Aah, nice to be back in WiFi range.
Matthew Yglesias does a great job of distinguishing between what I think might be a right-wing bugaboo — forcing population control — and helping individuals plan to have the size of family they actually want. It’s in the context of a claim that the carbon-reduction benefit of contraception is cost effective compared to other, perhaps more obvious reasons. But the “eugenics” vs. consumer demand argument stands regardless. Here’s Yglesias (emphasis mine.)
Lydia DePillis has a depressing item about the role access to contraceptives is playing (or, rather, not playing) in efforts to forestall catastrophic climate change
... Reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies out there—calculated on the basis of “unmet need,” or women who want contraception but currently don’t have access — is roughly five times as cost-effective as deploying low-carbon technologies like wind, solar, and carbon sequestration.
... That’s not to say we should be engaging in coercive limits on people’s ability to have children, that would be a cure that’s far worse than the disease. But the evidence is pretty clear that in societies where women are empowered and have access to contraception, that on average they want modest-sized families. And what this study is talking about is specifically what could be accomplished by closing the gap between the level of contraception that people want to have and the level of contraception they’re actually able to maintain. There are dozens of good reasons to think closing that gap would be beneficial, the impact on the environment is one of them, and there’s no reason people should refuse to say that.
This ought to hold true, by the way, even if you’re opposed to abortion. It ought to hold true even if you (mistakenly) believe certain forms of contraception are really secret, closet forms of abortion, because if you really believe that then you’re obliged only to advocate for contraceptives you can’t possibly pretend cause secret, closet abortions.
(That we don’t see contraceptive opponents pressing for safe, effective, affordable, reliable, available, and usable methods that satisfy their concerns about “abortion” suggests they’re insincere. And, to borrow the phrase from Yglesias, there’s no reason people should refuse to say that either.)
