@maxdancona,
maxdancona wrote:
You might not be aware of this, LivingLava, but since the 20th centiry we have developed methods of preventing pregnancy that don't require giving up one of the most enjoyable activities in life.
I love having sex, and I can't imagine giving it up. I don't want to have more children, so I had this simple operation that solved the problem. There are several very effectiveways to enjoy human sexuality without having a pregnancy.
For me, and for many human beings, giving up sex is simply not an option.
Increasing access to reliable birth control and good sex education is the best way to decrease the need for abortion.
I understand all that. I just don't think you or many other people realize that it is possible to give up sex, and that once you do it sounds silly to hear someone say that it "is simply not an option."
People start as children who know nothing about sex. Children become sexualized as they reach puberty and adolescence, and then it starts becoming difficult how to manage feelings and desires that come with hormones. Sex is actually just one part of that, since other emotions and desires also become much stronger, along with the mind more generally.
Humans have the ability to resist desire. Some people are stronger in resisting some desires than others. We can progress in our ability to resist and overcome desire, but to do so we have to practice; and practice won't happen if we don't bother because we've become convinced that resistance is futile.
So there's a social-cultural support system for resisting and overcoming desire, and government policies are part of that. If the government sends a signal that people simply can't resist desire, then many may assume that government is the ultimate authority and remain completely ignorant of possibilities beyond what is portrayed by government. This is especially true as religion loses popularity and secular culture grows more widespread, even to the point that religion itself is becoming secularized in many ways.
So while various forms of birth control may help as a stop-gap measure on the path to developing the self-control to overcome sexual desire, they shouldn't mislead people into assuming that sexual desire can't be overcome and that there is no choice but to continue having sex when there is no interest in achieving pregnancy.
As difficult as it is to accept in a culture that treats sex like a harmless recreational activity, it should really be viewed as something as rare as pregnancy and childbirth; i.e. as something you do when you want to have children and otherwise not. That cultural notion is going to be extremely hard to achieve when there are so many cultural forces out to construct sexual pleasure as something light that you can do all the time. In a sense, it would be that way if people would return to the old values where sexual desire was fully sublimated such that dating and little flirtations bore little if any risk of leading to sex unless two people decided first to get married.
Avoiding premarital sex is an ethic that is probably alien to many if not most people these days, but it used to be the standard and it is unfortunate that it was abandoned culturally, because it did a lot to prevent the kinds of sexual abuses, harassment, date rape, and other problems we read about so much in the news today. Maybe there were so many people that broke the rule instead of following it that the rule itself became little more than a farce, but if people generally would strive for and develop the level of self-discipline needed to avoid sex prior to marriage, they would also have mastered the ability to control desire within marriage, which would help them be better partners and make make wiser decisions within family life.
