More on Contraceptives

There is an ongoing controversy over the mandate in Obamacare for organizations that offer health insurance plans to their employees to include reimbursements for contraceptives. Many Catholic and some other religious organizations oppose the requirement because it violates their religious principles.  I think a solution would be to remove the requirement for health insurance plans and have the government provide free contraceptives to anyone who wants them through local public health offices, public schools, and organizations such as Planned Parenthood. As I have argued elsewhere ,doing this would harm no one,  help people, help the needy disproportionately, save money, lessen suffering, and make the government smaller and less expensive, all by reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies and thus the number of children born to people  unable or unwilling to support and care for them properly. (I would go further and pay teenager girls a bounty to use the free contraceptives.) Of course there would be a problem of women who could afford to buy their own contraceptives taking unfair advantage of the program to get them free.  However, I think the cost of free riders  would be small relative to the overall  benefits. Besides, people who usually object to welfare for the well off might be nonetheless quite willing  to see their tax dollars used to help keep  the Sandra Flukes of the world from reproducing themselves.

It could be argued that religious people would still be forced to support - indirectly through their taxes  - activities they oppose. However  this happens to taxpayers all the time. Pacifists pay taxes, and the government uses tax money to fund the armed forces and foreign wars. Libertarians pay taxes, and the government uses tax money to pay for bureaucrats and regulators, and so on.  The difference is that people with religious objections to contraceptives would not be required to participate actively in something that violates their principles but only to pay taxes,  just as the government taxes pacifists and libertarians but does not require pacifists to work in defense plants or libertarians to become police informers.