los países menos libres, aquellos en los que la camarilla del poder toma todas las decisiones, aporta todas las ideas e impone sus dogmas por la fuerza, son los más pobres y los menos dichosos.
El décimo, por último, es la cantidad de emigrantes. No hay síntoma más elocuente del fracaso de una sociedad que el porcentaje de gente que tiene que escapar de ella para sobrevivir. Cuanto más educada es la emigración –como sucede con la venezolana–, más evidente es el desastre. Cuando emigran los emprendedores, los ingenieros, los médicos, las personas que teóricamente pudieran labrarse un buen porvenir en la patria en que nacieron, es señal de que estamos ante sociedades fallidas.
Hay que compilar ese índice. Cruzar esas variables sería muy útil.
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