Okay, I thought I was done posting today. But then I had the rare irritation of reading an article I almost totally agree with in every respect and finding one section that absolutely infuriated me.
The article demonstrates nicely that Santorum’s claim that the ACA would hurt his family (which includes a severely disabled child) is completely disingenuous. We families with disabled kids benefit big time! Now we cannot be excluded for a pre-existing condition! Now we can get more coverage for therapies! Now we don’t have to pay $100,000 a year in out-of-pocket medical expenses! (Okay, I didn’t pay that much for my disabled kid. My county provides all necessary early intervention therapies through the school system. But I did pay a lot, and Santorum himself did pay $100,000!). So he should be well aware that people cannot easily afford a disabled child without government help.
So..yay, Stephanie Mencimer, author of this article!
But then:
Were Santorum to deny women, particularly those in their 40s, abortion and contraception, more families—including those of lesser means—would face the severe challenges of raising disabled children. The possibility for serious complications rises exponentially among older women should they forgo contraception. Humans weren’t designed to have children well into mid-life.
My emphasis. So. A few problems with this. (For the record, my kid’s Ridiculously Rare genetic disorder has no correlation with the parents’ age, and I am not yet in my 40s. So this doesn’t apply to me personally.)
- Humans were not designed to do anything. They evolved. Sometimes they didn’t evolve to do something perfectly, but just well enough.
- I’m pretty sure the author of this article (this is in Mother Jones) would not be pleased to tell gays and lesbians that they were designed for heterosexual sex. But once you start telling people that they should behave according to certain facts about body functions, you are going down a natural law-ish route.
- Doesn’t this smack of blaming the victim?
- No quibble with the fact that fertility rates decline and genetic disorders rise as the mother’s age increases. But healthy kids of older mothers tend to be brighter and better behaved. Older parents are more stable financially and emotionally and are more likely to be married, all markers of successful child-rearing. So maybe it’s sort of a draw about when it’s best to have kids?
Nobody has commented on this, which is a shame because it is a good post.
It’s not a good post, it’s a great post!
This is why I’m not a natural law guy.
Thanks for commenting! I didn’t get a shut-out!
Or maybe not? Maybe what it suggests is there is an optimum time of life to have children? Or maybe just that we shouldn’t be saying when people should be having children if they’re planned, as this author isn’t, but that you can’t really ignore the higher risk for later pregnancies when considering family planning policy?
This is touchy, but while humans weren’t designed by a designer, there is design in evolution, it’s just not the cause, but rather the product of it. This is not to say that humans were in fact not designed to bear children after forty. Clearly, they can, so the design that exists now, to the extent there is any in this aspect of human biology is for them to do it from time to time. But at the same time, it may not be charitable to read the author literally in that way. She may simply mean to suggest that it’s not the wisest decision in the world to have a child that you’re not actually seeking to have if you’re over 40. I understand your problem with this statement as written, but I don’t think it needs to be interpreted quite as as you do.
On blaming the victim, no of course it’s not blaming the victim. All this author is saying is that there is no reason as a matter of policy not to facilitate access to the most effective methods of contraception for women over 40 who would like to avoid becoming pregnant. Who’s the victim here? Where’s the blaming? Just talking about the higher average costs of pregnancy at older ages is blaming those “victims” who have to bear children at an older age when they preferred not to have? What’s she blaming them for? what is she saying they did wrong? What is she saying they should be denied as a result? If there are any victims, it’s any women who’ve had the ease of their access to the means to prevent this lessened, or its cost raised, for any reason that isn’t compelling – the exact thing this author is writing to oppose.
I agree people over 40 should have access to BC.
The victim blamed is the woman over 40 who had a disabled kid and did what she was not designed to do.
I understand this was a tossed off comment, as I hope I expressed in the post. But it actually is an inaccurate and unpleasant thing to say. There are trade-offs to having a kid over 40. If you’re going to make a comment that it’s a non-optimal time to have a baby (and that’s fine), then back it up. She attempted to do this with only incomplete evidence (i.e., only about genetic disorders, not about the benefits). She didn’t need to make this comment at all to make her broader point.
Just so I’m clear: you per se are the one saying that that person is a victim, right? Because from where I sit this author is simply pointing out that a person who chooses to carry a pregnancy to term over the age of forty does so facing relatively much higher risks of complication and genetic disorder. (She follows up with an unfortunate statement about design that seems kind of neither here nor there with regard to the rest of what she says to me, but again, it is unfortunate.)
I think it’s pretty hard to cash out the life prospects/performance probabilities of healthy children of older women as against the immediate health risks to the mother and the heightened risk of disorder in the child, so I don’t think that her merely pointing out the heightened health risks was inappropriate. This is an article primarily about reproductive health. All I meant by say that there might be an optimum time was that it might be that as opposed to what I kind of thought you suggested, which was that the costs and benefits offset more or less evenly up and down the age range. She actually doesn’t say anything about optimality – all she does is point out the higher risks associated with giving birth at a higher age. And again, I think that’s fine to present as information on it’s own – there’s no obligation to balance it with other information about life prospects. Really, what I think is that they seem like quite remote and unrelatable concerns (though both important) to me. Do women who experience dangerous complications to themselves as a result of a late pregnancy console themselves with the thought that, statistically, their child has a higher chance for success in life for it? Perhaps they do, but surely they know that individual realities are more significant determinant of individual outcomes than statistical aggregations. In other words, how her child does in life rests largely in her hands, and then in more further particular events beyond her control – not in probabilities. This is in contrast to the health risks, which are much more out of her hands and actually governed by the probabilities, (I would think). I’m just having trouble seeing these things as balancing each other rather than simply being multiple simultaneous statistical realities.
To be clearer, the first part of her paragraph suggest that women over should *have access to* birth control. Totally with her! The last part suggest they should *be on* birth control. Not so with her.
I didn’t read it that way. I read her clause of “Santorum deny[ing] women … abortion and contraception” to inform the sense of the verb forgo in “forgo contraception,” so that I read “forgo contraception” as “be forced or induced to forgo contraception against their preference,” e.g. because of budget decisions resulting from the lack of full coverage, etc. So the full sentence is just the factual statement that the health risks are higher for a pregnancy occurring later in the childbearing years. And then I read the ‘design’ sentence as simply a bad theory about why those risks are higher – not a normative statement about whether a woman should choose to have a child at that time. the whole paragraph is just a normative statement about the high probabilistic health consequences for older women of even slightly lessening the ease of their access to effective contraception.
By no means do I claim this is the only valid reading of this paragraph, but I think it is a reasonable one. My prediction would be that if you called this author up and ask her, I don’t think you’d find out that she believes older women (say, over 40) should not have children if they want to, and ergo should practice contraception. Only that they should do so knowing the risks, and that all women of that age should have facilitated access to the most effective method of contraception for them individually. That’s just my hunch.
To be super clear, my quibble was only with the sentence I emphasized. (FWIW, the reason I have three kids under five is not that I am a masochist, but because I wanted to get them all in before my late thirties and the risks of infertility and genetic disorders set in. So I picked a non-ideal spacing of children.) I’m just saying there are pluses to having kids later, and since, as you said, women can have babies then, there seems no reason to make a claim that they are not designed to do so.
I agree that if you called the author and asked her, she would not say, on reflection, that women over 40 should be forced to be on birth control. My guess is that, while she was writing this paragraph, her views on the matter were inchoate and inconsistent. Which is fine (my views on countless matters are that way until I turn my attention to them), but she is making an argument in a major publication. I will do her the compliment of believing that she indeed said what she meant – that she thought women were not designed to be having children then. Since I suspect that she wouldn’t like the implications of that and it is inconsistent with the totality of her beliefs, I will do her the compliment of pointing out where I think she went wrong (just as I consider it a compliment that you have spent the time and effort to engage on this post with me).
It’s worth mentioning that the argument that women aren’t designed to have babies after 35 is very frequently used by misogynists (not “have a different opinion on birth control” misogynists but rather “has an obvious disdain or contempt for women” misogynists) as a rhetorical bat to use against women. Suggesting, in effect, that their desire for any sort of independents will leave them barren or without the ability to produce healthy children after 30.
It’s actually because of that where the initial statement you are critiquing rubbed me the wrong way. Regardless of what the author meant by it, it feeds into some rather ugly things.
It was an unfortunate line, without a doubt. In addition to the reasons already given, it’s extremely unclear exactly what anyone who says it either means by it descriptively, or what their point in using it is. I’d be interested to hear the author on those questions in this case. I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt that she’s not a misogynist.
I also pick on it because it’s a line of reasoning I find annoying, but is actually quite common.
Part of the problem is that it’s not so much a line of reasoning itself, as just a single dubious contention. It both needs a line of reasoning of its own to be justified (not a tall order to say the least), and also needs to be situated as part of a larger line of reasoning if we are to understand what the author’s intent in making the contention is. The problem is that it has neither of those here, at least not in a clear way.
yes a tall order! yes a tall order!
I too, give her the benefit of the doubt that she’s not a misogynist. But that still is, as Will points out, a misogynist thing to say. One need not be a misogynist to have one misogynist belief that conflicts with the totality of one’s belief. I’m pretty sure I’m not a misogynist, but I wouldn’t be shocked to find a misogynist belief or two lurking around in there.
Yes, you’re right: not a line of reasoning itself. And the implicit line of reasoning behind it (however vague) would tend to be the same line that justifies homophobia and birth control as unnatural.
I’ve heard the view expressed that it is immoral for a woman in her 40s to consider having a kid. One of these days, I’ll write a post addressing that directly.
I seriously doubt she’s a misogynist. I do think, however, that she used an argument that was handy but that she did not think through (on either the implications of the argument or even the veracity). This is not an uncommon thing. When an argument is convenient, we often don’t think it through as thoroughly as we should. That, I think, is what it comes down to.
Bearing in mind that I wouldn’t dream of telling someone else what to do on this score — I’m more in the camp of “less moral” to have a kid when you are in your forties. There are so many kids who need a home already…
… and that’s it. my argument doesn’t go more than “hey look, there are kids out there! why not get one of them!”
Well, of course Will didn’t say that that is a misogynist thing to say – he said it’s something frequently said by misogynists. Maybe it is a misogynist thing to say, I don’t know. As I said, it was unfortunate and unnecessary to what I take her point to be (which absolutely not that women shouldn’t consider having kids in their 40s).
Again, I guess I dispute that that’s her line of reasoning. To me what she is saying is “Humans weren’t designed to have children well into mid-life, therefore the possibility for serious complications rises exponentially among older women should they forgo contraception.” I can think that birth control is unnatural (“Natural” is a ridiculously vague philosophical idea in any case) and think it’s the been knees, for example – in fact, that’s what I think.
By all means write the post, I just hope you don’t try to draw this author into it, because my whole point is that’s absolutely not what she’s saying.
No, no interest in trying to draw this author into it. She didn’t express it directly as a moral point, and I think we’ve given a talmudic enough reading of that one line.
But I have heard it expressed directly as a moral point.
We (I mainly) have definitely done it to death. 😉
Suggesting that women over 40 becoming pregnant involves disproportionate health risks is exactly as sexist as suggesting that women over 80 playing contact football involves disproportionate health risks.
Increased health risks =! “body isn’t designed for it”
I’m confused as to whether you’re just upset by the word choice or you honestly believe that she was espousing Intelligent Design theory.
Since I am giving the author the benefit of the doubt, I am going to go with “word choice.” In this case, however, word choice matters.
It’s like this. There is a subset of the population with an unrealistic idea of fertility in advanced maternal age. There is another subset of the population with an equally wrong idea of FAMA in the other direction. It’s the latter group that says things like “women over forty aren’t naturally designed to carry and give birth to (healthy) babies.”
A statement that is quite simply wrong. At least as it pertains to women as a whole (much less “humans” as a whole). Women over forty do get pregnant and carry babies to term with regularity. Many can’t, but many can. If we’re talking about fertility drugs and IVF, then we’re screwing with nature (which isn’t in and of itself a bad thing, but it is a thing). But in the context that the author is talking about, natural (indeed, unintended) pregnancy, we’re talking about women that are fertile. Women whose bodies are doing what nature allowed their bodies to do. Sometimes this will have unfortunate results (which itself is natural, though undesirable), but often it will not. The statement made here, often made by genuine misogynists, suggests that it’s all the former case. This wouldn’t be offensive if it were true (nobody would be objecting if we were talking about women over 55, though it would be a useless statement in the above context because unintended pregnancy is rather unlikely), but it’s not true. But it’s a false (or grossly exaggerated) statement often made with the intent to offend.
In other words, Picture Of A Racist.
I don’t follow, but if I had to guess I would guess you’re saying that I am saying “Because bad people say it, I believe it can’t be true.”
Which is not what I am saying.
Or, alternately, “I reject what is being said because of who is saying it.”
Which is also an inaccurate interpretation. I spent more time explaining why (I believe) what was said was faulty than the connection with undesirable people saying it.
Interpretation #3: “Because bad people say it, you shouldn’t say it, either.”
There is some truth to this one, I suppose. If Group X says Y, and you do not want to be associated with nor lend assistance to Group X, you should be careful about saying Y. If Y is true and pertinent, well then you have to admit that Group X is right about this (I have sympathy for various viewpoints of various Group X’s. It’s not fun, but I can’t pretend I don’t just because I don’t like Group X).
Of course, in the “question everything” sense, you would ideally give the same scrutiny to echoing something from Group Z, which you generally support. But in the push-and-pull, X vs. Z, you have to focus more of your attention somewhere. I sometimes spend too much time scrutinizing Group Z, which can make me rather squishy and indecisive.
I think that it is all about risks when men or women have children after 40. Yes, a disorder can happen at any age and have nothing to do with how old you are. Stuff happens and we can not always prepare. At the same time we need to look at the facts with a clear mind, which is hard with something as charged as reproductive rights.
There is almost nobody I know who would not say it was foolish for a 16 year old to choose to be a parent. Still, people do it. Some never finish school. Others find out the hard way that adults around them judge there choice as selfish and ignorant. The same goes for us older people in reverse. There is nothing young at heart about seeing a 60 year old man try to push his kids pram and his portable air supply at the same time!
I know a person could die at any age . I also know that most of the big killers such as COPD and lung cancer are lifestyle related and take a long time to show up. 40 year old men and women have higher risks of death and disability then a 20 year old within the next 18 years unless you live in a 3rd world nation or are at war. As a woman over age 40 this is not a shock to me.
Yes, I have friends my age TTC. It is hurtful to see them loose babies, try all sorts of ART, only to be left broke and depressed. Wile we are not designed to do anything we have yet as human kind evolved to the point that we have beat death due to being old. I think if we all accepted that ageing is not a disease, then people like Paul Ryan would be seen for what they are. Do I need to say it?