More Sexist Jokes on "Sic et Non"

[_Kishkumen]

Yeah. In my book, a 56-44 split doesn't make one position "popular" and another "unpopular." It would take something like a 70-30 or 80-20 split before I would start to think of things in those terms.

56-44 is pretty normal on controversial social issues.

It depends on whom you are talking to.

[_Yoda]

I'm guessing you meant to say "considerably less".

Yes. That is what I get for typing in a hurry.

[_MsJack]

Sorry, I missed these earlier posts. Seth, Kish, thanks for the respectful responses.

It makes a lot more sense when you think of it as a health issue, rather than a sexcapade issue.

I mean, eating a dozen donuts a day is a foodcapade, if you will, but very few would try to get a person's heart disease treatment defunded by their insurance on the basis of it being the natural result of the person's lifestyle choices.

If we want a food & health comparison, then I think asking insurance companies to fund your choice of birth control is comparable to asking them to fund a healthy diet. My recent decision to go pescetarian is largely a health issue for me, but I'm not asking my insurance to pay for my copy of Betty Crocker's Easy Everyday Vegetarian, or for my grocery list filled with vegetables, grains, dairy & seafoods.

Conversely, I don't think defunding heart disease treatment because of a person's lifestyle choices is analogous to defunding elective birth control. Birth control (and the sex that attends it) is the lifestyle choice. That is what people are asking to not fund, just as they're asking to not fund donuts or pescetarian grocery lists. The results (or lack thereof) of using birth control should absolutely be funded by health insurance. So pregnancy, childbirth, and treatment of STDs should be funded. But the choices people are making to arrive at those points generally should not be.

[_LDSToronto]

Sorry, I missed these earlier posts. Seth, Kish, thanks for the respectful responses.

It makes a lot more sense when you think of it as a health issue, rather than a sexcapade issue.

I mean, eating a dozen donuts a day is a foodcapade, if you will, but very few would try to get a person's heart disease treatment defunded by their insurance on the basis of it being the natural result of the person's lifestyle choices.

If we want a food & health comparison, then I think asking insurance companies to fund your choice of birth control is comparable to asking them to fund a healthy diet. My recent decision to go pescetarian is largely a health issue for me, but I'm not asking my insurance to pay for my copy of Betty Crocker's Easy Everyday Vegetarian, or for my grocery list filled with vegetables, grains, dairy & seafoods.

Conversely, I don't think defunding heart disease treatment because of a person's lifestyle choices is analogous to defunding elective birth control. Birth control (and the sex that attends it) is the lifestyle choice. That is what people are asking to not fund, just as they're asking to not fund donuts or pescetarian grocery lists. The results (or lack thereof) of using birth control should absolutely be funded by health insurance. So pregnancy, childbirth, and treatment of STDs should be funded. But the choices people are making to arrive at those points generally should not be.

Safe, healthy sex is the lifestyle choice, birth control is one factor, as is proper sex education (which we know is non-existent in parts of America) and proper social supports. Birth control benefits society in that it gives women control and ownership of their reproductive rights. Calling this covered birth control 'government-funded sexcapades' is a moral judgment and can imply that taxpayer dollars should be limited to expenditures that are morally-benign.

Boiling the issue down to "I like to have sex and so I want the government to pay so I don't have babies" is an oversimplification.

H.

[_Bond James Bond]

This doesn't offend me, either. While I'm all for seeing reform to the extent that insurance companies pay for medicinal birth control, I don't believe anyone should be obligated to pay for someone else's elective birth control. "Butt out, it's my choice / Oh, by the way, you're paying for it" does strike me as something of a contradiction of principles.

I guess I do think elective birth control should be subsidized or supplied for the very poor, but I don't think it should be supplied for everyone regardless of income bracket. Fund your own sexcapades.

"Butt out, it's my choice to donate to a church / Oh by the way, you're paying for it when I write it off on my taxes" seems to be a contradiction of principles as well.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Check out all these white dudes tellin' a woman 'wats wat' when it comes to reproductive issues.

[_Bond James Bond]

Check out all these white dudes tellin' a woman 'wats wat' when it comes to reproductive issues.

No woman knows her reproductive system like a celibate man.

[_Kishkumen]

If we want a food & health comparison, then I think asking insurance companies to fund your choice of birth control is comparable to asking them to fund a healthy diet. My recent decision to go pescetarian is largely a health issue for me, but I'm not asking my insurance to pay for my copy of Betty Crocker's Easy Everyday Vegetarian, or for my grocery list filled with vegetables, grains, dairy & seafoods.

Conversely, I don't think defunding heart disease treatment because of a person's lifestyle choices is analogous to defunding elective birth control. Birth control (and the sex that attends it) is the lifestyle choice. That is what people are asking to not fund, just as they're asking to not fund donuts or pescetarian grocery lists. The results (or lack thereof) of using birth control should absolutely be funded by health insurance. So pregnancy, childbirth, and treatment of STDs should be funded. But the choices people are making to arrive at those points generally should not be.

I would treat it more like the decision to have an FDA or not. Sure, we could leave it up to individuals to find and choose foods that don't contain lots of rat feces, and some conservatives would say that market forces will lead to the right results, but I am pleased that we have at least some government watchdog, no matter how insufficient, to involve itself in this kind of health issue.

We could completely deregulate insurance, and let the market decide whether the bandaids only for 10 cents a month approach is something acceptable as insurance, or we can demand that insurance providers meet certain government standards, just as, once upon a time, people tested the weight of coin to make sure it contained the right mixture of metals. Personally, I think a certain measure of government oversight is best to preserve the "common weal," a term and principle that many conservatives seem to have jettisoned in favor of a Randian utopian paradise of corporate superheroes that is completely unrealistic.

The simple fact is that this gets down to the question of what you are comfortable with the government doing. I would contend that it is more a matter of taste than one of reason, although people on both sides insist that they are the ones who are being rational.

[_Jaybear]

Access to birth control is important for women's heath.

Several years ago, British medical scientists published a 39-year follow-up of 23,000 women who started using the pill in the 1960s and 23,000 who did not. Among pill users, they found a significant reduction in ovarian, uterine and bowel cancers, and even melanomas. Another study of 17,000 women found that use of the pill was associated with a small but measurable increase in life expectancy.

Last December, at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Vatican City, two Australian scientists, Kara Britt and Roger Short, gave a keynote address titled "The Plight of Nuns." They recommended that nuns should take the pill for a couple of years during their lifetimes to reduce the increased risk of cancer associated with not having children. It was not a tongue-in-cheek criticism of the Vatican but good medical advice based on impeccable statistics and sound biological insights. It was also theologically sound.http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/20 ... d-20120220

[Guest]

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