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Provide sex education in starting in junior high because that's when most kids start having sex, if possible. Provide free birth control in health class. Put it in the high school bathrooms in vending machines. Normalize the topic.
Stop making sex so taboo and forget about "virginity pledges." They only work for the kids who weren't gonna have sex anyway. For everyone else, it just gets them hot.
Morning after pills should be easier to obtain and in fact is a very simple recipe. It's something like three birth control pills at once, then two the next day. This is not medical advice. Saw Palmetto is also strongly not advised for pregnant women. Just saying.
IUD's could be covered by insurance as could gynecological care for poor women. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Who is supposed to be behind the New World Order, anyway. Word on the Internet is George Bush and his Republican cronies went and had a secret meeting with the United Nations and blah blah blah conspiracy paranoia et cetera.
I despise George Bush myself, and granted, he is far from sensible, like the rest of his Jesus Thugs. I want to say that all the stuff they did to prevent abortion and prevent anyone at all being better educated and to prevent any type of family planning, whatsoever, means that they couldn't possibly be trying to control population, or limit it. Then again, they do take the long way around, so it just might be true.
Maybe it's reverse psychology? Make women think we don't want them to use condoms, and they will out of spite?
Or maybe it's sadism. Women who sin can die off of AIDS (even raped women are sinning, surely) and the babies born to them sick can suffer and die while we, the righteous watch smugly. It's enough to make you think the Christians in charge are really working for Satan, if you believe that kind of thing.
This is what Wikipedia says about population control:
Ibn Khaldoun, a famous North African Arab polymath (1332–1406), considered population changes to be connected to economic development, linking high birth rates and low death rates to times of economic upswing, and low birth rates and high death rates to economic downswing. Khaldoun concluded that high population density rather than high absolute population numbers were desirable to achieve more efficient division of labour and cheap administration.[8]
This actually fits in with my personal theory of why the Capitalists (Christians) are against abortion.
Human population control is the practice of artificially altering the rate of growth of a human population. Historically, human population control has been implemented by limiting the population'sbirth rate, usually by government mandate, and has been undertaken as a response to factors including high or increasing levels ofpoverty, environmental concerns, religious reasons, and overpopulation. While population control can involve measures that improve people's lives by giving them greater control of their reproduction, some programs have exposed them to exploitation.[1]
Right, like "Catholic Homes" that will allow a pregnant teenager to live there and give her baby up for adoption. You think they do that for free? I don't.
Worldwide, the population control movement was active throughout the 1960s and 1970s, driving many reproductive health and family planningprograms. In the 1980s, tension grew between population control advocates and women's health activists who advanced women'sreproductive rights as part of a human rights-based approach.[2]Growing opposition to the narrow population control focus led to a significant change in population control policies in the early 1990s.[3]
In ancient Greece, Plato (427-347 BCE) and Aristotle (384-322 BCE) discussed the best population size for Greek city states such as Sparta, and concluded that cities should be small enough for efficient administration and direct citizen participation in public affairs, but at the same time needed to be large enough to defend themselves against hostile neighboring city states. In order to maintain a desired population size, the philosophers advised that procreation, and if necessary,immigration, should be encouraged if the population size was too small.Emigration to colonies would be encouraged should the population become too large.[6] Aristotle concluded that a large increase in population would bring, "certain poverty on the citizenry, and poverty is the cause of sedition and evil." To halt rapid population increase, Aristotle advocated the use of abortion and the exposure of newborns.[7]
Confucius (551-478 BCE) and other Chinese writers cautioned that, "excessive growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife."
Example: visit New Jersey
Confucius also observed that, "mortality increases when food supply is insufficient; that permanent marriage makes for high infantile mortality rates, that war checks population growth."[6]
There's got to be an easier way.
Ancient Rome, especially in the time of Augustus (63 BCE- CE 14), needed manpower to acquire and administer the vast Roman Empire. A series of laws were instituted to encourage early marriage and frequent childbirth. Lex Julia (18 BCE) and the Lex Papia Poppaea (CE 9) are two well known examples of such laws, which among others, provided tax breaks and preferential treatment when applying for public office for those that complied with the laws.
Why don't we just do this? And when there are too many people, give the tax breaks to the childless...oooooh. This sort of is what we're doing. The rich get the tax breaks, but the poor are left to die of exposure because they are still following old school, be fruitful rules. Nobody told them the new rules. Stop showing those Goddamn Disney movies to little kids and people will stop growing up thinking marriage is the be-all, end all.
Severe limitations were imposed on those who did not. For example, the surviving spouse of a childless couple could only inherit one-tenth of the deceased fortune, while the rest was taken by the state. These laws encountered resistance from the population which led to the disregard of their provisions and to their eventual abolition.[5]
Resistance works!
Tertullian, an early Christian author (ca. CE 160-220), was one of the first to describe famine and war as factors that can prevent overpopulation.[5] He wrote: "The strongest witness is the vast population of the earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs; as our demands grow greater, our complaints against Nature's inadequacy are heard by all. The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars and earthquakes have come to be regarded as a blessing to overcrowded nations, since they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the human race."[8]
Is it just me that thinks the Christians have a really fucked up way of solving problems. "Hey, let's not talk this over like civilized people, maybe practice safe sex and common sense-no. Let's keep telling people to have a gazillion babies and punish women who say "no" to the man of the house, and to get rid of some of this surplus humanity, we'll just fabricate a war!" "Mmmm-hmmmm. Excellent idea." Really? Thanks loads, Tertullian. That fourteen year old gang-raped chick will be glad to know getting shot in the headafter the fifth guy bukakied all over her was all for the greater good. What a way to go. Awesome idea.
In the 20th century, population control proponents have drawn from the insights of Thomas Malthus, a British clergyman and economist who published An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. Malthus argued that, "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio." He also outlined the idea of "positive checks" and "preventative checks." "Positive checks," such as diseases, war, disaster and famine, are factors that Malthus considered to increase the death rate.[12]
The Reverend[1]Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (13 or 14 February 1766 – 23 or 29 December 1834[2]) was an English scholar, influential in political economy anddemography.[3][4]Malthus popularized the economic theory ofrent.[5]
1. It figures, he was probably a slumlord, too.
2. I am beginning to see why we had so many "religious" wars.
The six editions of his An Essay on the Principle of Population, published from 1798 to 1826, observed that sooner or later population gets checked by famine anddisease.
"Preventative checks" were factors that Malthus believed to affect the birth rate such as moral restraint, abstinence and birth control.[12] He predicted that "positive checks" on exponential population growth would ultimately save humanity from itself and that human misery was an "absolute necessary consequence."[13] Malthus went on to explain why he believed that this misery affected the poor in a disproportionate manner.
How about moral restraint with the wars, and birth control for the rest of us?
[There is a] constant effort towards an increase in population [which tends to] subject the lower classes of society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition…The way in which these effects are produced seems to be this. We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population …increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food, therefore which before supplied seven millions must now be divided among seven millions and half or eight millions. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress.[14]
So even though there is plenty to go round, it's better not to share.
A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies - often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparent brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance to survive.
Nice. who is the patient?
In his concluding chapter, Ehrlich offered a partial solution to the "population problem,"
"[We need] compulsory birth regulation... [through] the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired family size".
So why is there so much resistance to education, birth control, and abortion!?
Ehrlich's views came to be accepted by many population control advocates in the United States and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s.[18]Since Ehrlich introduced his idea of the "population bomb," overpopulation has been blamed for a variety of issues, including increasing poverty, high unemployment rates, environmental degradation, famine and genocide.[13] In a 2004 interview, Ehrlich reviewed the predictions in his book, and found that while the specific dates within his predictions may have been wrong, his predictions about climate change and disease were valid. Ehrlich continued to advocate for population control and co-authored the book The Population Explosion, released in 1990 with his wife Anne Ehrlich.
Paige Whaley Eager argues that the shift in perception that occurred in the 1960s must be understood in the context of the demographic changes that took place at the time.[19] It was only in the first decade of the 19th century that the world's population reached one billion. The second billion was added in the 1930s, and the next billion in the 1960s. 90 percent of this net increase occurred in developing countries.[19]Eager also argues that, at the time, the United States recognised that these demographic changes could significantly affect global geopolitics. Large increases occurred in China, Mexico and Nigeria, and demographers warned of a "population explosion," particularly in developing countries from the mid-1950s onwards.
tion control and economics
See also: Demographic-economic paradox and demographic gift
Opinions vary among economists about the effects of population change on a nation's economic health. Recent US scientific research concluded that the raising of a child costs about $16,000 yearly ($291,570 total for raising him/her up to his/her 18th birthday).[21] In the USA, the multiplication of this number with the yearly population growth will yield the overall cost of the population growth. Costs for other developed countries are usually of similar order of magnitude.
While some believe that reduction of the population is a key to economic growth, others argue that population reduction should be focused on what they judge to be undesirable sections of the population (seeEugenics). Other economists doubt that a correlation between population reduction and economic growth exists. Some economists, such as Thomas Sowell[22] and Walter E. Williams,[23] have argued that poverty and famine are caused by bad government and bad economic policies, not by overpopulation.
In his book, The Ultimate Resource, economist Julian Simon argued that higher population density leads to more specialization and technological innovation, which in turn leads to a higher standard of living. He claimed that human beings are the ultimate resource since we possess "productive and inventive minds that help find creative solutions to man’s problems, thus leaving us better off over the long run".[24] He also claimed that, "Our species is better off in just about every measurable material way."[25][context?]
Simon also claimed that if you considered a list of countries ranked in order by population density, there is no correlation between population density and poverty and starvation. Instead, if you considered a list ofcountries ranked in order by corruption within their respective governments, there is a significant correlation between government corruption and poverty and famine.[26]
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It is generally accepted that overpopulation is aggravated by poverty and gender inequality with consequent unavailability, and lack of knowledge, of contraception. Third world evidence usually bears this theory out. However, first and second world fertility rates, in the Depression era United States, modern Russia, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Estonia and France suggest that these populations are responding inversely to poverty and economic pressures, especially on women.[27] Thus, France is increasing social and women's services, like childcare and parental leave, expecting the policy to stop the aging of its population. Italy is regarded as alleviating overpopulation more rapidly than Sweden as a result of less gender equality and fewer children's services.[citation needed]
Newer research has been done by the U.S. National Security Council, in a study entitled National Security Study Memorandum 200, under the direction of Henry Kissinger in 1974. This report stressed that only 13 countries are projected to account for 47 percent of the world population increase by the year 2050. This, it is argued, (due to its impact on development, food requirements, resources and the environment) adversely affected the welfare and progress of countries concerned. It further argued that this would undermine the stability of countries friendly to the US and therefore harm the "national security" of the US as well.[28]
David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), place in their studyFood, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy the maximum U.S. populationfor a sustainable economy at 200 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third, and world population will have to be reduced by two-thirds, says the study.[29] A more recent study by Pimentel and colleagues (2010) suggests that the Earth can support a population of two billion individuals, but only if all individuals are willing to live at a European standard of living and use natural resourcessustainably. These researchers state that reducing population from today's level of over 6.8 billion to the suggested 2 billion would take slightly longer than 100 years if every couple, worldwide, agrees to produce an average of only one child.[30]
Pimentel and Giampietro believe that agricultural crises will develop, but they will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not become critical until 2050.[29] Geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer claims that coming decades could see spiraling food prices without relief and massive starvation on a global level never experienced before.[31][32]
Another study has been done by the National Audubon Society which recently released a 16-page document called "Population and Habitat: Making the Connection." In this study, population control is widely supported.[33]
[edit]Support for population control
Population control is also increasingly being featured in many environmental documentaries and films. An example is The Planet-documentary, which describes the ongoing rising human population, its effects on the planet, and the necessity of population control.
As early as 1798, Thomas Malthus stated in his Essay on the Principle of Population that population control needed to be implemented into society. Around the year 1900, Sir Francis Galton said in his publication called "Hereditary Improvement" that, "The unfit could become enemies to the State, if they continue to propagate." In 1968, Paul Ehrlich noted inThe Population Bomb that, "We must cut the cancer of population growth," and that, "if this was not done, there would be only one other solution, namely the ‘death rate solution’ in which we raise the death rate through war-famine-pestilence etc.”
In the same year, another prominent modern advocate for mandatory population control was Garrett Hardin, who proposed in his landmark 1968 essay The Tragedy of the Commons that society must relinquish the "freedom to breed" through "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon." Later on, in 1972, he reaffirmed his support in his new essay “Exploring New Ethics for Survival”, by stating that, “We are breeding ourselves into oblivion.” Many prominent personalities, such as Bertrand Russell,Margaret Sanger (1939), John D. Rockefeller, Frederick Osborn (1952),Isaac Asimov and Jacques Cousteau have also advocated for population control.
Today, a number of influential people advocate population control. They are:
- David Attenborough[34]
- Michael E. Arth[35]
- Jonathon Porritt, UK sustainable development commissioner[36]
- Sara Parkin[37]
- Crispin Tickell[38]
- Christian de Duve, Nobel laureate[39]
The head of the UN Millennium Project Jeffrey Sachs is also a heavy proponent of decreasing the effects of overpopulation. In 2007, Jeffrey Sachs gave a number of lectures (2007 Reith Lectures) about population control and overpopulation. In his lectures, called "Bursting at the Seams", he featured an integrated approach that would deal with a number of problems associated with overpopulation and poverty reduction. For example, when criticized for advocating mosquito nets he argued that child survival was, "by far one of the most powerful ways," to achieve fertility reduction, as this would assure poor families that the smaller number of children they had would survive.[40]
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Opposition to population control
The Roman Catholic Church has opposed abortion, sterilization, and contraception as a general practice, but specifically in regard to population control policies.[citation needed] Pope Benedict XVI has stated that "The extermination of millions of unborn children, in the name of the fight against poverty, actually constitutes the destruction of the poorest of all human beings".[41]
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stands in official opposition to abortion if the abortion is done solely for the convenience of the parents (as opposed to life saving medical reasons for example)[42] The same church also opposes euthanasia and any other means of ending human life if the euthansia is done solely for the convenience of the person involed or those who are carrying it out.[43]
Present-day practice by countries
[edit]China
Main article: One-child policy
The most significant modern population control system is China's one-child policy, in which, with various exceptions, having more than one child is discouraged. Unauthorized births are punished by fines, although there have also been allegations of illegal forced abortions and forced sterilization.[44]
The Chinese government introduced the policy in 1978 to alleviate the social and environmental problems of China.[45] According to government officials, the policy has helped prevent 400 million births. The success of the policy has been questioned, and reduction in fertility has also been attributed to the modernization of China.[46] The policy is controversial both within and outside of China because of the issues it raises, the manner in which the policy has been implemented and because of concerns about negative economic and social consequences.
[edit]India
Main article: Family planning in India
Only those with two or fewer children are eligible for election to a Gram panchayat, or local government.
We two, ours two ("Hum do, hamare do" in Hindi) is a slogan meaning one family, two children and is intended to reinforce the message of family planning thereby aiding population control.
[edit]Iran
Main article: Family planning in Iran
Iran has succeeded in sharply reducing its birth rate in recent years. In Iran mandatory contraceptive courses are required for both males and females before a marriage license can be obtained. The government emphasizes the benefits of smaller families and the use of contraception.[47]
That's smart.
ited States
Enacted in 1970, Title X of the Public Health Service Act provides access to contraceptive services, supplies and information to those in need. Priority for services is given to people with low-incomes. The Title X Family Planning program is administered through the Office of Population Affairs under the Office of Public Health and Science. It is directed by the Office of Family Planning.[48] In 2007, Congress appropriated roughly $283 million for family planning under Title X, at least 90 percent of which was used for services in family planning clinics.[48] Title X is a vital source of funding for family planning clinics throughout the nation,[49] which provide reproductive health care.
The education and services supplied by the Title X-funded clinics support young individuals and low-income families. The goals of developing healthy families are accomplished by helping individuals and couples decide whether to have children and when the appropriate time to do so would be.[49]
Title X has made the prevention of unintended pregnancies possible.[49]It has allowed millions of American women to receive necessary reproductive health care, plan their pregnancies and prevent abortions. Title X is dedicated exclusively to funding family planning and reproductive health care services.[48]
Title X as a percentage of total public funding to family planning client services has steadily declined from 44% of total expenditures in 1980 to 12% in 2006. Medicaid has increased from 20% to 71% in the same time. In 2006, Medicaid contributed $1.3 billion to public family planning.[50]
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Great.
Uzbekistan
- Main article: Compulsory sterilization: Uzbekistan
It is reported that Uzbekistan has been pursuing a policy of forced sterilizations, hysterectomies and IUD insertions since the late 1990s in order to impose population control.[
where?
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Uzbekistan
According to reports, as of 2012, forced and coerced sterilization are current Government policy in Uzbekistan for women with two or three children as a means of imposing population control and to improve maternal mortality rates.[3][44][45] In November 2007, a report by the United Nations Committee Against Torture reported that "the large number of cases of forced sterilization and removal of reproductive organs of women at reproductive age after their first or second pregnancy indicate that the Uzbek government is trying to control the birth rate in the country" and noted that such actions were not against the national Criminal Code [46] in response to which the Uzbek delegation to the associated conference was "puzzled by the suggestion of forced sterilization, and could not see how this could be forced."[47]
Reports of forced sterilizations, hysterectomies and IUD insertions first emerged in 2005,[3][44][45][48] although it is reported that the practice originated in the late 1990s,[49] with reports of a secret degree dating from 2000.[48] The current policy was allegedly instituted by Islam Karimov under Presidential Decree PP-1096, "on additional measures to protect the health of the mother and child, the formation of a healthy generation"[50] which came into force in 2009.[51] In 2005 Deputy Health Minister Assomidin Ismoilov confirmed that doctors in Uzbekistan were being held responsible for increased birth rates.[48]
Based on a report by journalist Natalia Antelava, doctors reported that the Ministry of Health told doctors they must perform surgical sterilizations on women. One doctor reported, “It’s ruling number 1098 and it says that after two children, in some areas after three, a woman should be sterilized.”[52] In 2010, the Ministry of Health passed a decree stating all clinics in Uzbekistan should have sterilization equipment ready for use. The same report also states that sterilization is to be done on a voluntary basis with the informed consent of the patient.[52] In the 2010 Human Rights Report of Uzbekistan, there were many reports of forced sterilization of women along with allegations of the government pressuring doctors to sterilize women in order to control the population.[53] Doctors also reported to Antelava that there are quotas they must reach every month on how many women they need to sterilize. These orders are passed on to them through their bosses and, allegedly, from the government.
Imagine they are doing that here? What a boon to fertility doctors!
On May 15, 2012, during a meeting with the Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow the Uzbek president Islam Karimov said: "we are doing everything in our hands to make sure that the population growth rate [in Uzbekistan] does not exceed 1.2-1.3"[54] The Uzbek version of RFE/RLreported that with this statement Karimov indirectly admitted that forced sterilization of women is indeed taking place in Uzbekistan.[54]
Russia. I hear they are run by organized crime.
The Puerto Rican government and population was suffering from economic problems, high unemployment rate, and poverty during the 1920s. The United States blamed overpopulation for these problems.[56]Contraception was illegal in the Puerto Rican colony which was largely due to the main religion of Puerto Rico: Catholicism. The Catholic Churchteachings state that contraception and sterilization are sins against nature. Therefore, any form of contraception was illegal in Puerto Rico before the late 1930s.[57] In 1937, the United States made contraceptives legal, initiating their plan for population control.[58]
A demographer from Puerto Rico reported in 1968 that women in the United States were ten time less likely to be sterilized than women from Puerto Rico. The U.S. began to worry about overpopulation of the small island that could potentially lead to a major decline socially and economically. Therefore, the U.S. began to enforce public policies in order to control the rapidly increasing population.[59]
By 1965, demographer Harriet Presser reported, 34% of Puerto Rican mothers ages 20–49 had been sterilized, the highest rate ever documented for a population.[60] Sterilization was so common that Puerto Rican women labeled it "la operacion", or the operation.[61] Many Puerto Rican women also began having "la operacion" due to healthcare worker visits whom advocated sterilization and already sterilized women whom were receiving favoritism in the work industry after their sterilization.[59] The government continued with their plan as stated in a report dated November 1973. The report, entitled "Opportunities for Education, Employment, and Training", was written by an economic policy group backed by the governor of Puerto Rico. This report explains alternatives for decreasing the Puerto Rican working class and a high unemployment rate was noted in the report as Puerto Rico's main problem.
A private organization opened twenty-three birth control clinics in 1937 and a bill was signed eliminating the laws making the advertisement of contraceptives and pregnancy prevention services a felony. Another 160 private and public birth control clinics were opened after another bill was signed authorizing the "Commissioner of Health in Puerto Rico to regulate the teaching and dissemination of eugenic principles, including contraception, to health centers and maternal hospitals".[56] Soon after, the United States government passed Law #136 which made sterilization legal for other than strictly medical reasons and advocated picking out the "unfit".[56]
In addition to the forced sterilization Puerto Rican women endured, they were also used as test subjects for birth control pills. In 1954 and 1955, two researchers, Gregory Pincus and John Rock, chose Puerto Rico as the site for large-scale human trials for an oral contraceptive. They had already achieved success in the human trials in Boston; however, in order to get the oral contraceptive in the market, they would need a larger trial. During that time, anti-birth control laws were non-existent in Puerto Rico and many birth control clinics were already riddled everywhere on the island. Also, with Puerto Rico being one of the most densely populated areas in the world during the 1950s, U.S. officials greatly supported birth control as a way to control the growing population.[63]
Many women were eager to try the new drug that helped prevent pregnancy and the large population on the small island made it easier for Pincus and Rock to monitor the trials. Another factor in choosing Puerto Rican women as test subjects was the fact that they were all poor and uneducated. If uneducated women in Puerto Rico could follow the regimen for the oral contraceptive then an educated woman somewhere else in the world would be able to as well. Also, the success of the trials would prove that the use of the oral contraceptives would not be too complicated for women to use in other developing nations as well as the slums of some U.S. cities.[63]
Women thought it was all about them. hahahaha!
A private organization opened twenty-three birth control clinics in 1937 and a bill was signed eliminating the laws making the advertisement of contraceptives and pregnancy prevention services a felony. Another 160 private and public birth control clinics were opened after another bill was signed authorizing the "Commissioner of Health in Puerto Rico to regulate the teaching and dissemination of eugenic principles, including contraception, to health centers and maternal hospitals".[56] Soon after, the United States government passed Law #136 which made sterilization legal for other than strictly medical reasons and advocated picking out the "unfit".[56]
In addition to the forced sterilization Puerto Rican women endured, they were also used as test subjects for birth control pills. In 1954 and 1955, two researchers, Gregory Pincus and John Rock, chose Puerto Rico as the site for large-scale human trials for an oral contraceptive. They had already achieved success in the human trials in Boston; however, in order to get the oral contraceptive in the market, they would need a larger trial. During that time, anti-birth control laws were non-existent in Puerto Rico and many birth control clinics were already riddled everywhere on the island. Also, with Puerto Rico being one of the most densely populated areas in the world during the 1950s, U.S. officials greatly supported birth control as a way to control the growing population.[63]
Many women were eager to try the new drug that helped prevent pregnancy and the large population on the small island made it easier for Pincus and Rock to monitor the trials. Another factor in choosing Puerto Rican women as test subjects was the fact that they were all poor and uneducated. If uneducated women in Puerto Rico could follow the regimen for the oral contraceptive then an educated woman somewhere else in the world would be able to as well. Also, the success of the trials would prove that the use of the oral contraceptives would not be too complicated for women to use in other developing nations as well as the slums of some U.S. cities.[63]
The drug trials began in Rio Piedras in April 1965. The maximum amount of people needed immediately reached capacity once the trials began. Pincus and Rock immediately opened more trial locations. Rock chose a high dose of synthetic oral progesterone, Enovid, which was G.D Searle's name brand, the pharmaceutical company providing the drug. Later, synthetic estrogen was added to the pill due to its efficacy. Dr. Edris Rice-Wray, the medical director of Puerto Rico Family Planning Association and a Puerto Rico Medical School faculty member, headed the trials. He reported 100% efficacy rate of the pills a year after the study began but also reported "that 17% of the women in the study complained of nausea, dizziness, headaches, stomach pain and vomiting".[63] However, Pincus and Rock did not listen to Dr. Rice-Wray and the Pill was placed on the market.
The Puerto Rican women involved in the study were not told they were part of a drug trial. Researchers informed them that they would be receiving a drug that prevented pregnancy. They were not informed of the dangerous side effects that may occur or that taking the pill was experimental. Pincus, Rock, and the researchers and doctors involved in the drug trials have since been "accused of deceit, colonialism and the exploitation of poor women of color".[63]
Rightly so.
Compensation
As of January 2011, discussions are underway regarding compensation for the victims of forced sterilization under the authorization of theEugenics Board of North Carolina. Governor Bev Perdue formed the NC Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation in 2010 in order "to provide justice and compensate victims who were forcibly sterilized by the State of North Carolina".[66] As of April 13, 2012, victims of forced sterilization in North Carolina have yet to be compensated.[67] Governor Bev Perdue recommended providing each living victim with $50,000. However, Gov. Perdue and others are awaiting approval for the compensation and are working towards writing a bill. Discussions have yet to begin regarding compensation for victims of forced sterilization in other states. Other countries have yet to compensate victims of forced sterilization.
According to the Eugenic Protection Law (1948), sterilization could be enforced on criminals "with genetic predisposition to commit crime", patients with genetic diseases such as total color-blindness, hemophilia,albinism and ichthyosis, and mental affections such as schizophrenia,manic-depression and epilepsy.[15] The mental sicknesses were added in 1952.
The United States was the first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics.[32] The heads of the program were avid believers in eugenics and frequently argued for their program. It was shut down due to ethical problems. The principal targets of the American program were the mentally retarded and the mentally ill, but also targeted under many state laws were the deaf, the blind, people withepilepsy, and the physically deformed.
I could see this from a practical point of view, on the other hand, most of my best friends are crazy.
Angela Davis, Native Americans, as well as African-American women[33]were sterilized against their will in many states, often without their knowledge while they were in a hospital for other reasons (e.g. childbirth). Some sterilizations took place in prisons and other penal institutions, targeting criminality, but they were in the relative[citation needed] minority. In the end, over 65,000 individuals were sterilized in 33 states under state compulsory sterilization programs in the United States.[34]][35]
The first state to introduce a compulsory sterilization bill was Michigan, in 1897 but the proposed law failed to garner enough votes by legislators to be adopted. Eight years later Pennsylvania's state legislators passed a sterilization bill that was vetoed by the governor. Indiana became the first state to enact sterilization legislation in 1907,[36] followed closely by Washington and California in 1909. Sterilization rates across the country were relatively low (California being the sole exception) until the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell which legitimized the forced sterilization of patients at a Virginia home for the mentally retarded. The number of sterilizations performed per year increased until another Supreme Court case, Skinner v. Oklahoma, 1942, complicated the legal situation by ruling against sterilization of criminals if the equal protection clause of the constitution was violated. That is, if sterilization was to be performed, then it could not exempt white-collar criminals.[37]
Most sterilization laws could be divided into three main categories of motivations: eugenic (concerned with heredity), therapeutic (part of an even-then obscure medical theory that sterilization would lead to vitality), or punitive (as a punishment for criminals), though of course these motivations could be combined in practice and theory (sterilization of criminals could be both punitive and eugenic, for example). Buck v. Bellasserted only that eugenic sterilization was constitutional, whereasSkinner v. Oklahoma ruled specifically against punitive sterilization. Most operations only worked to prevent reproduction (such as severing the vas deferens in males), though some states (Oregon and North Dakota in particular) had laws which called for the use of castration. In general, most sterilizations were performed under eugenic statutes, in state-run psychiatric hospitals and homes for the mentally disabled.[38] There was never a federal sterilization statute, though eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin, whose state-level "Model Eugenical Sterilization Law" was the basis of the statute affirmed in Buck v. Bell, proposed the structure of one in 1922.[39]
After World War II, public opinion towards eugenics and sterilization programs became more negative in the light of the connection with thegenocidal policies of Nazi Germany, though a significant number of sterilizations continued in a few states until the early 1960s. TheOregon Board of Eugenics, later renamed the Board of Social Protection, existed until 1983,[40] with the last forcible sterilization occurring in 1981.[41]
1981!
At least one compensation case, Poe v. Lynchburg Training School & Hospital (1981), was filed in the courts on the grounds that the sterilization law was unconstitutional. It was rejected because the law was no longer in effect at the time of the filing. However, the petitioners were granted some compensation as the stipulations of the law itself, which required informing the patients about their operations, had not been carried out in many cases.
Most sterilization laws could be divided into three main categories of motivations: eugenic (concerned with heredity), therapeutic (part of an even-then obscure medical theory that sterilization would lead to vitality), or punitive (as a punishment for criminals), though of course these motivations could be combined in practice and theory (sterilization of criminals could be both punitive and eugenic, for example). Buck v. Bellasserted only that eugenic sterilization was constitutional, whereasSkinner v. Oklahoma ruled specifically against punitive sterilization. Most operations only worked to prevent reproduction (such as severing the vas deferens in males), though some states (Oregon and North Dakota in particular) had laws which called for the use of castration. In general, most sterilizations were performed under eugenic statutes, in state-run psychiatric hospitals and homes for the mentally disabled.[38] There was never a federal sterilization statute,
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