Mom: "I've got a baby". Dad: "Ay Carumba, how am I going to pay for this?"
I have been astounded at the number of you old white guys who have supported Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Sandra Fluke for her support of no cost birth control for women. The comments are suggesting that college age women want free birth control so they can have unbridled sex every night of the week.
News flash guys, it takes a man and a woman to have sex that might result in conception. If you don’t want Sandra Fluke to have access to free birth control tell your sons to stopping asking for sex from Sandra Fluke or any other woman.
I understand that you don’t want to subsidize the cost of birth control for women through your insurance premiums. However, both the government and health insurance companies want to offer free birth control. The problem is that the babies your sons help create cost money to deliver and support.
If you don’t want to subsidize birth control, are you willing to pay for more government services that support children? If you take away birth control you will inevitably add children to such programs as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Food Stamps, Women Infants and Children program, Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid. It is far cheaper to prevent an unwanted pregnancy that your sons might produce than to support the children your sons leave behind.
If health insurance companies had their way they wouldn’t even offer health insurance to women of child bearing potential. Ask any woman that has applied for an individual health insurance policy the type of questions they asked about her menstruation cycle. If any of her answers hint that she might be pregnant she is declined.
Most individual policies state that maternity is not a covered benefit. The problem with delivering a baby is that there can be complications. These complications can lead to “medically necessary” life saving intervention for mother and child. The medically necessary expenses, after any deductible, will begin to be covered by the health insurance plan. Consequently, health insurance companies are more than happy to provide free birth control because it lowers the statistical probabilities of them having to pay certain claims associated with child birth.
I am perfectly willing to support a ban on free birth control as long as you old white guys promise to support the children your sons produce. Or is that too much to ask for?