I did not say they should not have sex, but their inability to provide for a child is, I think we can agree, a much bigger and deeper problem than whether their health insurance covers contraception. That is true if only because, once again, contraception is not a panacea: Poor people who screw like rabbits because they have contraception and "poverty makes procreation recreation" will still get pregnant with children they cannot feed. They do. Less often than when birth control was unavailable, but it still happens plenty. I calculated a rough estimate in the Planned Parenthood thread based on teen birth rates, number of teens and birth control with 92% effectiveness; came out to about 80,000 teen pregnancies per year. If 92% were a mortal (or perhaps vital, in this case) I would have gotten a full college scholarship instead of a one time $1000 stipend.

Poor people who do not want/cannot provide for children should not have sex. Contraception changes the odds of children, but not that fundamental reality. They still have the CHOICE of what to do with their own bodies, but choices have consequences and, contrary to what some claim, liberalism does not mean making others accountable for ones poor decisions.


The church cannot stop contraception, but it can refuse to pay for it. Regardless, when doctors prescribe contraception and have their nurses send claim forms to insurance company functionaries so they can be processed by claims adjustors and paid by accountants we are no longer talking about a matter between me and my partner, but HOW MANY others we inform of it. As far as that goes, the church would not be informed which employees did and did not use contraception whether or not their insurance covered it, and they really do not care: They just do not want to pay for something their religion forbids, anymore than Rabbis want to pay for ham sandwiches at the B'nai B'rith lunch counter.


Just because you separate two directly contradictory statements with a single sentence does not make them any less contradictory, y'know. Here, I will shorten the pair to a single internally consistent sentence:

"By the church paying for my insurance but not allow me to have a choice in my insurance... People can't pick and choose their health insurance plan since they instead get whatever their company chooses for them."

If we want people to have freedom of choice in insurance we will institute a public option. Until then, people will get what their employer chooses to share the cost of (and, thanks to Obama, be forced to pick up the difference out of their wages.) At least as bad, the cost will continue to skyrocket and eat up more and more of any productivity increase as it has for the past generation, because the insurance companies that were already gouging a public dependent on them now have a captive audience, plus a $900 billion federal subsidy. The price had already climbed so high even DEATH could not ensure everyone met it by any means necessary, so now they are required to by law. Call me crazy, but I expect any for profit corporation GUARANTEED a consumer base to suck the poor bastards dry (not that they were not doing a fine job already.)

Contraception coverage is just a tiny facet of that monstrous problem; were it not for China, I would call it the biggest one facing America (and it may be anyway.) How much of our GDP goes to health insurance? How much of our debt is Medicare, even though its costs are only growing about a third as fast as private insurance (thanks in no small part to the fact it is a single payer government plan)? Meanwhile, yes, you get the insurance your employer chooses to provide; the feds have made some coverage mandatory, but if you think this is the last time an employer (or insurer) will try to weasel out of one you are kidding yourself.