nd now, a post with some actual substance:

     In recent weeks, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt has been taking fire for a leaked draft regulation defining abortion as “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.” Before implantation, as you may guess, basically means birth control. (Source.)

     Abortion and contraception, again.
     Leavitt tried a sneaky move recently, trying to redefine abortion so that the definition could technically include birth control measures such as the Pill, too. Now, Leavitt claims that his intention was to provide regulation so that doctors who have some sort of disagreement with performing an abortion would be protected from having to do so, but the language of his proposal was so vague as to leave gigantic gaping loopholes. The problem with this is that these loopholes could eventually be used to deny funding to, say, your local health department, so they wouldn’t be able to afford to give women birth control for free or cheaply, as they do now.
     Providing free/cheap birth control is a vital service. Even when I had good insurance, I couldn’t really afford the thirty or more bucks a month it would have cost me to get birth control through a regular doctor’s office. But, I could afford to pay the six bucks a month the health department charged me. Without that, I’d have been left to rely on condoms and the various lotions, potions, and devices sold over the counter to prevent pregnancy. Either that, or abstain, and remember, I was married at the time. I kind of doubt the marriage would have lasted as long as it did if I hadn’t been putting out, and let me guarantee, if I’d thought I was risking getting knocked up, I wouldn’t have been putting out.
     The government has already gone out of its way to cut funding to health departments. What’s going to happen when women can’t get cheap birth control Pills? They sure aren’t going to stop screwing, I’ll guarantee that. They’ll just start getting pregnant a lot more often. And remember, we’re talking about low income women here, probably without fathers around to help foot the bill. That’s going to put more women and more children on more welfare and more social services, and end up costing us a fucking fortune.
     You can’t just say, “Sorry, no birth control for you!” and think that will somehow magically stop women from getting laid, and magically stop men from wandering off after having knocked said women up, and magically stop premarital sex. Ending free/cheap birth control will not turn the world into a happy fundie Christian paradise where everyone gets married and has a dozen kids and lives happily ever after. All it’s going to result in is more unwanted babies, raised by poor single mothers. Which, some statisticians say, will lead to a raise in crime rates, and will certainly lead to a lot of miserable kids who never learn any better, and grow up to repeat their mother’s and father’s mistakes.
     Women have a right to make their own decisions in this arena, and, in the long run, it will be cheaper and healthier for our society to keep providing free/cheap birth control.

     (Photo credit: The Pill.)

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 3:22 am and is filed under Controversies, Medicine, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.