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Brigid comments on Politics Discussion Thread August 2012 - Less Wrong
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People who are pro-life in the abortion debate should also be pro- free birth control pills (those not requiring a co-pay).
If pro-lifers were more pragmatic, they would rank the issues that they care about from least-bad to worst. Most would agree that abortion is worse than pre-marital sex. Therefore, they should support efforts to eliminate the need for abortions (not just seek to eliminate the ability to have an abortion). As access to birth control reduces the likelihood of the need to have an abortion, free birth control pills would reduce the overall number of abortions, thus supporting the pro-life stance.
Also, if you agree with the analysis done by Steven Levitt in the book Freakonomics (availability of abortion services led to a drastic decrease in crime), by the same logic, free birth control should lead to a decrease in the crime rate as well.
The catch: That pro-lifers have to believe that they will not be able to get everything that they want politically, and must prioritize their goals.
When discussing our opponents, it is easy to suggest that they should maximize their immediate utility. When discussing ourselves, it is easier to notice that maximizing immediate utility could have various negative long-term consequences.
Maybe there are good game-theoretic reasons why pro-lifers should oppose what you suggest. For example, ranking one's values from least-bad to worst (and making the ranking generally known) could be a bad signalling move, if you really want to achieve them all in long run.
A related outside view observation: Whenever a Green attempts to give the Blues tactical advise, no matter how well-meaning, the advise always seems to boil down to compromising on at least half the Blue positions.
Fair enough. :)
That's a great point that I didn't consider.
That doesn't follow. Do I need to sing the song?
Birth control pills are only as reliable as the people who take them. This intervention could very well cause an increase in abortion.
That is a mechanism by which availability of birth control could theoretically increase abortion; do you have any empiricism handy?
Absolutely none whatsoever.
Edit: Confound these Lesswrongers, they drive me to research.
Anyways, to make a brief attempt using data from here, it seems that I was either overestimating p(oops|pill) or underestimating p(oops|condom). Of course, the hypothetical pragmatic pro-lifer really should be advocating for Dreaded_Anomaly's suggested methods as opposed to free pills.
Still, I give substantially more credence to the statement:
(Note: I was not giving much credence to begin with.)
Long lasting birth control exists and the various methods have much lower failure rates than the once-a-day pill.
Here's a large analysis from the Guttmacher Institute about rates of contraception use vs. rates of abortion. Increased contraception use along with improving methods dramatically reduces the abortion rate.
This seems reasonable. But it's based on the assumption that abortion-outlawing groups are acting in a particular goal-based way. And most of them are not. Instead, the laws reflecting their values have become goals in and of themselves - it's what the organizations exist for. This definitely leads to missed opportunities.
If they were pragmatic they would not be pro-life, the entire argument boils down to pragmatism versus deontological rules.
I'm with you on this one, and it ties in with a point that I have used several times in discussions about abortion, regarding why pro-lifers have done such a poor job thus far of accomplishing their goals.
If a person truly believes that "life starts at conception" and that abortion is taking the life of a human being, a rational actor who values human life would take action to minimize the loss of life, correct? If the pro-life movement was doing this, they would be proposing options that would be palatable to a much greater portion of society than their current hard-line ideas, though it might still not be enough to get laws passed. They should be not just willing, but eager, to make concessions for rape and incest victims, and for cases in which the life of the mother is in danger. You can argue the slippery slope all you want, but the fact is, human beings are being killed (as they believe) while they stick to their guns.
People are really, really bad at taking action in response to this kind of thing. Selling people on "if you care about human lives, it matters how many of them you save, and you can get information about that" is tricky and about 90% of the concept of optimal philanthropy.
Many forms of contraceptives are already free from non-profits. And they're pretty cheap otherwise. I don't think mandating that insurance cover contraceptives would affect their use very much.
While Planned Parenthood clearly could be biased, they state (noteably without a reference) that " Women typically pay between $15 and $50 a month in co-pays for birth control pills — $180 to $600 a year." Even $180 is pretty expensive.
They also claim that " More than one-third of all women voters have struggled to pay for prescription birth control at some point in their lives, and have as a result used birth control inconsistently."
Finally, "On average, a woman spends 30 years of her life trying to avoid pregnancy. That means 30 years of paying for birth control."
I think nearly all the responses to this question miss the point. your points (both the original comment and the responses) use a "less wrong" type definition of rationality/pragmatism/reasonableness, none of which apply to the many religious pro-lifers.
When looking at abortion from a religious perspective, and not a legal or "less wrong" rationality perspective, being pro-life is absolutely consistent with not wanting people to use birth control. procreation, all relevant acts and the results relating thereto, are sacred and should not be messed with. Simple - that's all there is to it. Though i personally do not believe in these, it strikes me as a reasonable and principled way of looking at the issue (e.g., most believe life is sacred, most pro-choicers dont like abortion, etc.). The idea of "cutting your losses" and being pragmatic, from a religious viewpoint, is actually quite ridiculous. Losing the issue is 100% better than being pragmatic precisely because it allows the pro-lifer to live their life in a manner that is consistent with their guidepost -- religion. Religion serves as their moral compass. In many ways, these religious morals are consistent with the legal and pragmatic perspectives the less wrong community generally supports. When they diverge, the less wrong community looks to "rationality," the religious look to their religion. I believe a vast majority of religious folks are "subjectively rational." Objective rationality is rationality that can be proven correct. Subjective rationality is rationality that cannot be proven wrong. So long as you cannot prove there is no god (which you can't, sorry!), religious arguments, particularly ones that at its core are trying to preserve life (and embryos that result in life) will have my vote as subjectively rational. I note that most countries, paricularly the united states, were formed and flourished with religious laws carrying the day, at least from moral and personal perspective.
This is not to say your arguments are "wrong" in the abstract, frankly, its irrelevant. In a social environment/community, being "right" is only as important as the number of people that agree with you. We live in a world where a significant portion of the population is pro-life/etc. To me, trying to judge their perspectives within a framework that on its face is inapplicable sounds like a waste. Seems more important to understand the varying models these people are using, since we're forced to deal with them irrespective of having the "correct" (pragmatic/rational) viewpoint.