GOP's Attack on Birth Control Screws Men

5 Reasons the GOP's Attack on Birth Control Screws Men | The Smirking Chimp:

'via Blog this'


"1. Modern Birth Control Methods Help Men Have More Sex

Let's dispense with the obvious first: sex.

In North Carolina this week, commissioners in one county rejected a state grant to cover the costs of family-planning for low-income women and their men. New Hanover County Chairman Ted Davis told the Wilmington Star-News, “If these young women are being responsible and didn’t have the sex to begin with, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

Any red-blooded straight dude should be absolutely appalled by such a prospect.

While there was never a more "innocent" time when people only had sex within the bounds of matrimony (that's just a cherished conservative myth) it is the case that when premarital (or peri-marital, or extra-marital) sex came with significant risk of pregnancy, and a ton of social stigma attached to it, women were a lot choosier. If you're a straight man with an active sex life, you should be outraged that social conservatives are trying to shame women for using birth control, and thus trying to put a crimp in your game.

This is true for married men as well. According to research by the Guttmacher Institute, only “3% of married Catholic women who do not want to become pregnant rely on natural family planning.” That requires abstaining for about 11-12 days in a woman's menstrual cycle, meaning that the husbands of the 72 percent of married Catholic women who use modern contraception are, in theory at least, having significantly more sex.

Also, if you're a man in a monogamous relationship, wouldn't you prefer your partner use the pill or another method instead of condoms? They're both forms of birth control, obviously, but the Right's slut-shaming doesn't include methods that men use.

2. You Say 'Consequence-Free Sex' as if That's a Bad Thing

At the heart of socially conservative antipathy toward contraception is their rage at the idea that women can go around sleeping with men without facing the “consequences” of their actions.

It's nonsense, but it's nonsense that cuts both ways. Shotgun weddings are largely a thing of the past for today's man, thanks largely to modern forms of birth control (and access to abortion).

According to CNN, in 2010, “The cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 for a middle-income, two-parent family averaged $226,920,” and that figure didn't include college. Even irresponsible men, like notorious deadbeat dad Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Illinois, can end up being ordered by the courts to pick up their share of that tab. Men should be very upset with anyone messing with their “consequence-free” sex lives.

3. Healthier Spouses and Kids

Here's a simple and widely understood biological reality: after giving birth to a child, a woman is able to conceive long before her body is entirely ready for the next pregnancy.

Doctors have long noted that not adequately spacing their kids – studies suggest anywhere between three to five years is optimal – is associated with lower birth-weights, a higher risk of complications, and both poorer neo-natal outcomes for babies and postpartum health of new mothers.

Men who want to start or add to a family obviously have a compelling interest in having a healthy spouse and kids who start out their lives on the right track, and contraception can be an important part of making that happen.

4. Economic Benefits

Because birth control is considered a “woman's issue,” there's not a lot of research on the economic impact of contraception on men. But we can extrapolate. Annie Lowery, writing in the New York Times, notes that “a number of studies have shown that by allowing women to delay marriage and childbearing, the pill has also helped them invest in their skills and education, join the work force in greater numbers, move into higher-status and better-paying professions and make more money over all.”

There is no reason to believe that the same dynamics don't play a significant role in some young men's economic fortunes. A 20-year-old new father also comes under pressure to get a job – any job – to help support his new, unplanned family before he has had a chance to invest in the skills and education required to “move into higher-status and better-paying professions.”

5. Indirect Economic Benefits

Social critics like to point out that 50 percent of American marriages end in divorce, but that also means that half of them don't. In 2010, economist Heather Boushey and two colleagues at the Center for American Progress analyzed state-by-state income data and concluded “that mothers in every state and the District of Columbia are financially supporting their families—and many are their family’s primary breadwinner. Women’s earnings are critical to their families’ financial stability.”

More than 19 million families with children have a mother that is a breadwinner or co-breadwinner bringing home at least a quarter of the family’s earnings. More than half of mothers in almost every state play this role... More than 6 in 10 families with children in 42 states rely on a woman to serve as breadwinner or co-breadwinner.

Lowery cites data showing “that young women who won access to the pill in the 1960s ended up earning an 8 percent premium on their hourly wages by age 50,” and notes that contraceptives “counted for 30 percent – 30 percent! – of the convergence of men’s and women’s earnings from 1990 to 2000.”

So, the indirect economic benefits for millions of men living with women are pretty clear: We've entered into an era in which very few families can get by with one breadwinner. When mom is able to put off childbearing until she gets an education and develops the skills necessary to get a fatter paycheck, the whole family does better."

(Great points!)