It's not about affording diapers, it's about affording clothes and food and healthcare and baby strollers and a bigger apartment and babysitting and diapers.
The costs of everything you need to raise a child come as a surprise to most middle-class people. How would they not to the poor. Common sense says that people raise kids in developing countries and they have nothing, so it can't take money, right? But in a western society with a western standard of living, that common sense is wrong.
Or to put it differently: If you raise a child like in a developing country, but you are in one of many developed nations, the government will come and abduct your child.
With all due respect, I never understood the prevailing attitude in the US to do everything it takes to make you keep that βsacred lifeβ if you get pregnant by accident β and then once itβs there, drop it like a hot potato and do exactly zero to make it a tax-paying, happy and productive member of society. The hypocrisy of it all just blows my mind.
Yeah, they wail and wail about murdering children and then are all too pleased to scorn and segregate the mothers (but not so much the fathers) of these children so they have the worst possible chances.
At which point did we, as a society, settle the philosophical conundrum that is taking an unborn life? Cells, fetus or baby? What is it? Since when? Why? How should it be done?
I'm not religious at all but it seems to me that, at least tangentially, most religious believes are rooted in philosophical unknowns and feeling of uncertainty. Religious people then resort to their faith of choice as a way to find answers.
Then again, since, as you say, being against abortion for religious reasons is idiotic, do we have an all encompassing
scientific and philosophical answer about when, why and how it is "not idiotic" to perform an abortion?
If we don't, because as far as I know we don't, then why is it idiotic to decide based on your inability to understand a situation for which other people do not have answers?
As I said, I'm not religious and agree that religion is certainly not the only compass some people should lead their lives by. Nevertheless, your remark rubbed me the wrong way. "Idiotic," how can you be so judgmental if you to don't have answers to all the questions I listed above?
The philosophical conundrum was settled when we as a society created the single definition for what life is. At that date we also defined good, evil, humane and inhuman.
That is to say, there is no single moment when those got a definitive definition. There is human rights and yet we have not a single definition of what human mean. I still recall reading discussions if a dead person has human rights or not, which implies some amount of uncertainty that goes beyond even life itself.
Calling people idiotic is never the right move and it does rub people in the wrong way, but I disagree to the claim that you need to have all the answers. I do not have a encompassing scientific and philosophical answer when human life start, what makes it human, and when it ends, but I still perceive human rights to be essential and those who object to human rights to be fundamentally wrong. If the discussion is to be moved forward I feel like demanding answers to those question will just lead into an impassable domain.
Yes, it's a cheap shot to just dismiss it all as religious and idiotic. Except in self-defense or war, societies generally aren't OK with killing people. But when do fetuses become people? Some cultures were OK with parents (or at least, fathers) killing children younger than eight years. Many have gone with birth as the cutoff.
There is an argument that conception is the cutoff. But on the other hand, the relationship of mother and fetus is rather unique. So arguably she can evict a fetus, whenever she wishes. After all, there is otherwise no obligation for one person to save the life of another.
But religion played and still plays a large role in forming these discussions because of its supposedly unique position as a "moral compass" for many cultures over the course of history.
Imho this is especially evident if you take a look cloning and stem-cell research in general. While most of the West is still busy trying to figure out how to make it compatible with Christian ideals of life, China, in their usual pragmatism, just goes ahead and does it because they don't have a comparable lobby stopping them from doing it.
In that regard, it is pretty much religion that put a stop sign there and even tho this debate is anything but new, I'm not really sure we've actually progressed at all with said debate, it rather feels like decades of stalemate.
> So arguably she can evict a fetus, whenever she wishes.
A mother 'evicting' a fetus at 24 weeks without the abortion would result in a very tiny, but likely healthy baby (at least in the US, where premature baby care is generally outstanding). Source - held one in my hands this fall when our friends adopted him.
Sure, she evicts, and gives it up for adoption. If it's viable, it gets adopted, or ends up in an orphanage. If it's not viable, it dies. But it's not her responsibility.
It's not that religions are idiotic. It's that trying to enact any moral framework homogenously across a global population is idiotic and completely unrealistic.
Really? In 2018, given the myriad of ways you can cost-effectively prevent pregnancy, I hardly accept "because it happened" as an answer.
Yes, birth control sometimes fails. That statistic alone cannot explain the quantity of individuals having children, who simply shouldn't be. People can down vote me all they want, but what I am saying is true: Having children when you cannot afford to take care of them is reckless and incredibly selfish.
But yes, sometimes people have kids, realizing that they have no clue how they'll afford them. Call it desperation, if you will. Or rebellion against an unjust society.
Or maybe they don't really think it through. Much of the time, I suspect.
Because the color of your skin matters. African American babies are cheaper to adopt but stay in the system longer because they are harder to place in adoptive homes.
Not really relevant to solving the problem of getting rid of the baby. Any parent who's OK with aborting that baby probably doesn't have any issue with how long the baby stays in the system.
Totally relevant. The original statement was (paraphrased) "Someone might have gotten pregnant even if they can't afford kids," to which someone replied "Put it to adoption."
First, this seems incredibly heartless -- poor people should just give their kids up to adoption -- and second, it only makes "logical" sense if you assume that adoption is a better outcome for the kids than growing up poor. But if, as stated, some kids are going to end up in "they system" for years or decades, instead of magically getting adopted into some rich family, then putting them up for adoption may well end up much worse.
What a fetus comprehends is different from what a toddler comprehends. Many people assume (whether correctly or incorrectly) that a fetus has the level of consciousness of an animal, or perhaps even less than a companion species like dogs.
I agree. Birth control is much cheaper than diapers, and a lot cheaper than raising a child to adulthood. The person this article focuses on was chosen carefully. Most readers will feel sympathy for her, but in reality, the consequences of her decision to have unprotected sex out of wedlock while working at a low-paying job and living with her parents as an adult is her responsibility. And clearly, she's irresponsible. And there are people who don't think adult humans should be responsible for themselves, which is who this article's aimed at.
Birth control fails. Approximately 8% of women still end up pregnant during their first year on birth control, and even after the first year the percentage doesn't fall to 0.
There are many reasons that it fails, although missing a dose is the largest reason. Other reasons can be improper storage, using certain drugs (prescription or otherwise), or even consuming an unusual amount of some foods or supplements. Even if you do everything right there's a small chance that it will happen anyway.
Now, people like to claim that if you skip a dose or mess up taking it at the wrong time of the day it's your fault, but it can be complicated due to the different types of pills available, and if you get switched to a different brand, it can be easy to mess up. Typically pills come in a 28 pack. The first 21 or 24 of those will have the hormones used to prevent pregnancy, and then either 7 or 4 will be placebos. But some schemes only give you 21 pills and then you go a week without taking any before starting up the next set. There's also now larger packages and the hormone concentrations and days without taking them vary as well.
Condoms have certain advantages, but they break. And other forms of birth control tend to be more expensive and out of the reach of people living in poverty.
IUD pregnancies are often extrauterine (which are mostly non viable, so that solves the unwanted pregnancy problem). And there's still abortion. I wonder to what point having a child was a choice in the case you evoked.
As someone who had a very wanted (married, secure in our careers) pregnancy end up being βextrauterineβ (tubal, if you must know) and therefore requiring emergency medical intervention to not kill me, I think you may want to reconsider that as a better or more economical outcome.
In the same way, although cooking doesn't always make food safe to eat, there is a form of cooking that's simple and 100% effective: not eating.
And although the various safety measures rock climbers use sometimes fail, there is a method of rock-climbing safety that's 100% effective: not going rock-climbing in the first place.
And I have a perfectly safe car: that is, I never leave my house.
I take it you can see how ridiculous these are. The point (well, one point) of cooking is to be able to eat food and not get food poisoning. The point of all the ropes and things is to be able to climb rocks and not fall to your death. The point of seatbelts and crumple zones and antilock braking is to be able to drive from place to place and not get killed in a car crash.
Not having sex -- which I assume is what you are referring to here -- isn't a form of birth control, because it doesn't accomplish the objective of having sex and not making babies.
It might still be a good idea, of course. Just as it might be a good idea never to go rock climbing (maybe it's just too dangerous to be really worth it for anyone who's thinking clearly) or never to drive a car (it's bad for the environment in lots of ways, after all). But that's a separate argument, and the case needs to be made honestly (cost/benefit on failure rates, appeals to alleged rules handed down by alleged gods, etc.) rather than by snarky one-liners like the one above.
I know that this may sound strange, and I don't share this trait myself, but for many people sex is a critical part of forming a romantic bond with their partner. Without sex, they feel unloved and invalidated in the relationship. That's just part of their emotional needs. So for some people sex is indeed a psychological need.
You don't need to do any of those things. You can subsist on liquid diet-drinks. Plenty of people never leave their homes, either by choice or because for some reason they can't. Plenty of people don't have cars. (I didn't until I was 36 years old.)
But a large fraction of people would find their lives made much, much worse if they were unable to eat solid food, to leave their house, or to drive a car.
Exactly the same goes for sex.
Brief reminder of the context for this discussion: the person the OP is about had a child despite not having much money, various people here said you shouldn't be having children if you're too short of money, others pointed out that not having children is sometimes difficult, and that is when user rubidium suggested that total abstinence from sex might be the answer.
So we're talking here about whether it's reasonable to say that poor people should just never have sex.
I guess opinions on that might vary. My opinion is: duh, no, what an absolutely terrible idea. You don't literally have to have sex any more than you literally have to have friends or holidays or music, but just like any of those it's a hell of a thing to say whole classes of people should just do without.
So unmarried women who canβt afford birth control, or who live at home should be forced into abstinence?
Your entire comment is incredibly entitled and condescending. Have a look through the other comments on this thread for some reasonable discourse on the subject, plenty of people have commented on how the issue is far more nuanced than you make it out to be.
That's exactly the point some of us are trying to make:
This issue is incredibly nuanced, but people like you (and the authors of the article) never want to talk about one side of it: Personal responsibility.
The second we bring it up, we're denounced as callous, entitled, naΓ―ve, etc. etc.
It's surprising to me how often those pronouncing the complexity and nuance of an issue are almost always just fierce defenders of ONE side - the other side - of the issue.
One factor to consider is that it might, even in the US, be one of the few ways to make sure you'll (eventually) have some helping hands and be (somewhat) taken care of in older age.
Maybe because they also couldn't afford contraception?
Life just happens, as nice as it would be for all children to be born planned into stable circumstances, afaik the reality is often quite a bit more unpredictable than that.
I work in Family Law and these type of statements can be said about any group: wealthy, middle class, poor.
Middle class: "That people who work all the time and never spend time with their kids are allowed to have children will always blow my mind. What is the point of having a child if you never see them."
Rich: "That people who will rob their kids of their self reliance, by buying them everything they want, are allowed to have children will always blow my mind. What is the point of having child if they just end up leeching on their parents."
I mean we can come with all sorts of irrational and judgmental comments.
So, only the wealthy should have kids? Because if you factor everything in that we "should" be doing for kids, only the wealthy could afford it.
Seriously, why don't we leave the decision of who should be allowed to have kids out of the conversation and we as a society buck up and help take care of the ones who need help?
Why should middle-class people be the only ones who can have children? I find it much more mysterious that we have people who work full time in this country who can't afford diapers.
