Monday, June 02, 2008

Everything should work this way

I was talking to someone who is trying to conceive, and she said that they lied to us in sex ed by telling us that you can get pregnant at any time in your menstrual cycle, when in reality you have to be ovulating.

And that is perfectly true if you're trying to make a baby RIGHT NOW.

However, if you're trying to avoid pregnancy, you still essentially have to protect yourself every day of your cycle. Unless you're absolutely 100% certain you're not ovulating right now and any sperm will have left by the time you do ovulate, the rhythm method is useless.

This is actually a good way to have imperfect knowledge that doesn't grasp every nuance. You start by thinking you have to protect yourself every day, so you err on the side of caution and not making any humans who are going to be dependent on you. Then when you do want to have a baby, you have to learn more and do research and understand complicated things about body temperature and mucus consistency. If you mess up on this complicated stuff, you end up not having a baby. To deliberately make a baby, you have to set out to educate yourself on how to do so and get all these copmlicated techniques right. If you think you can have a baby by just stopping the pills without learning all the complicated ovulation science, you're less likely to end up with a baby.

Everything in the world should work this way! The base understanding of anything should lead people to err on the side of caution and of less risky outcomes, and you should need more knowledge and understanding to achieve the riskier outcomes.

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