Contraceptives and Politics

I yield to few in the strength of  my opposition to Obamacare or my hope that it will be repealed and/or declared unconstitutional. However on the issue of contraception, Obamacare does not go far enough. As long as this nation operates a welfare state, and it seems likely to do so for the foreseeable future, the government should directly provide free contraceptives to women and pay teenage girls a bounty for using them.

This seems extreme, perhaps, but I believe it can be justified on both humanitarian and pragmatic grounds.  Almost everyone agrees that teenage pregnancies are profoundly undesirable. A teenage girl who has a baby to raise generally has a millstone around her neck in terms of building a good life for herself and avoiding poverty or worse. An infant  being raised by a single teenage mother begins life with more than one strike against him in terms of growing into a successful adult and avoiding poverty or worse. The human costs of teenage motherhood are wrenchingly pathetic, and the costs to the country and its taxpaying citizens– directly in welfare an subsidies and indirectly in crime and damaged lives and dysfunctional communities -  are  staggering. The situation is not all that much better for never married women and  their children (or for the costs to society) when  the pregnancy occurs when the mother is out of her teens, particularly   if she is poor, uneducated, and lacking in valuable, marketable job skills. Many of the same risks and costs apply, though usually to an attenuated degree, to married couples who have more children than they can support.  Free access to contraceptives and  instruction and encouragement on using them could prevent a lot of suffering, avoid a lot of cost, and literally make the country a better place.   

Many conservatives would object to this on the grounds that it weakens the case for their preferred alternative of abstinence outside of marriage. However it doesn’t really.    Anyone wanting to do so would remain perfectly free to preach and counsel abstinence on moral or other grounds to anyone who would listen, and those who opted for it would not be forced or pressured to take the government up on its (for them) unnecessary contraceptives. The difference is that  there would be a backstop in place for those for whom the arguments for abstinence do not carry the day.

I said  that the government should do this as long as we have a welfare state, because I agree in principle that doling out contraceptives is not a proper function for a truly limited government in a truly free society. If we ever approach such a society, it would be time for the government to get out of the contraceptive business and leave it to private charities and humanitarians.  Until then, I would be happy to see the government take a hand. When the government can do something that harms no one,  that helps people, that helps  the needy disproportionately, that saves money, that lessens suffering, and makes the government smaller and less expensive, it should do it.