Re:How Likely Is It That Birth Control Could Let You Down?
by hga on Sunday February 15, 2015 @08:49AM
(#9052587)
It occurs to me that you can divide birth control methods into those that require self-discipline, e.g. rhythm and barrier methods and the pill, vs. ones that don't like IUDs, Norplant and of course surgery. And that there's a population for whom none of the self-discipline methods are going to work in the long term (I've been around women who had an amazing difficultly in taking the pill every day...).
Then there's the confounding factor of the backstops, the "morning after" medicines and abortion, with the further confounding factor of cultural acceptance of them. I've read that there's almost no stigma associated with abortion in Japan, which I connect with another thing I've read, that a baby isn't considered to be ... real?, really counted as alive in some sense, until it survives for 3 days. Which helps deal with the high natural mortality rate right after birth.
Which needs to be remembered when you e.g. try to compare life expectancy rates between countries, since infant mortality is such a major factor in that, and countries vary wildly in how they score it. E.g. the US tries very hard, much harder than most counties, to save preemies and those with birth defects, whereas the latter are unlikely to ever exit the neonatal unit alive in the PRC (something that came up in discussion of the couple in Armenia where it's claimed the mother gave the father of their newborn son with Downs Syndrome the ultimatum of divorce if he wanted to keep the child, one pretty clear implication being he would be killed if not).
Then there's the confounding factor of the backstops, the "morning after" medicines and abortion, with the further confounding factor of cultural acceptance of them. I've read that there's almost no stigma associated with abortion in Japan, which I connect with another thing I've read, that a baby isn't considered to be ... real?, really counted as alive in some sense, until it survives for 3 days. Which helps deal with the high natural mortality rate right after birth.
Which needs to be remembered when you e.g. try to compare life expectancy rates between countries, since infant mortality is such a major factor in that, and countries vary wildly in how they score it. E.g. the US tries very hard, much harder than most counties, to save preemies and those with birth defects, whereas the latter are unlikely to ever exit the neonatal unit alive in the PRC (something that came up in discussion of the couple in Armenia where it's claimed the mother gave the father of their newborn son with Downs Syndrome the ultimatum of divorce if he wanted to keep the child, one pretty clear implication being he would be killed if not).