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 Thursday, April 27, 2006
The Contraceptive Quiz Show, Final Question/Maggie Gallagher
If 100 women start having sex at 16, use a contraceptive method perfectly that is 95 percent effective, and marry at 26, how many will experience a nonmarital pregnancy? (Cristina, Jennifer, you can play too if you want). posted by maggie at 8:30 PM | link 
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Is this the new quizz show, "Who wants to be an unwed mother or father?"
With these quizz questions, and with each guess we make, and with each lifeline used, we should imagine being asked, "Is that your final answer?"
If that's 95% per year, then 100*(1-0.95^10) = 40.1%. Depending on the assumptions about what happens next, some of those may go on to have multiple births. And your point is?
Here's my problem, Maggie. I see you making the point that even a 95% effective contraceptive doesn't remove the link between sex and babies, or the moral significance of that link. And, that far, I agree with you. A 40.1% chance of having at least one pregnancy before you marry is pretty darn high. And, unless you assume, not only that abortion is legal and freely available, but that it is and should be acceptable to all of these 100 women, then at least some of them should be thinking twice about these odds. Particularly since a sizeable fraction of the pregnancies will be taking place, not only before they're married, but before they're educated and able to be gainfully employed. This is, in fact, why I spent the overwhelming majority of my years from 16-26 not having sex, despite ample opportunities.
On the other hand, unless I assume that the women, collectively, are having twenty times as much premarital sex as they would be without the contraceptives (which seems unlikely), they're still better off in the world with that 95% effective contraceptive.
Even more so, when I consider that most of them will still want to moderate and space their births after they're married, and that at least some of them will find NFP more difficult to use than the 95% effective contraceptive.
Lynn is right, its hard to determine without a frequency rate. At some point the frequency rate rises to almost ensure pregnancy, and at other rates its almost negligable.
I video I watched as a youth called this "sexual roulette", striking a chord along the chance. But like Russian roulette, some games are only won by not playing at all. As my friend learned playing a "sure fire strategy" of reds and blacks on a real roullette table, you can find yourself is a real hole real quick with only the hope to wind up breaking even. He lost 400 dollars just to win 5.
Wouldn't this debate on chance mirror that of gambling? What Voltaire pointed out was a tax on the poor in math? Is pre-marital sex the perverbial fixed income person who spends what little money they have on Lottery tickets? For all but a very few, the tax on their lives is net-negative and hampers in small or big ways their ability to really help themselves.
Because pre-marital sex seems to be the sub-text here. Contraception is in and of itself a non-debate. But the false sense of security it adds to a worrisome game where little to a lot can be lost. And that is where I stand, pre-marital sex is the issue. And is it ever not a net-negative? Luckily with contraceptives it is less of a net-negative but it still just depleates.
Whether we can regulate this through regulation of contraception, I'm not sure.
"On the other hand, unless I assume that the women, collectively, are having twenty times as much premarital sex as they would be without the contraceptives (which seems unlikely), they're still better off in the world with that 95% effective contraceptive."
I think the thrust of the argument has some merit, but the details are a bit suspect. I presume 20 was intended as 1/(1-0.95) = 1/0.05. Indeed 0.05 per year is the probability of a single woman falling pregnant per unit time in years, at least approximately for small times (i.e., rather less than 10 years). But to get a valid comparison normalized for amount of sex you have to divide by the comparable rate for a woman in similar circumstances not using contraception. A typical time to conception for couples actively trying to get pregnant is 6 months or 0.5 per year, so the ratio would be more like 10:1. Of course, we're just pulling ballpark numbers out of the air but it's still important to get the concepts clear.
"And is it ever not a net-negative?"
It depends entirely on what you think should count. There are certain really obvious benefits that you can't possibly not have noticed - you must have defined them out of existence. Compare: a Amish-like sect only grudgingly permits driving at all and wants to ban recreational driving. "Whenever is recreational driving not a net negative?", they ask. The obvious response is, "But people enjoy it". But this is not convincing. "How can you possibly count people's pleasure, when every time they go on the road they risk killing some innocent bystander?"
The point is that nobody on the conservative side is actually doing any sort of meaningful cost-benefit analysis. They're adding up all the costs and then ignoring everything else by assuming the conclusion - that any sex outside the box so to speak is immoral and so any benefits can be disregarded. That's not how we approach most other problems. We say, "Yes you can drive recreationally as much as you like provided you meet certain basic standards of care and accept responsibility for making good any damage you cause to the extent possible." We don't say, because some drivers drive drunk and cause a wildly disproportionate number of recreational driving accidents that therefore nobody can drive recreationally.
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"The point is that nobody on the conservative side is actually doing any sort of meaningful cost-benefit analysis. They're adding up all the costs and then ignoring everything else by assuming the conclusion - that any sex outside the box so to speak is immoral and so any benefits can be disregarded. That's not how we approach most other problems."
This wonderfully encapsulates the perspective of the radical materialist. But it is not the way moral issues are approached. We do not make a cost-benefit analysis of varied murders or thefts to determine whether or not they are cost effective. We do not say that it's ok to murder and rob rich people so that we may more effectively distribute their wealth and have a greater number of people reap the benefits of their wealth. Well, not unless we are radical Marxists. We actually begin by accepting the given conclusion: "Thou shalt not kill." It has nothing to do with external-material gains.
We begin with the conclusion that sexual relationships should be within the marriage paradigm of one man and one woman. We recognize that there are implicit and explicit problems with pre-marital sex which have led to the sordid and chaotic social conditions that we are experiencing today. The benefits of marriage can be reasoned out but not necessarily through a materialistic cost-benefit analysis. It relates to an inner, spiritual enrichment and family love that is frequently incomprehensible to the mere materialist.
If for the sake of convenience and/or the justification of one's condition, some will now call the consequences of the moral breakdown good or not recognize the gravity of the situation, this only highlights why there is indeed a great "culture war" raging. The "frog" is becoming quite comfortable in the pot of increasingly hotter water.
"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.." Alexander Pope
Mark B, what cost-benefit analysis have you seen that you would also find credible? Have you done your own (back-of-envelope or otherwise)?
" We do not make a cost-benefit analysis of varied murders or thefts to determine whether or not they are cost effective."
But even in the extreme case of deliberate killing, we _do_ do a cost-benefit analysis, and we conclude, by no means unanimously, but collectively as a democratic society, that killing _is_ sometimes cost-effective, such as when used as a deterrent against certain crimes and when the power to kill is reserved to the government. Even if you decide for totally moralistic reasons that the guilty deserve to die, a cost benefit analysis is still required because of the possibility of false convictions. "We" set the value of the lives of the wrongly convicted much higher for the purposes than those of the truly guilty, but we don't set them at infinity. We accept that some innocents will die for the sake of the overall smooth functioning of the justice system. (If you're from a tradition that disapproves of the death penalty and doesn't support the status quo, substitute long prison terms for a lesser but still drastic example of a bad thing to do to someone - the principle is the same.)
If you're from a tradition that disapproves of the death penalty and doesn't support the status quo,
Which, actually, Jose Solano is (as am I - though a slightly different tradition from his). FWIW.
"Which, actually, Jose Solano is [against the death penalty] (as am I - though a slightly different tradition from his)."
Sure. I would have bet better than even money on both of you, hence the scarequotes on "we" and the alternative example. Indeed I'm also against it. But that has to be as a result of a cost-benefit analysis - putting someone to death isn't so enormously more brutal than locking them up for life that completely different principles apply.
Mark B., in sum, what is the cost-benefit analysis for contraception and abortion?
Mark, I used to think 40 percent was the correct answer. But a competent statistical authority (and physician) recently told me no. The way they calculate success rates is on a "actual use year" basis in. So the answer is even more simple. 5 percent will get pregnant in the first year and in each successive year.
Which means one can expect 50 pregnancies among 100 women over a ten year period.
Lynn Gazis-Sax said...
"Here's my problem, Maggie. I see you making the point that even a 95% effective contraceptive doesn't remove the link between sex and babies, or the moral significance of that link. And, that far, I agree with you."
Lynn, if you agree with me so far, that was the only point I was trying to make with this post.
I think its the MOST important thing by far.
Some day maybe I will explain how I got from there to somewhere pretty close to the Catholic Church's position. And just decided in practice to step over the small gap.
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Mark B. I did not make myself fully clear. I realize very well that there are people who make a cost-benefit analysis of their interactions with others. I described them in my comment. The man who mugs you on a dark street of New York has clearly made a cost-benefit analysis (whether or not you agree with it). The man who afterwards may help you up and take you to the hospital has not. Not all motivations for moral interactions require a weighing of the cost. This cost-weighing is done by a certain type of person.
Now, the question of what is the actual cost-benefit analysis that you have made, with regard to the use of pre-marital contraception, has been posed by Chairm. Is it that by cheaply purchasing and using a prophylactic one may have a cheap thrill with less fear of pregnancy or disease? Without any materialistic cost-benefit analysis a great many would simply advise the couple to just say "no." They may follow ancient wisdom, have some intuition as to what is "right," or have some experience whereby they realize that the inner beings of the couple should be united before their bodies fuse sexually.
This may not be the thread in which to pursue this further. Be well.
But that has to be as a result of a cost-benefit analysis
I'll take it that you mean "cost-benefit analysis" to include looking at the costs and benefits of your actions to everyone; if you're only looking at the costs and benefits to yourself, then it wouldn't be moral reasoning.
"We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fighting with outward weapons for any end or under any pretense whatsoever" - the traditional Quaker Peace Testimony - isn't really a utilitarian argument, though there are also utilitarian arguments to be made on matters like the death penalty.
More generally, I think an ethics which untethers itself too far from cost-benefit considerations - which is to say, an ethics that doesn't take time to consider the actual effect of the rules being promoted on people's lives - is problematic, but that a pure act-based utilitarianism is too vulnerable to being misled by the emotions of the moment. Rule-based utilitarianism looks to me like a better bet, if you're going utilitarian. On the other hand, Kant's non-utilitarian approach has a certain appeal to me.
Anyway, contraception isn't a thing like torture which is intrinsically wrong, so that would definitely be something I'd judge on cost-benefit considerations (where the costs and benefits include others as well as myself).
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I'll think some more about your comment Lynn, but can now submit a quick thought about your idea that "contraception isn't a thing like torture which is intrinsically wrong."
It is certainly most disturbing when one considers the intense and immediate suffering that can be inflicted through torture, so we may more readily call it "intrinsically wrong." But, when it is the slower and less noticeable, quietly inflicted damage done through say abortion or promotion of the use of pre-marital contraception, it becomes harder to respond to the problem or to see it as being intrinsically wrong. It's the "frog" in the pot of boiling water analogy where it is both the individual and the total society that is being slowly but unconsciously boiled alive.
The damage done to the respect for life and to the real love that should be cultivated between a man and a woman as a husband and wife, becomes for too many difficult to appreciate, though it can be a far greater societal damage overall than the heinous tortures that thoroughly dehumanize the torturer and the society that condones it.
The interpretation of "torture" as always "intrinsically wrong" is also more ethically complicated that we sometimes imagine. I know it is a difficult concept to contemplate, especially for pacifists. I'm thinking in terms of agonizing pain that may be inflicted on, for instance, an unwilling child for his medical good. We were fostering a child from Mexico who needed heart surgery. I'll spare you the details of what he was put through for which we and his parents were responsible. But he is now a healthy young man.
This leads us into the broader discussion of "ends and means." May not be relevant to this thread.
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