Why Accept Contraception as a Women’s Issue?

By Selwyn Duke

While many points have been made about this campaign’s contraception controversy, there’s one that I haven’t yet heard anyone mention.

Why do we accept contraception as a women’s issue?

After all, there is a prophylactic designed for use by men, and insurance policies would have covered it no more than they would female birth control. Even more significantly, contraception is unnecessary unless there’s the possibility of conception, something impossible without the participation of a man. In other words, contraception is always used by both sexes.

The likely response here is that I’m being obtuse. “Don’t you know, Duke, that women generally have to assume the responsibility for birth control?” But hold the phone. The feminists have long maintained that men should shoulder half the burden of contraception and that thinking otherwise is “sexist.” So why did they make that antiquated, “sexist” assumption an implicit centerpiece in their argument for government policy?

Additionally, the burden stressed when defending the contraception mandate is the financial one. But not only is birth control quite cheap, it isn’t entirely true that this expense is footed only by the fairer sex. After all, if a man and woman truly are a couple, expenses are often a mutual responsibility. And not only is this especially true of married couples, it’s also a fact that husbands are much more likely than wives to be the main or even sole income source. So is it primarily “female” or “male” dollars that pay for birth control? It would be interesting to see a study to that effect.

Of course, then there’s the type of single woman targeted by the statist contraception appeal, the species known as the Fluke. Single women who have one-night stands or who enter into other low-commitment sexual relationships aren’t going to collect tolls before allowing partners in lust to cross the bridge to nowhere, so they would have to pay to play (who, however, pays for the dates?). But this raises a question: is facilitating such behavior good social policy?

So our government funding has gone from midnight basketball to midnight…well, you know. Paying for people’s healthful recreational activities was bad enough; now we have to finance their recreational sex. And since these tax dollars come partially from women, robbing the taxpayer to pay for contraception is as much a “women’s” issue as is the use of it.

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