Birth control on Safehold?

Has there been any evidence of birth control on Safehold? Pasquale's teachings seem to be sufficient to reduce infant mortality well below anything Earth managed at a comparable level of technology. With pre-Merlin technology and unchecked birth rates, it seems like Safehold would've been only a few generations away from not being able to feed its people.

Given the genetic engineering skills of Operation Ark's team, I would've expected to see a plant that acts as an effective and side-effect-free oral contraceptive. Would Langhorne have objected if such a plant had been created? It seems that even Langhorne's fanaticism (like that of the settlers of Grayson) didn't extend to barring technology essential for basic medical needs. Contraception could've been a luxury for the individual and a hindrance for society in the early days, but eventually it'd become a necessity for both.

I wonder if managing the birth rate is one of the things that's on the to-do list for the millennial Archangel visit, in whatever form it's planned to take...

I would be very surprised if they had, because the crop yield on Safehold is substantially higher than it is on earth, so it would be able to sustain a far higher population without significant trouble. And it would take a substantial amount of time to get to that level.

I would be amazed if the Church permitted the use of any form of birth contol. I seem to remember some mention of a mandate to 'be fruitful and multiply'. Colony planets need a rapid population increase to survive and provide labor in low tech society. The genegineered(sp?) crops should mean hunger would not be a problem providing they had the labor available to plant, tend and harvest the crops. Eight million sounds like a lot of people but a major catastrophe or series of disasters (plague or weather) might threaten the long term viability of the colony.

There was a mention (when Ohlyvya is watching her daughter and future son-in-law) of betrothed couples sometimes coming to their wedding already pregnant or with small babies. If they had easy access to birth control methods that would be a lot more unusual and shocking.

Of course, a lot of couples probably do use some form of birth control, even if it's only the abstention method. But I doubt the Church would encourage it unless there was a clear risk to the mother's health.

Morden wrote:I would be very surprised if they had, because the crop yield on Safehold is substantially higher than it is on earth, so it would be able to sustain a far higher population without significant trouble. And it would take a substantial amount of time to get to that level.

How substantial? If we assume that each Safeholdian will have an average of, say, 1.2 children who live to have their own children (which seems low to me) and assuming a generation time of about 30 years (which seems about right given the mention of late-ish marriage for middle class people and early for both upper and serf classes) it'll only be a bit over a century before Safehold hits its second billion and about two more after that before it surpasses the current population of Earth.

I'm not saying it'll happen within Cayleb's lifetime; it won't. Sooner or later, though...for humans with a finite amount of real estate, the only long-term options are birth control or disaster.

ayg wrote:There was a mention (when Ohlyvya is watching her daughter and future son-in-law) of betrothed couples sometimes coming to their wedding already pregnant or with small babies. If they had easy access to birth control methods that would be a lot more unusual and shocking.

I'd forgotten about that. Thanks. That's good evidence for a lack of reliable birth control.

Seems like it'd be hard to run a brothel and staff it with slender young women who stay in that condition and in that job field for any real length of time. Given the fact that Ninian was a working girl for a while, she'd either be physically wrecked, mother to double digits, or have access to something to prevent pregnancy.

Kufat wrote:

ayg wrote:There was a mention (when Ohlyvya is watching her daughter and future son-in-law) of betrothed couples sometimes coming to their wedding already pregnant or with small babies. If they had easy access to birth control methods that would be a lot more unusual and shocking.

I'd forgotten about that. Thanks. That's good evidence for a lack of available birth control.

Undercover Fat Kid wrote:Seems like it'd be hard to run a brothel and staff it with slender young women who stay in that condition and in that job field for any real length of time. Given the fact that Ninian was a working girl for a while, she'd either be physically wrecked, mother to double digits, or have access to something to prevent pregnancy.

...

Not trying to start a discussion, but most historical sources I've read posit easy access to abortion for the case of prostitutes in the ancient world, at least. Probably up to the invention of safes as well, but no direct readings to support that.

I am actually rather surprised we are not routinely hearing about families of a dozen or more kids which were quite common till quite recently and still common enough in places with no reliable birth control. I live in a place with a strong Irish Catholic culture going back several centuries and a number of my older colleagues at work come from families that large.

I'm not offering an opinion on bc, abortion, or the use of the same, just mentioning that there is just no way that the "world's oldest profession" can be feasible without some way to prevent pregnancy and or birth.

Since a main character spent some time as a working girl herself, doesn't seem to have 8 bazillion children, and has other women that she seems to care for working for her as professionals, it stands to reason that there must be something available that isn't traumatic or fatal to the women.

I'd posit that it just hadn't been Germaine to the story yet.

jgnfld wrote:

Undercover Fat Kid wrote:Seems like it'd be hard to run a brothel and staff it with slender young women who stay in that condition and in that job field for any real length of time. Given the fact that Ninian was a working girl for a while, she'd either be physically wrecked, mother to double digits, or have access to something to prevent pregnancy.

...

Not trying to start a discussion, but most historical sources I've read posit easy access to abortion for the case of prostitutes in the ancient world, at least. Probably up to the invention of safes as well, but no direct readings to support that.

I am actually rather surprised we are not routinely hearing about families of a dozen or more kids which were quite common till quite recently and still common enough in places with no reliable birth control. I live in a place with a strong Irish Catholic culture going back several centuries and a number of my older colleagues at work come from families that large.

The whole thing is a bit tricky because we don't know enough about the state of disease and thus the death rate, IMO.

I don't really understand why Safehold should have infectious disease at all -- it would likely have been trivial for the Operation Ark people to remove all diseases from the colonists and livestock brought. (It's possible that diseases could have evolved from harmless human-commensal bacteria, but most of the really bad diseases we have or had jumped from other mammals, with a few occasional bird things like some strains of flu, so it doesn't seem especially likely.) Wound infections could I think still happen from soil bacteria and stuff, but it shouldn't go beyond that.

Without that, population growth should have been incredibly fast, given the large starting population and fairly 'traditional' social structure (IE women as homemakers/wives and mothers).

OTOH we never saw that much of mainland life before the big war. It's quite possible that the densely populated, low-tech, serfdom-bound mainland areas have regular famines and ARE at the limit for their static primitive farming technology (though of course vastly below what could be supported by a technologically progressive society).

Kufat wrote:How substantial? If we assume that each Safeholdian will have an average of, say, 1.2 children who live to have their own children (which seems low to me)

Right now, probably yes. In less than a century, it'll probably be much lower than that. The experience from Earth is that birthrates drop radically in technological societies.

This may well be a problem for Safehold re-establishing some kind of interstellar civilization... though the Terran Federation must have figured out a way around the issue since they had quite a few colony planets.