Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cbscc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbsck!cbscc!pmd From: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Re: The "day-after" pill Message-ID: <4343@cbscc.UUCP> Date: Wed, 12-Dec-84 12:27:46 EST Article-I.D.: cbscc.4343 Posted: Wed Dec 12 12:27:46 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 13-Dec-84 02:51:21 EST References: <4315@cbscc.UUCP>, <158@mhuxr.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus Lines: 68 >Marcel Simon >There is definitely a need for *far* more study on the health effects >of the so-called day-after pill. However, Dubuc's glib dismissal is >just premature. His point of view makes that dismissal expected. I agree with the need for study, but you don't reason against the problems I suggested. You seem of favor ignoring them while extoling the "benefits": >But what about the advantages of such a pill? In the Third World, >especially, the problem in family planning is to get the couple >to practice it. Condoms, birth control pills, etc, run out, and >dispensing centers can be far away. So you get forced family planning >a la China and India. Extreme measures, but these countries have >almost **TWO BILLION** people to feed every day!!!!!! This is justification for extreme measures? Do you understand the variety of atrocities that can easily be put in the category of "forced family planning"? Who's doing the planning when the planning is forced? Who chooses the method? >Hence the >attractiveness of a pill that does not have to be taken every day. >It also allows for a planned for child to be conceive immediately, >without a two-three month withdrawal period, as with the current Pill. There are plenty of birth control methods (the morning after pill is an abortifacient) that have the same advantage over the current Pill. Anyway that's hardly worth emphasizing after extolling the MAPs virtues for cutting down on 2 billion hungry people. > >The day after pill needs further study, lots thereof. But it is >conceivably an alternative to family planning problems that >CANNOT accept the kind of claptrap Dubuc spews forth from his >safe vantage point. After all he does not have to worry about >being the interior minister of some overpopulated, underfed >country. > How comfrortable am I? I don't take the comfortable position of labeling another's argument "claptrap" without giving any reasoning. Can't really argue against name calling, can I? Forgive me if I have problems in seeing why abortion is such a wonderful solution overpopulation and lack of food. To me merely suggesting it as if it were the obvious solution displays a lack of consideration of the causes of such problems. You advocate a solution irrespective of the cause? If third world people see hope for a brighter future they may voluntarily limit their population. Lower the infant mortality rate so they can see that family planning can be done with the confidence that their progeny won't die out. Does forced family planning lead to a better future? How? I wonder how the interior minister of Ethiopia would sympathize with your last statement. The government taxes all the food that is brought in to relieve the famine there. To assume that the governments of countries with these problems are always concerned for the welfare of their people is again taking a simplistic approch to a complex problem. Abortion is the "easy answer" suggested as part of the solution to every thing from child abuse to poverty to hunger. I guess removing (or preventing?) people with problems is one way of removing the problems. Not the best way, I think. -- Paul Dubuc cbscc!pmd