In a country of alarmingly high unplanned pregnancy, American women need access to affordable birth control for economic and health reasons.
By June Carbone and Naomi Cahn
January 29, 2012
The Obama administration’s recent decision to require most religious-affiliated employers to cover birth control for their employees is good news for the women who work for religious employers and do not share the male hierarchy’s opposition to birth control. It is also good news for a country with the one of the highest unplanned pregnancy rates in the developed world.
More Than Just Using Condoms
Contraception, as every woman knows, is a system that depends on developing the right habits and getting consistent reinforcement from partners, parents and/or friends. In other words, effective contraception takes more work than simply remembering to use condoms. As a result, many women are more devoted to their gynecologists than other doctor in their lives – and gynecologists can be expensive. One of us visited hers after the birth of a third child. By the late thirties, pregnancy becomes riskier for mother and child and few families feel they can afford a fourth even on a law professor’s income. The gynecologist explained that methods of contraception that work for young women often don’t work as well after childbirth. The solution: an IUD. There was only one problem, the doctor sheepishly explained: It cost $400 and insurance wouldn’t cover it for an employee of a Catholic university. For a professional, $400 is not out of reach; for many women it is.
Conservatives insist that women know about contraception, condoms are cheap and available, and the high rate of unplanned pregnancies reflects conscious decisions not to bother with protection. What this argument overlooks is that the use of birth control is the result of a system – a system that encourages use, makes it easy to get access, and promotes a culture that associates responsibility with contraception. Middle class communities have that. The trip to Planned Parenthood is a rite of passage in many suburban high schools. Many knowledgeable parents drive their daughters to doctors’ appointments soon after puberty explaining that the pill helps control menstrual camps. In European countries with low teen birth and abortion rates, the government provides free birth control to anyone who wants it with information in public schools making it easy to understand and obtain. Widespread use, however, follows not just from access but from the development of a culture that says taking the pill is the right thing to do (which is why the notion that the pill alleviates menstrual cramps is even more prevalent in Holland than here) and the accidental pregnancy is a mark of failure.
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