Weekend question
Jennifer Roback Morse wrote on Townhall.com this week:
[U]sing Planned Parenthood’s own data… two studies [here and here]…
A poor cohabiting teenager using the Pill has a failure rate of 48.4%. You read that correctly: nearly half of poor cohabiting teenagers get pregnant during their first year using the Pill. If she kicked her boyfriend out of the house, or if she married him, her probability of pregnancy drops to 12.9%. At the other extreme, a middle-aged, middle-class married woman has a 3% chance of getting pregnant after a year on the Pill.
Over 70% of poor, cohabiting teenagers using condoms, will be pregnant within a year. By contrast, the middle-aged, middle-class married woman has a 6% chance of pregnancy after a year of condom use.
These figures cast new light on the debate over contraception education. The commonly quoted failure rates of 8% for the Pill and 15% for the condom are inflated by the highly successful use by middle-aged, middle-class married couples. Yet, the government promotes contraception most heavily among the young, the poor and the single
Bearing in mind comprehensive sex ed has been trialed in the U.S. for over 40 years, and contraceptives are now easily (and literally freely) available, what do you think should be done to lower the pregnancy rate of America’s socioeconomically poor?
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Oh my God. When I was in high school (I think I took Health in 1998), I was taught that the failure rate of the Pill was 2%. We knew that was “if used perfectly,” but I never imagined that the actual results would be so different. When I was 19 I was living with my now ex-boyfriend and relying on the Pill. We were middle class, so that second study puts me at a 31.4% failure rate! Looking back I can see that I wasn’t very responsible about taking the Pill, so I can see how failure rates like that happen, but at the time everyone told me (and I believed) that I was being “responsible.” I was being “smart” and “doing the right thing” by practicing safe sex. I never had any idea that I had a nearly 1 in 3 chance of getting pregnant anyway. Suffice to say, if I had had a baby with him, my life would be dramatically different. I’d be tied to him forever, when I’d rather the ties be permanently severed. I’d have another child with crippled relations to one parent (my husband was a single father when we met, and my oldest two rarely see their mother). Perhaps my child would resent me for the way I treated his father years ago (I wasn’t very nice to him.) Perhaps I would have had an abortion; I was pro-choice then.
I just can’t imagine. :(
The no-brainer would be to put the promotional emphasis on contraception that can’t be missused; implants and injections.
There’s that- there is also promoting the RIGHT use of standard birth control. For example, the Pill needs to be taken every day at the SAME EXACT time to have the percentage rate that they advertise, and if you want to be even more careful, double up. Use BC AND condoms. Nothing is certain, so it’s important that if you miss a pill, use condoms effectively and have the MAP easily accessable. It’s not that the failure rates are that high- it’s that people don’t use birth control perfectly as directed.
Erin,
You have been an open book here. Do you mind if I ask what birth control method you were using when you got pregnant and why do you think it failed?
Maybe you have already answered this question and I missed it. If so, sorry.
Sadny- I was on the Pill, and on occasion we would use condoms. I learned from my mistake- I now take my pill every single day at the same time and I will NOT have sex without a condom until I am ready to have a child.
I agree with Erin, I think part of the problem is the fact that young lower class women don’t fully understand how to use the BC.
I used to be on the pill, I’d freak out if I took it only 2 hours later than when I was suppose to. I switched to the nuva ring, which is much nicer. I’ve never gotten pregnant. I’ve had a few scares where I’d freak out because my period was so light, lasting a day… sometimes only part of a day. But one of the things with the nuva ring is that it causes you to have light periods. Sometimes you just have a little spotting and sometimes you’ll have a regular period lasting a few days. I’ve been on the ring over a year now and I’ve noticed a pattern. So I don’t freak out anymore.
Yup, sounds like a discrepancy with usage. That’s one of the few reasons why people using the products have different results. Middle class married people are probably more educated and experienced, and lower class people probably don’t have good advice or education to use contraception as correctly. Often, concerning the “failure rate” it is based on CORRECT use.
Quote of the day…
The killer is (this was on Fox news) Rev. Sharpton kept saying he didn’t understand why they referred to her as looking like a whore…He kept saying she was modestly dressed. HELLOOOOOO…
This would be modest dress:
http://www.amishabuse.com/images/amish.jpg
Aw fuzz…if that’s modest dress, then I don’t even dress modestly. :(
I think my dad would probably prefer me to wear Amish clothing, heaven forbid somebody of the male gender look at me. :-p
You would think with all of this artificial conraception the abortion rate would’ve dropped. It has a little from the 90’s, and it’s much more than the 70’s.
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortionstats.html
But for the record, I don’t think Beyonce’s outfit is that terribly slutty…she is actually pretty well covered but I can see how you could see it as “slutty”. Personally, on the continuum of “whorish Hollywood clothing”, Beyonce’s “roboho” costume is pretty darned tame. Ridiculous, but tame.
yeah, you would think.
“Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.” –Isaac Asimov.
Actually Spud,
Against everything the gods themselves contend in vain.
There are countries that do not have right-to-lifers (Japan, for instance, or Sweden) and in many ways these countries are better off than we are–less domestic terror (acts of terror committed by native-born citizens).
It sounds like the poor teen cohabitors are not USING condoms so much as FAILING TO USE them.
Why is Beyonce dressed like the Tin Man?
I find most comments here super-strange,
I guess that comes from an understanding that poor people are not middle-class without money. Many poor people I know and others I’ve read about in other cultures have a very different understanding of what a family and an individual mean. Diana’s concept of body autonomy would be so foreign/strange to them, many would think it sheer lunacy.
An effective reduction in poor-teen pregnancy is directly related to how safe/stable their own family-unit is. More condoms are more things/distractions from real life … the life in a family. Understand that a ‘failure’ is only the perspective of the wealthy. Many poor folks want kids … because they draw meaning and worth from running a family. [At least MY KID knows that I am important.] Perhaps they forgot to take their BC on purpose????
John,
It is so funny that your wrote that. Today in the adoration chapel I was reading Chestertons “What’s Wrong with the World”.
It was all about family and how it is a rich man’s idea that women should be “allowed” out of the home.
(Remember that he was writing during a time when women were clamoring for the vote)…
He says the rich man wants to get away from his home because he doesn’t understand the concept of “home”. He has servants to cook and clean. Someone to do the landscaping. Someone to tend to his children. He goes to an office and pretends to work while the women go to parks and don’t even pretend to work.
But in the poor man’s world, it’s the outside world that is the prison. In the outside world you cannot be free. You must punch in at 7:00, punch out at 5:00. Eat lunch at 12:00 and do it in 45 minutes. Wear certain clothes, answer to superiors…whereas the rich man is the superior.
Only in the home is a poor man truly free. He can eat on the floor, put carpeting on the ceiling, read his newspaper in his underwear…It is here that a woman can decide to eat pancakes for dinner and have ice cream for breakfast. It is here that you are king and queen of your castle.
I couldn’t agree more that many of these young people “accidentally” get pregnant on purpose…because they are seeking the freedom that comes from heading their own family and home…
You say that the idea of bodily autonomy is foreign and strange to us, but I’ll bet you 10 mullets that the thought of running a household full of kids and being fiscally responsible for them is just as foreign to our friends here. And yet I bet that as their lives go on they will feel a certain, un-namable restlessness that you and I know is a deep need for … family.
Family, two people so committed to each other and a common goal, that of creating little mr. and mrs’s, raising them and continuing the cycle is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest and most powerful natural needs known to man.
I am reminded of The Wedding Song…very popular at weddings back in my day…
When a man shall leave his mother.
And a woman leave her home.
They shall travel onto where the two shall be as one.
As it was in the beginning, is now until the end.
Woman draws her life from man, and gives it back again.
And there is love.
Danny,
Just got back from the Irish American Heritage Center. Guess who was playing?
Gaelic Storm.
I felt your presence the entire time…
Jimmy Moore will be playing at the Milwaukee Fest and Mary Ellen (his wife) and I are thinking of going…I’ll let you know. Maybe we could hook up over some Winston’s fish n’ chips…
Just sang that song yesterday at a wedding MK!
MK:
“You say that the idea of bodily autonomy is foreign and strange to us, but I’ll bet you 10 mullets that the thought of running a household full of kids and being fiscally responsible for them is just as foreign to our friends here. And yet I bet that as their lives go on they will feel a certain, un-namable restlessness that you and I know is a deep need for … family.”
Oh, I agree that even many pro-choicers feel the need to raise and nurture a family (hell, I know I do. My boyfriend could seriously make some beautiful babies!). However, many of us still subscribe to the right to bodily integrity while someday hoping to CONSENT to the use of our bodies by another to achieve that need. It still works to us.
I PLAN on having (optimally) three babies, sometime in the somewhat distant future. I can withold on that desire because there are more important things for me to pursue at this point. I can get married and continue my career, then decide to go off birth control when I am ready with my husband to have a baby. It’s simple. :)
I can withold on that desire because there are more important things for me to pursue at this point.
It’s not the idea of having children that is foreign to you Alyssa, it’s the idea of giving everything up to have them.
To us, there is nothing more important that having and raising our families. This is what I meant by foreign. I’m sure this notion is just as alien to you as bodily autonomy is to us.
MK: What I view as important is being financially secure in a career I love so as to be able to provide everything I can for a family. I want to achieve all my goals so that I can then focus all of my being on a family, as it will then become the most important part of my life. But before that, I want to pursue the dreams I’ve always hoped for, before I progress to the final dream of having a family. Never said it wouldn’t be the most important thing in my life…I just said it’s not the most important thing NOW, due to the fact that it’s not practical to start a family on hopes and dreams, without anything to support it.
Alyssa,
I know what you are saying. What I am saying is that the idea of postponing those dreams because you found yourself pregnant now is foreign to you.
To you and many here, what you want always comes first. Family is not the most important thing to you because you believe that if the timing is not right then the baby will have to give up it’s life. You’re not going to be the one to make tha sacrifice.
We believe the opposite. When a life comes into the world, nothing that you are doing is more important, and therefore we would be willing to give up whatever it took to allow that child to have a life. This is the concept that I am saying is foreign to you. Sure you’d sacrifice eventually, but on your terms. We don’t think that way.
“Just got back from the Irish American Heritage Center. Guess who was playing?
Gaelic Storm.
I felt your presence the entire time…”
Ye filt ma presence bacause thayrs nae a time that I’m not listenin ta the Gaelic Storm…
A whole hell o’ bagpipes, that’s what we need, d’ya ken?
I was wonderin’ what that buzzin’ in my ear was…it was bagpipes.
A friend of mine from waaaaay back was there (as is wont to happen at an Irish Party) and he was with the “best friend” (their words, not mine) of one of the band members…Derek somethin’ or other. Apparently they went to grade school or something. Should I have gotten you an autograph?
Nae, the little whiskey drinkin’ mammies boys are nae a match fer the sheer braw o’ a true Scotsman! SCOTLAND GO BRAUGH!
[Translation: Nah, I’ve met Gaelic Storm a few times, and my buddy Luke Donia’s older sister once filled in for the fiddle player during a tour and I got to meet them and share a pint o’ plain with them, so it’s all good.]
I’ll tell ya, I’m seriously bushed. I need to get a better job than farm work. Put me back in the factories, or UPS, or bouncing, or something!
Hi Danny!