I’m passionately pro-choice and I support the following suggestion 100%:
Dispense birth control free to anyone who wants it, at any age, at any time. Of course this will be at taxpayer expense. If we are so concerned as a nation about all those poor killed fetuses, it’s time we showed it.
Question: why don’t the anti-choicers support this idea? And please don’t tell me that they are into saving the taxpayers’ money. Who do you think will pay for the efforts to capture the doctors and the women engaged in back-alley abortions if abortion is outlawed? Who will pay for the housing and care of unwanted abandoned kids whose numbers will soar? Who will fund the growing police force and expanding penitentiary system needed to house the adults who were unwanted as kids? Yes, right you are, taxpayers.
The only answer to this question I have been able to come up with is that these people don’t give a rat’s tuches about fetuses. If they really did, wouldn’t they support the only method that has been proven to reduce the number of abortions, namely, promoting the culture of contraception?
If anybody has any other answer, feel free to share.
Clarissa's Blog 
I suspect that such a policy will do less than one might hope to lower the number of abortions as it does not take into account people simply not being responsible. I admit that these are the last people one should want to not have an abortion and bring a child into the world.
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I’ve always wondered about such a thing myself… it baffles me completely. It seems they really only care about attempting to control other people’s sex lives… that is the only explanation I can come up with… and it also explains why they’re so against gay/lesbian sex – they can’t make babies that way, so they have to be controlled some other way… *sigh*
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I asked an anti-choicer why they were against birth control once, and they said that birth control was “lazy” and “irresponsible” and “cheating”, and that the only way to truly live responsibly was abstinence until marriage.
When I have sex, I live by the “two forms of protection/birth control, and one of them is always a condom” line of safer sex, so that logic is completely alien to me.
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“When I have sex, I live by the “two forms of protection/birth control, and one of them is always a condom” line of safer sex, so that logic is completely alien to me.”
– That’s exactly how I used to do it. 🙂
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Good rules just get better with age. 🙂
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Personally, I think that it’s rather disgraceful that a woman needs to get a prescription in order to acquire the birth control pill. I am aware that taking the pill unwisely can result in complications, but so can cough syrup and asprin, and these are both available over-the-counter. In my opinion, the fact that it’s not freely available is indicative of a sort of institutionalized ‘slut shaming.’
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I know! I SO agree with you! As a person who had to move a lot, I always had to jump through hoops to get my pills because
a) it’s hard to find a doctor who takes on new patients;
b) doctors don’t want temporary patients who are just there for 3 months;
c) a new patient always undergoes a complete checkup and that requires money if you don’t have insurance or don’t have insurance that works in this town or with this doctor.
Gosh, if I only told all of the adventures I had to undergo just because I wanted to be RESPONSIBLE and get my pills.
This is why I don’t believe in these stories about crowds of irresponsible women who don’t take pills because they enjoy abortions.
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“This is why I don’t believe in these stories about crowds of irresponsible women who don’t take pills because they enjoy abortions.”
None enjoys abortions. I just can not believe they are enjoyable at any level. As simple as that.
None prefers an abortion to a pill.
As for your question, I think it is just as E (The Third Glance) says.
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“None enjoys abortions. I just can not believe they are enjoyable at any level. As simple as that.
None prefers an abortion to a pill.”
Indeed. Even if we lived in a world where women seeking abortions didn’t have to walk the gauntlet between columns of fundamentalist protestors and face potential ostracism from their friends and family for their choice, I imagine that getting one would be approximately as much fun as getting a root canal (that is to say, not at all).
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It’s all about control. But more than one anti-choicer will tell you it’s because something like that is socialist or communist, and the United States is not the Soviet Union. They need to make things like that black and white, or else they’ll risk their supporters turning over to the (pro-choice) Dark Side.
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And they will be so wrong it’s funny! In the USSR,nobody could get any contraception. It was neither manufactured nor imported. As a result, I know women who had DOZENS of abortions.
Anti-choicers need to learn their history.
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Recall the chart Clarissa linked to a while back.
It really is about controlling women’s sex lives. Indeed, the assumption that anti-choicers and their ilk are motivated by a desire is a powerful means of explaining their actions and escaping the (to rational eyes) irreconcilable illogic of their positions.
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That should be “motivated by a desire to control women is a …”
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Basically they are a bunch of party poopers who just don’t want people to enjoy themselves and have sex. Maybe they are all neurotic with pokers up their backsides, full of guilt because of their upbringing and anxious that no one has a better time than them.
The concept of live and let live does not enter their minds at all. They just want everyone to be as controlled, uptight and miserable as them.
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Now this is an answer I dig. Good job, Sarah! 🙂
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I am totally for free birth control. But I agree with Izgad that “such a policy will do less than one might hope to lower the number of abortions as it does not take into account people simply not being responsible.” You might want to have a look at the situation in the UK where birth control is free. From what I remember, the UK has a very high rate of teenage pregnancies, and I am not sure whether the picture of unwanted pregnancies of adults is any better.
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This is because single teenage mothers get a council flat and benefits. It’s a lifestyle/career choice…
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The problem in the UK was sex ed, not the availability of contraceptives. Both are necessary. Incidentally, the single teenage mother thing is largely a myth. The vast majority of ‘single’ mothers in the (very small amount still remaining) council house population are mothers in their mid 20’s-30’s, who are divorced / or have had a LTR breakdown. Most teenage mothers (who are a very small minority of single parents) live with their parents these days, it being less shameful and less likely to get them kicked out now.
It is true though that an actually homeless pregnant under-age teenager will go to the head of the queue, although mostly these days they get hostel housing until they are overage and then they have to find a flat and apply for housing benefit like the rest of us.
Our teenage pregnancy rate is too high though, although the figures started dropping after the Gillick case, again after some sex ed was made compulsory and still further after the morning after pill was made OTC.
To my mind, one of the most stupid things our current government has done, (and it was one of the first things they did upon taking power) was kill off a bill which had cross bench support, that provided for compulsory comprehensive sex & relationship education, which covered more than just the biological basics which are currently required in the National Curriculum. (Biological basics are ‘this is an ovary, this is the vas deferens’, etc. Generally don’t even mention the clitoris, never mind anything more outré.)
Even more mindbogglingly stupid is that the new ‘free’ schools won’t have to give any personal/sexual health education AT ALL if they don’t want to – and a worryingly large number of the new schools are religiously based and will chose not to.
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When I lived in Mexico, I could walk up to any pharmacy, and buy my preferred birth control with no questions asked (and much much cheaper). Here, I have to go to my doctor, not just once, but every year, and then they have the right to do things like tell the pharmacy to only allow me to buy one package per month! I’ve often had times where I had to skip a month or two because my work/travel schedule didn’t allow me to go to the required doctor’s visit when I needed my prescription renewed.
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My OB-GYN insists I come by for the prescription once every 3 months. Then I get 3 packets of pills and then I need to come back again.
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I’m passionately pro-choice and I support the following suggestion 100%:
Actually this is the case already in many countries. But those countries are socialist hell-holes, such as, ah, hum, Germany.
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The suggestion I quoted has absolutely nothing to do with socialism. And Germany is a capitalist country with a strong welfare system. That translates into socialism only at Fox News.
Do I need to repeat the definition of socialism?
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I was being sarcastic.
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“I was being sarcastic.”
– Ah! Sorry, I haven’t fully woken up yet.
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Birth control is not free in Germany, at least not for adults.
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Free for university students and people under 20 years of age. After that paying shouldn’t really be much of an issue in a place such as Germany.
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