Why is providing birth control to sexually active women a bad thing?
Seriously, why? Someone please explain this to me.
I understand that some people disagree with birth control, and you know, that's fine by me; but it's an indisputable fact that available birth control saves people money. (Birth control has more uses than pregnancy prevention, but let's address the most controversial one, shall we?) Scaring teens into abstinence has been proven ineffective.
You know, I'm beginning to think this is more about keeping a patriarchal paradigm firmly in place.
Women like sex just as much as men do, perhaps more... so why is it that Republicans want insurance to cover Viagra (which has about as much non-sexual use as a condom) instead of birth control (which has at least hundreds of common, non-sexual uses)? Why are men allowed to have lots and lots of sex without discrimination? And why is it that people like Rush Limbaugh and co. feel it necessary to victimize thousands of stupid teenage girls for the sake of their ridiculous crusade against human sexuality? (Yes, I know that most teenage girls take birth control for hormonal reasons, I'm just addressing his initial "slut" remarks.)
Are they afraid of women becoming independent in their own lives?
This isn't about logic. It's about an organization filled with men that keeps women stuck in their respective gender roles, unable to branch out. It's about gender roles that need to be broken, not just for women, but for GLBT people who suffer discrimination in their daily lives, for male rape victims, for stay-at-home dads, for anyone who's been abused or weakened.
It's time we start admitting the problem exists.
I understand that some people don't believe in birth control, but there's a very simple solution: just don't take birth control. Telling a few million people that they can choose not to take birth control is more effective than telling a few million people that they should just stop having sex (which, by the way, obviously does not work), particularly because people's beliefs change (while the biological facts of sex remain the same). Even if the wide majority of women take birth control for contraceptive reasons (which they don't, but still), that's better than letting them have children they can't afford, and it's better than eventually having those children put into a system that isn't prepared to take care of them.
So why don't we stop being selfish and start doing something about it? Are gender roles really that important?