^Yeah, but that can be achieved with good access to health care and contraception, accurate sex education, and promotion of a rational worldview.
My plan is less about birth control and more about regulating who should actually be allowed to be a parent. It's like a driver's license; you have to pass a test to get one. There should be a parenting license. If you fail the test, no baby for you!
A hundred years from now, when all the people of Earth are citizens of the world and participants in a global democracy, historians will remember this as the moment it all began.
Oh I know -- that was the problem I was alluding to. Unfortunately, parents aren't always the best meter for the quality of the children they produce -- not to mention the inherently fucked eugenics issues, the question of who gets to choose what criteria and why. I give your plan a big ol' YIKES!
I'm not gonna regulate things too harshly. More like some basic "How do you behave in public" scenarios. Do you bring a crying baby to a movie theater? Do you let your kids run around a grocery store unattended? Is it appropriate to bring your 3-year old to a restaurant and then get hammered with your friends?
A question-and-answer test like that may not be a reliable predictor of actual behavior. Many people would say, "No, I would never do that," and even believe they wouldn't, but then do. Better solution is to let anyone reproduce, but if a baby starts crying in a movie theater, the government will take custody.
Raise them in indoctrination centers so they grow up to be loyal citizens who don't cry in movie theaters or unwrap hard candies during the symphony.
A large obstruction to condom use in developing countries is that macho cultures tend to reject them out of fear/pride/paranoia. Somehow I doubt a male "pill" would be anything other than vastly more unpopular for such folk. Heck, the idea freaks me out, and I'm one of the most reasonable people on the planet. The female body has a mechanism for periodic bouts of non-fertility; the male one doesn't, and that makes it, on a visceral level at the very least, much more unnratural. IUDs, however, are safe, reasonably cheap, long-lasting, and not susceptible to male sabotage. Perhaps we should focus on those...
^Except that IUDs can hurt like a bitch and cause horrendous scarring and complications in some women -- not saying it's not a great method for some, but not for all. I think you should reconsider your suggestion and see if your "visceral" reaction is really a worthy reason not to focus on more male-based methods of birth control. It's really not any more or less natural than fucking with a woman's cycle, and I'd suggest that maybe if you distance yourself a bit from your emotional reaction you'll see that it's really not a reasonable position. I know that the reaction you're describing is a real hurdle to get over when it comes to male-based birth control, but I'd suggest it is your attitude (and the men who share it) that needs changing, not the goal of developing a men's pill. I cannot take birth control pills, nor can I get an IUD, both for health reasons. Kinda sucks that the burden has to be on me, huh? My ex-boyfriend would have preferred condom-free sex, and even said to me he wished there was a pill for him to take, but unfortunately, it couldn't happen.
^ I'm sorry for your burden. And I didn't know IUDs could hurt... so I see I'm not qualified to offer a properly educated take on the matter yet. As for a male pill, I didn't say I wouldn't consider using one; I only said that the idea of it freaks me out. And while you may well be correct that it's my "attitude that needs changing", I can guarantee that such rhetoric would not work in the more traditional, macho cultures where birth control is most needed. By all means, let's research a male pill and help make it available to developing societies if men there do want it. But realistically, I think it's women who're going to have to be the key actors in the vast majority of cases.
Forget the male pill, they need the male depo provera injection. Just shoot 'em up and they can shoot off as they like.
And I'm sorry if I came on strong. I recognize upon rereading my post that it could be read as more of an attack than I intended. It's just that I loathe machismo, and I think that attitude is something that really needs to be addressed, and something we need to work on changing, for everyone's good. You can see it in this thread, when someone compared a vasectomy to a woman getting her tubes tied -- anyone who thinks those procedures are comparable doesn't have a clue about what's involved! As for birth control, admittedly, it's not a problem for a lot of women at all. However, I think a lot of men don't recognize what a difficult issue it is for a lot of women. The pill does have side effects, some of which are dangerous. My mother got a pulmonary embolism from the pill, and as I have an autoimmune disease that already raises risk factors for certain vascular problems, the combined family history and health problems make the pill a non-choice for me. My little sister has psychological side-effects with hormonal birth control (severe depression and hypomania, confusion, and seizures). A non-hormonal IUD can indeed be a good choice, if the woman is not allergic to copper. I've known 5 women who have or have had them. Two had severe complications and had to have them removed, and two of the remaining three really liked them, but said the procedure was so painful they weren't sure about doing it again. Depo can be good, but it causes weight gain and there are concerns about long-term effects on health and fertility. Ultimately, I think the issue of birth control is far more complicated than many men recognize, and that was what I was trying to address in that post.
Well there's always the diaphragm if someone wants condom free sex but has too many problems with hormonal birth control. Personally I'm not a fan of dicking with one's hormones or sticking bits of copper or plastic into the uterus. These things seem ridiculously fraught when there are barrier methods available. It bothers me that people who have huge problems with hormonal methods (and yes I know not everyone does) persist with them as if it is a requirement.
^Yeah, the diaphragm is okay -- a pain in the ass though. I just think that a large portion of men assume that the pill is the quick and easy solution, when things are a lot more complex for a lot of chicks.
I had a friend who used to just stick the diaphragm in every night after she brushed her teeth. In case she needed it
^Given the title of this thread, there's a lovely irony to the fact that the conversation has turned thusly.
If anyone's got a better idea of how to start bringing about an ideal future for humanity than making birth control available to everyone, women especially, by all means let's hear it... (... and no, no offense, but advocating for a global government isn't it.)