GOP vs. Birth Control Pill

[Andara Bledin]

There are even some estimates if the USA went with a single payer extended medicare system. We would only need to pay 6 to 8 times the current amount of medicare taxes. And before anyone goes cant raze taxes that socialism or some shit. Compare that to what you pay for insurance through your employer along with what their contribution is.

And don't forget that it would cover everybody, not just the rich or people with jobs, most of whom pay about 10% under the current system.

^-.-^

[crashhelmet]

Makes you wonder how long it will be before you have to be married to legally have a child.

[Aethian]

Or have to fill out an application for one.

[HYHYBT]

No, the onus is on women here. Men are fully permitted to have and enjoy sex. Women are *not* permitted to enjoy sex or want sex.

What's the fun of having sex with someone who isn't enjoying it?

[Andara Bledin]

What's the fun of having sex with someone who isn't enjoying it?

Ah, see, you actually want to have sex with someone because you are interested in that someone as opposed to the misogynists who have sex with women as a sign of their power and for whom the idea that women like sex and might go out and get it with someone else is threatening to their manhood.

^-.-^

[draco664]

...Wouldn't it be more cost-efficient to pay for birth control and keep women from popping out babies that they can't afford?

By several orders of magnitude.

There is absolutely no logical reason to not cover birth control.

Sure there is. Insurance is designed to mitigate risk. Lightning strikes, cancer, car crashes and the like only happen to a fraction of the population, and if everyone pays a little bit, then those who are unlucky are covered.

But birth control is not a rare thing. And since a heap of people are on it, you end up with something that would cost you personally $X a month costs you around $X a month in increased premiums.

There you go... a logical reason not to cover it.

Now, *subsidizing* it is a different kettle of fish, and ties neatly into the first point AdminAssistant made. Every dollar you put into reducing the cost of birth control may save you many hundreds in welfare costs over the next two decades. But even if it only saves you double what you put into it, it's a great deal.

Of course, then you'd be accused of encouraging people to have sex, and that's just icky. Good, God-fearing people can't have that! Bastiges.

[fireheart17]

Now, *subsidizing* it is a different kettle of fish, and ties neatly into the first point AdminAssistant made. Every dollar you put into reducing the cost of birth control may save you many hundreds in welfare costs over the next two decades. But even if it only saves you double what you put into it, it's a great deal.

Of course, then you'd be accused of encouraging people to have sex, and that's just icky. Good, God-fearing people can't have that! Bastiges.

A LOT of birth control down here is subsidised by the Government. The Implanon is normally around $50-$60 (plus insertion and all that). I only had to pay $30 for it. And if I had a concession card, it would've been $5. (not a student card)

And while we're all up in arms over gay marriage and homosexuality in general, people seem to have no problem with people using birth control freely. There's no encouragement about sex. Generally.

Condoms are the only exception to that rule

[evilfarmer]

Your Implanon is only 50 to 60 before subsidi? I had it put in three yrs ago and it was over a grand that luckly my insurance paid for. I now have to have it redone and hopefully its covered again.

[draco664]

A LOT of birth control down here is subsidised by the Government. The Implanon is normally around $50-$60 (plus insertion and all that). I only had to pay $30 for it. And if I had a concession card, it would've been $5. (not a student card)

Your Implanon is only 50 to 60 before subsidi? I had it put in three yrs ago and it was over a grand that luckly my insurance paid for. I now have to have it redone and hopefully its covered again.

Yeah, my wife got her implanon in before we had kids for about $30, if I recall. Might even have been a bit less, because we had private health cover - and they're delighted to pay for effective contraception. We even got her obstetrician to implant another one after she had our second child. She did it as part of her usual follow up, so we didn't need to pay her any more than we were already.

I'll say in again and again, every government dollar that gets spent subsidising contraception saves hundreds in child-rearing costs.

[fireheart17]

Yeah, my wife got her implanon in before we had kids for about $30, if I recall. Might even have been a bit less, because we had private health cover - and they're delighted to pay for effective contraception. We even got her obstetrician to implant another one after she had our second child. She did it as part of her usual follow up, so we didn't need to pay her any more than we were already.

I'll say in again and again, every government dollar that gets spent subsidising contraception saves hundreds in child-rearing costs.

I will keep that in mind for the near future (the health cover). Because my doctor that inserted it bulk-bills, he had no problem inserting it for me for free, I just had to pay for the cost of the Implanon.

[Rebel]

I paid about $80 for my Implanon to first get inserted, but since then, I've moved over to Canada. For some reason Canada hasn't approved the Implanon for the general public yet. In order for me to have it replaced I would have to go to a Planned Parenthood across the border and pay around $1000 out of pocket, or wait and save to fly back to Australia to visit and have it done there.

I am not impressed. This is the only BC I could find that doesn't make me fat, unnecessarily angry, crampy as hell, and had a bonus of stopping my periods altogether. Canada better step up its game.

[Cymberleah]

Not wanting to pay for women to have sex whenever they want without having babies

Ok, small pet peeve here. Women aren't having babies on their own. So far, there still needs to be a male involved somewhere.

People are having babies. And for all the men who kvetch about paying child support for kids they didn't want in the first place (which is not all men, but it's not an insignificant percentage either) you'd think that the "extra" on their monthly insurance bill to pay for birth control would be seen as a wise investment.

Just because women bear the obvious physical cost of gestating a child does not mean that preventing the birth of a child is entirely in the woman's best interest. Preventing unwanted childbirth is a issue for our entire society, not just the XX half. Pretending that just because you're XY and don't have to bear the child makes it Not Your Problem is incredibly short-sighted and factually incorrect.

Do you want your one night stand, or two month relationship that you end because, whoa, that lady is CRAZY to follow you for the next eighteen years and cost you a few hundred grand? No? Ok, so you want her on BC.

Do you want your wife to provide financial support to the marriage, help save up for a down payment on a house, pay off student loans, get a job with decent benefits so if you lose your job you don't have to worry that your entire life will start circling the toilet? Ok, so you want her on BC.

Do you think that there is nothing a woman can contribute to society that isn't a baby, and that it is better for people to have life plans entirely disrupted due to incipient sproglets? Yeah, pass on the BC. 'Cause that's just for women anyway, has nothing to do with you!

[fireheart17]

I am not impressed. This is the only BC I could find that doesn't make me fat, unnecessarily angry, crampy as hell, and had a bonus of stopping my periods altogether. Canada better step up its game.

Those are exactly the reasons why I chose the Implanon over everything else. That and I wasn't willing to play the "contraceptive pill" dance to find one that suits me. On top of that, at the time, i was on an antidepressant and the Implanon wouldn't have affected it.

I did have some mild mood swings after it was inserted, but I've noticed that ever since, my cramps (and period) are very much lighter.

As for Cymberleah's post, the point that they were trying to make was that apart from condoms and sterilization, a man does not have any reliable means of birth control (the "withdrawal" method is not reliable). The BC aspect is entirely up to the woman. While yes, the responsibility of bearing and then raising a child is up to both halves, women are the ones who have the belly the size of a basketball at the end of 9 months.

[draco664]

I am not impressed. This is the only BC I could find that doesn't make me fat, unnecessarily angry, crampy as hell, and had a bonus of stopping my periods altogether.

I saw an Aussie comedienne called Sarah Kendall live once, and she talked about getting a contraceptive shot that was supposedly good for six months. Then she read the possible side-effects - weight gain, excessive body hair, deep voice, halitosis - she pondered that perhaps the side-effects *were* the contraceptive.

[Cymberleah]

Well, no, the debate isn't that there's no BC for men. Also, vasectomies. The debate is that men are forced, forced I tell you to pay real money for women to have all the sex they want. The sluts. Not to beat a dead horse, but it was Limbaugh who flat out said that he wasn't getting anything from women having BC, and that to make things fair he deserved amateur porn of any woman getting BC without having to pay the full cost.

Except that is emphatically untrue.

Birth control is used to stop pregnancy, or at least that's why it's considered an optional pharmaceutical. Pregnancy is a "woman's issue" which is true, but only as a subset of "human issue" (haha, pun). Men also benefit when they can have sex without having to have progeny. Especially considering that socially men are supposed to financially support what offspring they have, it's entirely cheaper for a guy to subsidize BC as part of his insurance.

Also, you pay huge sums of money when you have a child, just for the birthing process. No one kvetches that they are paying for the result of women having sex, or other people having sex. I know my insurance rates would go way down if you didn't have to pay for other people being fertile. At $10K a birth, and say $80 a month for BC, the cost of a woman taking BC through her entire fertile years is about equal to the cost of three pregnancies. And if you do something like a shot or an IUD which has a better cost/time ratio, it becomes cheaper to have women on BC then breeding a replacement population, let alone Catholic level family sizes. So saying that "you shouldn't have to pay for other people to have sex" is entirely missing the point, unless you're really insinuating that everyone (but you, of course) needs to be celibate. We're always paying when other people have sex, it's just that sometimes we're paying for the baby instead of the lack of one.

The real reason that the GOP have such a hard time accepting contraceptive usage is that it gives women choices on how they live their lives. The GOP do not trust women to make good choices, where "good choices" is a synonym for "letting everything stay the way it always has been." I'm not going to be all feminist/patriarchy/blahblahblah, but the GOP is going to do what is in their best interests, and for the most part the GOP is the party of people who had power in the past. Their efforts will be bent towards keeping conditions favorable for their members, which is to say as they were in the past, or as they want to think they were in the past (mothers staying home to raise kids, castle doctrine, massive wage inequality as the best drive for society).

I get a feeling that a part of the BC debate comes down to privilege. Men have always gotten to walk away from sex with nothing worse than an STD. Women have been left with the offspring, and they deserve three years of no sleep for enjoying sexytimes, the slut. Now that both parties can walk away with only having to worry about intimate germ warfare, well, that makes it just one more thing those women feel they get to be equal in. It's just slightly less special to be a man when women can do it too. Next thing you know, they'll start to pee standing up as well, and then it's just all downhill from there.