Abortions were common during the times of the founding fathers. It wasn't called abortion but places where you could obtain one advertised in newspapers of the day.It almost seems like that has to be satire, a parody … but it isn’t, is it? It’s actually real, right?
Returning “consequentiality” to sex … omg, these people live in the 19th century.
Abortions were common during the times of the founding fathers. It wasn't called abortion but places where you could obtain one advertised in newspapers of the day.It almost seems like that has to be satire, a parody … but it isn’t, is it? It’s actually real, right?
Returning “consequentiality” to sex … omg, these people live in the 19th century.
Malthus feared that giving women freedom would lead to overpopulation. Women would just fuck and reproduce geometrically and food production wouldn’t resulting in massive starvation. Gotta control those women!There was a time when the chastity of young women was preserved by keeping a close eye on them, and when that wasn't possible, keeping them locked up. The industrial revolution and universal education made either of those methods inapplicable. We need to remember, it is women who are responsible for creating new heirs to the family fortune, so it's really an economic process. A child born out of wedlock is a mouth the father does not have to feed. A child born of adulterous sex is even worse. Again, family resources are used to feed someone else's child, but this time, you might not know you're doing it.
There has always been a sect of American puritanism which believes girls, and eventually women, are responsible for sexual control before marriage. "Before" is an important distinction. After marriage, she has no control. No such constraints are put on a boy and he is free to pursue a girl to the limits she will allow. If it goes too far, it's solely her fault.
As is happens, sexual intercourse usually leaves no permanent marks, at least easily observed marks, so a girl could have sex with a boy, given the time and the privacy. The complication is pregnancy. A pregnant girl cannot deny having sex, at least once. Anything that reduces the risk of pregnancy, reduces the level of control which can be exercised over women. This has always been the major motive of the anti-abortion crowds. They crow about saving innocent lives, but it's really about punishing guilty lives.
Sometimes they forget and say it out loud.
Yeah, funny thing that. Right up until the pill actually gave women reproductive freedom, it was the consensus wisdom amongst learned men, that women wanted large families, and that it was their choices to breed at far in excess of the replacement rate that were driving population growth.Malthus feared that giving women freedom would lead to overpopulation.
Presumably the logic would go something like this:If you read the comments to that tweet, most people think she's a loon. One of the supporters blamed birth control for women having babies out of wedlock. Not quite sure I understand that logic.
Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. As education level rises, most women/couples have fewer children because the opportunity cost of having a child is greater. This is true irrespective of costs of raising a child. A basic aspect of family size/economics is that for most of human history, people were agrarian and more babies increased the capacity of a family to support itself and its members. More free labor. During this time frame infant mortality was much higher. A woman might give birth to a dozen children and have fewer than half survive. When women and men both have hid access to earn wages, they are able to thrive with fewer children. Specifically, it is easier for a woman with opportunities for paid employment to support herself without providing more children. As educational levels of women have increased world wide, so does the survival rate of children she bears just as the birth rate decreases. Usually, maternal survival rates increase but something wise seems to be going on in the US that has increased maternal morbidity and mortality rates.Yeah, funny thing that. Right up until the pill actually gave women reproductive freedom, it was the consensus wisdom amongst learned men, that women wanted large families, and that it was their choices to breed at far in excess of the replacement rate that were driving population growth.Malthus feared that giving women freedom would lead to overpopulation.
Then women actually got reproductive freedom, and in each place where they did, the net fertility rate fell rapidly below the replacement level, and has remained there.
Turns out, it wasn't women at fault at all.
It's now the consensus amongst learned men that it was nobody's fault. Because there is no thinkable alternative to the dichotomy of blaming women, or blaming nobody.
Apparently.
That's why we sometimes call them the Christian Taliban.These people really are just the Taliban in western attire.
Because they didn't wait for marriage.If you read the comments to that tweet, most people think she's a loon. One of the supporters blamed birth control for women having babies out of wedlock. Not quite sure I understand that logic.