Unintended Consequences of Anti-Choice Laws that Attempt to Force, Well, Unintended Consequences

Posted by figleaf | Tags:

Sat, 2010-05-15 19:51

Via Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution an article in The Economist points out yet another unforeseen consequence of restricted reproductive choice

Today, four out of ten married Mexican women are sterilised, a radical measure that partly reflects the continuing lack of other contraception in some areas as well as strict laws against abortion everywhere but the capital.

Read the quote in context here.

Cowen adds “Mexicans in the United States are now more fertile than Mexicans in Mexico.”

Two points I’d like to add

Second, this makes a lie of, oh, dozens of myths, stereotypes, and outright racist slurs about “irresponsible” population inevitabilities in “third” world, particularly “third world” highly-religious countries.

Second, the sterilization option makes perfect sense to me. For instance he continuing lack of other contraception for me, a man is why I got a vasectomy back when I was 21. And because, years later and after a painful, expensive, and statistically risky reversal, the same continuing lack of other contraceptive options let me to get sterilized yet again after the birth of our last planned, wanted child.

Presumably if they had other options the women of Mexico would choose less drastic, less medically risky*, and possibly less irreversible means of contraception.

As, presumably, would men if we had less drastic, less medically risky, and less difficult-to-reverse means.

I think that latter point, by the way, ties nicely into dozens of myths, stereotypes, and outright sexist slurs about “irresponsible” reproductive behavior in men.

* Note I only said more risky — tubal ligation is still relatively low-risk. Other methods just happen to be lower risk… but also happen to be easier to block distribution and use of.

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Add Brazil to that list. I

Submitted by colorlessblue (not verified) on Sun, 2010-05-16 03:39.

Add Brazil to that list. I just googled it, after always listening to talk on the news about how we have very very high levels of c-sections among the women who give birth on the public health system (meaning: low class, as even middle class people will try very hard to go for private), because they ask the doctors to give them tubal ligations while they’re already having open surgery. Some of the Google results:
This article:
“Forty percent of Brazilian married women from 15 to 49 years of age have undergone surgical sterilization. (...) Women with less schooling and lower socioeconomic status had more children and had begun childbearing and had been sterilized at younger ages than women with more schooling and higher socioeconomic status. Inequalities related to reproduction were strongly associated with teenage pregnancy and inadequate knowledge about contraceptives.”
This book says tubal ligations are illegal in Brazil and even so are performed more often than in any other country, and that 1/3 of black women and almost 1/3 of white women interviewed said they decided to have c-sections in order to have tubal ligations.
This other article says that in the Northeast (where I live, and maybe the poorest or second poorest region), most tubal ligations are paid by politicians buying votes, while in the other parts of the country they’re either paid by the patient or by manipulation of public funds.
I don’t have sources in english but I’ve also read stats about the number of men who just think contraception is a female problem and doesn’t concern them at all and so will refuse to use condoms when married. Also related to problems with treatment of STIs, as the women will repeatedly seek treatment and get reinfected by their partners. I remember reading something about how around 40% of men who got treatment for STIs didn’t even tell their partners they needed to get tested too.