From: Brad Jensen (brad.jensen@eufrates.com)
Date: Sun 07 Sep 2003 - 22:51:13 GMT
> Hi Scott.
>
> I don't think Keith was suggesting forcible birth control.
> Rather, he seems to be referring to the Bush
> administrations blockage of UN and USAID funding to
> organizations that give women the option to practice
> contraception.
If you are including abortion as 'contraception', I think
You are correct.
> Much of the religious right here in the US
> regards such things as condoms as being morally wrong, and
> consider abstinence to be the only legitimate option for
> birth control.
Much of? 20%? The Catholics have it as a religious tenet,
which most Catholics ignore. I'm trying to imagine 'such things as
condoms'.
There's a whole style of vaguespeak in making these arguments.
> The problem is that in the most conservative Islamic
> societies, women do not have a right to abstinence from
> marriage. They must accept the husbands their fathers
> arrange for them. Once married, they effectively lack any
> right to refuse sex from their husbands, too. Such women
> lack the right to abstinence that is generally taken for
> granted in the US. (Many also lack other basic rights, such
> as the right to refuse beatings by their husbands.) They
> also often lack the right to decide how any of the
> household money is spent, too. This effectively gives them
> no right to spend household money on such things as
> contraception. Under such circumstances, the only "right to
> choose" if available at all, is supplied by charities,
> including population programs. These include programs that
> receive UN and US funds.
Since that same dountrodden woman can't go ther eto get those things
unless her husband or a male relative takes her, I don't think she
is going to be liming up at the door.
> Women who want to choose not to have a fifth child (etc.)
> often want to stop having children because the feel they
> cannot afford to have children. In many cases, they cannot
> even afford contraception. The question is often one of
> whether women who do not feel they can even afford cheap
> contraception can afford something as expensive as another
> compulsory childbirth, and whether or not these women
> should have any say in the matter at all.
>
> --Aaron Lynch
I don't hink abortion should be illegal, but I don't think it
should be encouraged as a method of contraception either.
Brad Jensen
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