Inconceivable!
Is fertility a health issue or a lifestyle choice?
This month a health care refom advisory panel will meet to consider whether contraception should be offered free of charge as a form of preventative medicine, the AP reports. Healthcare reform of course poses many questions concerning how medical services are paid for and delivered. But, as the AP notes, social mores are at the heart of this latest question.
Contraception is a controversial tool for preventing pregnancy, with many religious movements banning it outright. At the heart of the argument against free contraception is that the use of contraception is a lifestyle choice, not a health issue. As the president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center notes, “there are other ways to avoid having children than by ingesting chemicals.”
All other things equal, should the use of contraception be thought of as a health issue or a lifestyle choice? And should it matter for whether it is provided free as a form of preventative care? Read more
It’s a woman’s world –and much more- in Iceland
The BBC reports that the World Economic Forum has found Iceland to be the country with the greatest parity between the genders. Out of curiosity, I decided to take a look at Iceland’s fertility rates to see if gender equality came at the expense of large families. It does not. In fact, according to John Carlin at The Guardian, Iceland simultaneously has Europe’s highest birth, divorce, and female employment rates.
This would probably be a recipe for social disaster in most of the rest of the world. But Iceland has negligible levels of crime, strong family cohesion, and high levels of both subjective happiness and living standards. Is there something we can learn from the Icelandic experience?
The Guardian article gushes with enthusiasm for the Icelandic way. A taboo-free and open-minded culture allows unconventional family arrangements to thrive. The Icelandic approach to relationships, marriage and family is casual and eminently pragmatic. Instead of leading to distress, poverty and broken families, high rates of birth, divorce, and female employment accompany strong, though patchwork, families and hardy children.
Cultures are complicated. They evolve organically over the course of centuries and are sustained under highly specific circumstances. Most fundamentally, to live like Icelanders, people would have to amend time-cherished beliefs about marriage and family. They might also have to reconsider the role of the state in supporting motherhood.
There are certainly things to be said for living “free of cant and prejudice and taboo.” But to overcome basic notions of family values is no simple matter. Unfortunately for those of us who might consider moving, the language is notoriously difficult.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user Gunna used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Clotheslined!
Should people be allowed to hang their laundry out to dry?
The BBC has an amusing perspective on a trend in the United States toward foregoing the use of mechanical driers in favor of drying clothes on the line. Outdoor clothesline drying is prohibited by many landlords and community associations on the basis that it that detracts from property values. Advocates of clothesline drying argue that it is less costly, friendlier to the environment, and has therapeutic benefits as well.
There are a couple of possible approaches to this issue. One approach is a consequentialist one, wherein we are faced with the costs and benefits preserving the property values and well-being of neighbors on the one hand and protecting the environment as well as peoples’ enjoyment of their own property on the other.
Some economists have tried to address problems of “social cost,” namely costs that people impose upon others as secondary consequences of their actions. But such analyses are only reasonable when we can make precise and commensurable measurements of the costs and benefits involved. How do we compare environmental degradation per ton of carbon emissions to property value loss, or the enjoyment and therapeutic value of hanging laundry? Many of these costs and benefits are subjective and vary wildly on a personal basis. Read more
Fat stamps?
Can we tell food stamp recipients what to eat?
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City – noted for his interest in public health – has issued a request to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow the city to bar the use of food stamps to purchase sugared drinks as a way to combat the city’s soaring obesity rates. The food stamp program (known officially as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) is a cash transfer that reaches about 40 million low-income Americans every month.
Some have already raised eyebrows at the ethical implications that come with determining what food stamp recipients can and can’t eat:
“The world would be better, I think, if people limited their purchases of sugared beverages,” Mr. Hacker said. “However, there are a great many ethical reasons to consider why one would not want to stigmatize people on food stamps.”
[...]
In 2004, the Agriculture Department denied a request by Minnesota to prevent food-stamp recipients from buying junk food. The department said that the plan, which focused on candy and soda, among other foods, was based on questionable merits and would “perpetuate the myth” that food-stamp users made poor shopping decisions.
What’s so odd about these complaints is that they seem to miss the deeper ethical question about the reach of government power. The real question we should be asking is whether governments have a right to tell some segment of the population what they can and can’t eat, and whether we want a government that substitutes its nutritional judgment for our own. Read more
Guest Post: The dignity of the prostitute
“Human dignity” demands that we must (never) legalize prostitution
Last week, a judge in Canada’s largest province struck down the country’s federal laws criminalizing prostitution. Judge Susan Himel of the Ontario Superior Court ruled that prohibitions on prostitution infringed Canadians’ constitutional rights to freedom of expression and to security of the person. If the decision is upheld at the federal level, Canada will join countries such as Germany and the Netherlands and states such as Nevada where prostitution is, to varying degrees, legal.
The legalization of prostitution is not currently a live issue in the United States, but a major policy change from our neighbour and largest trading partner could prompt a re-examination of the issue. Such a debate would likely pit progressive against progressive and conservative against conservative. In the prostitution debate, the camps are separated less by the traditional right versus left dividing lines, and more by a disagreement regarding the meaning of “human dignity.”
Although prevalent in Enlightenment thinking, the idea that states must respect human dignity entered the political and philosophical vernacular following the adaptation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Since then, liberal and constitutional theorists have struggled to define what, exactly, respect for human dignity by the state entails.
Liberal theory encompasses two different conceptions of what constitutes respect for human dignity, which point to two radically different conclusions in the debate over prostitution.
Ballad of an obese man
Liberalism, free choice, and Happy Meals
It has been reported that the city of San Francisco is considering an ordinance that would ban toys in kids meals unless the meals contain fruit and vegetable portions and limits calories. While the proposed ban applies to all restaurants, it is targeted specifically at McDonald’s and their infamous Happy Meals.
There is little doubt that childhood obesity is a serious problem in the United States, and that the government has an interest in fighting it. Furthermore, drawing on contemporary liberal theory, I think it is pretty easy to justify at least some laws aimed at regulating public health. However, it is far less clear how a law as harsh and direct as banning Happy Meals can be justified. Read more
The loss of innocence is more than a literary trope
In response to debates over public school library blacklists, the BBC poses the question, “should parents have the power to ban school texts?” The complaints the BBC article addresses are mostly about children’s exposure to sexuality. Some of the books in question are literary classics, though most are staples of pop culture like the Twilight series.
Who is responsible for the development of children, moral and otherwise? A short list of candidates would include parents and community organizations alongside schools. Parents have a great deal of latitude over their children, and can usually choose what activities in the community they engage in. But only the relatively privileged can choose what schools to send their children to, and when questions of sex and morality are concerned there is rarely consensus in the school boards. Someone is bound to be offended.
But in some ways the debate over public school blacklists misses the point. The fact remains that public school libraries are only one of many different ways for children to access information. By hook or by crook children will whet their curiosities. Concerned parents must surely acknowledge the existence of libraries outside of school, bookstores, and the internet.
The issue of public school library blacklists is only a distraction from the more general question of how children should be raised, and whether any one set of preferences should ever prevail against the wishes of some.
-Charles
Image from Flickr user Robert Dumas used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Honesty is the best policy
Sexual taboos lead the way to hypocrisy and tragedy
CNN reports that Bishop Eddie Long, Baptist church leader and staunch opponent of gay marriage, will defend himself from allegations of sexual assault on younger men. If the allegations prove true, then Bishop Long’s case will be the latest in a succession of gay sex scandals involving publicly anti-gay crusaders.
Of course, people who bill themselves as defenders of traditional sexual mores and values do not have any exclusive claim to scandalous sexual misconduct (although it is possible they have a slight edge). But when scandals involving those who profess such beliefs do arise, what really distinguishes their cases is less the severity of the transgressions and more the depths of their hypocrisy. They rightfully attract condemnation, for sexual hypocrisy, more than other kinds, ruins lives.
Worlds apart –why an open society may be better after all
On Monday, Han wrote about Thomas Friedman’s Op-Ed in the New York Times on the
“green economy,” contrasting the technocratic approach of China’s authoritarian rulers with the haphazard and undirected approach of the American political system. Han suggested that technocratic and authoritarian governments may have an advantage for costly but necessary endeavors.
There is certainly an allure of decisiveness and efficiency under technocratic rule. Thomas Friedman quotes the chairwoman of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy as saying that “There really is no debate about climate change in China.” But climate change is not the only issue on which public debate in China is absent.
In China, internet search terms such as “freedom,” “democracy,” and “demonstration” are blocked, as are some sites on health, education, news, entertainment, religion, pornography, Taiwan, and Tibet. Sometimes the bans extend to academic sites. In January of 2009, the Chinese government even censored Obama’s inauguration.
If technocrats are to monopolize decision-making, then they cannot be questioned or challenged meaningfully. This is worrisome, not only because the technocrats won’t get it right every time. John Stuart Mill once pointed out that the absence of debate leads to orthodoxy, rigidness, and most importantly stunted intellectual growth. Inertia and resistance to necessary change can plague authoritarian societies as much or more than democratic ones. Not only do liberty and political equality suffer, but so does the very development of societies and individuals.
Technocratic societies in the past have sometimes been able to make remarkable achievements in a brief time span. The Soviet Union not only launched Sputnik and led the world in rocketry but also aggressively promoted literacy and women’s rights. But these achievements did not last. Russia today is hardly a bastion of progressivism, prosperity, and innovation. Without intellectual diversity and debate, the promise of progress cannot be realized in the long run.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user sofafort used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Should identity and politics ever mix?
The BBC reports that France’s Senate has overwhelmingly approved banning Islamic full-body coverings. The heart of the issue is the integration of Muslim immigrants, who have been arriving in France and other European countries in large numbers for the last three decades but have often visibly failed to assimilate. Undoubtedly, the Paris riots of 2005 and the terror attacks in Madrid and London weigh heavily on the minds of French voters and parliamentarians.
France is not the only European country to move in this direction. Belgium and Spain are considering similar laws, and Switzerland recently outlawed minarets.
It is not surprising that secular Europeans react with visceral hostility and disgust to what they see as trappings of archaic, patriarchal and oppressive religiosity. The values that Muslim immigrants bring to Europe are often at odds with those of the modern Western human rights culture. But is it appropriate for the heavy hand of the law to secularize by force?
Forcible secularization as a form of social engineering has a mixed record. In Turkey, the fervently nationalist and secular governments since the time of Ataturk have outlawed headscarves and generally repressed religious expression. Islamic radicalism was forcibly stamped out (although the ruling AKP bills itself as a moderate Islamist party). But many rights that Americans would take for granted were trampled in the process. And religious identity politics in Turkey have by no means been resolved for good.
Banning articles of clothing might give the illusion of assimilation, while violating basic rights to religious expression. If Europeans want to address the challenges posed by immigrants from radically different cultures, they should probably think of other ways to bring their immigrants into the economic and social mainstream. Assimilation and religious freedom need not butt heads.
-Charles
Image by Flickr user BBC World Service used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
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