Women have been trying to tell us this all along. That having a monthly cycle shouldn't disallow them from all sorts of jobs; that being a woman is a difference, not a weakness, not something to be looked down upon.

Naturally, one would think that being a woman isn't something to be treated pharmacologically. That fertility isn't a disease.

Health insurance is something that is meant to kick in when a health catastrophe occurs; HMOs found that catastrophes occur because people don't take care of themselves - but instead of raising premiums on people who aren't taking care of themselves, like car insurers would if people weren't maintaining the car or driving safely, the health insurers funded all the preventative care.

Not that people use it in most cases anyway.

It is only under this rubric of risk prevention (considering that pregnancy is a risk) that contraception fits under health insurance. However, pregnancy is a risk the same way falling during mountain climbing is a risk. The question is this: is contraception the climbers' ropes - such that sex, not childbirth, is the risky objective - or is birth the objective that makes all other things worth it?

Traditional Christianity, Agnostic/Atheist Evolutionary Biology, traditional humanism, and most world religions, would put birth at that apex, worth everything, that which makes a father proud and a mother ... a mother. Modern secular individualistic society tends to see it differently - birth threatens immediate happiness and financial stability and health. It causes sleep deprivation and relationship strain. Only throwbacks participate in procreation, everyone else has sex, and the main risks there are STDs and abusive partners. Sex is pleasure, kids are a curse, and medically preventable - like STDs.

Well, when framed that way, I'll go with the evolutionary biologists, thank you. Kids are worth the cost... because they are a central aspect of life. Life without reproduction is not fully life, as any biologist can tell you.

well obviously it's not a disease, in as much as we understand the term. but it is also not a minor, uninfluential part of health concerns either.

completely aside from the fact an adult woman has the unquestionable right to determine what does with her own body, there are plenty of perfectly non-sexual (cause that's what this is really about, you don't want to be subsidizing hot, sweaty premarital sex you're not having) reasons birth control should be covered.

1. ovarian cysts

2. premenstrual cramping (in some women, this can be so severe they simply lose a day or two of their lives every month to symptoms if they don't get hormonal treatments)

3. endometriosis

4. hormone irregularlities

5. other stuff that doesn't matter because your objection is to the morality, not the science anyway and there is no reasoning with moralistic anti-choice logic anyway.

"Life without reproduction is not fully life, as any biologist can tell you. "

Tell that to your comrades in China and India. Tell that to a poor working mother.

cysts and hormonal irregularities, if you haven't noticed, are indeed disease states which inhibit fertility. that they can be treated with dosed hormones doesn't make those dosed hormones contraceptives, nor does it make paying for contraception in non-diseased individuals some sort of therapy.

....and I say you're full of shit.

I've published papers on gastrointestinal ecology and I know exactly what I'm full of, thank you very much.

I have heard a number of posts talking about birth control encouraging sex, immoraltiy, etc. Here the real deal. There are a number of women like me, who are moral and very religious people. I lost my virginity on my wedding night. However, that does not mean that I was prepared at the time to be a mother, nor should I have been forced to be. At the time I was a college student, as was my husband. Paying for birth control at $75/mo was simply an unfeasable option. Not to mention that had I not had access to birth control and gotten pregnant, both my husband and I would have had to quite college. In that scenario, both of us would have had to work long hours, been doomed to lifelong low-income, and had our child/children in daycare. In that scenario, I would not have been able to raise my own child. There are many women in similar situations. Is that what those of you who are against birth control really want? I bunch of children in this world who are raised by daycare centers and are the product of uneducated, ill-prepared parents. The choice to plan your family is both a responsibility and a right. Children deserve to be brought in families that welcome them and that are prepared both financially and emotionally.

Also, this whole concept of denying women birth control is extremely sexist. Women are the ones that bear the brunt of child birth both physically and financially. If a man impregnates a woman before he is ready, he typically won't have to quit college and especially won't have to quit work. His financial potential is steady. The longer he works uninterrupted, the greater his earning potential and the higher his social security benefits are when he retires. The woman on the other hand bears all the physical difficulties and complications of pregancy and often does need to stop working or work less after child birth. There are already less higher paying jobs available to women and less opportunity for promotion. Women already get paid less than men. Do you really want to scew the playing field even more?

Furthermore, are you saying that women should not be allowed the happiness and companionship of marriage and sexual relations unless they want to be mothers right away. What if they never want to be mothers? Must they remain celebate their entire lives and live out their days lonely and without companionship, without a husband? Moreover, what about the millions of men out there who either don't want children are simply aren't ready for them.

Finally, there are many legitimate medical reasons, beside preventing pregnancy for the use of birth control. Personally, I had horrible, irregular periods in my early teens. What was the prescription? Birth control pills. Did I go out and have sex just because I was on birth control. No! I abstained until marriage because I wanted to please God.

In conclusion, there are many legitimate, responsible, moral reasons for the use of birth control. Moreover, as has been stated in earlier posts, the are many legitimate, financial reasons for insurance companies to subsidize birth control. They continue to get monthly insurance premiums from their working, female clients and the don't have to pay for costly pregnancies and the costly healthcare of children.

What a shockingly well-thought-out, principled, balanced response with a first-hand perspective on the issue. I'm taken aback, I don't read such things on forums nearly as often as I'd like. I applaud your moderate attitude, and your presentation of an argument that's difficult to assail by extremists on either side of this issue. I've long subscribed to the belief that greater use of contraception contributes to fewer unexpected pregnancies AND to fewer abortions, and both of these outcomes are beneficial to society and to individuals within it.

Of course I expect someone to post here in a few minutes that you're a evil and should be burned at the stake, but you hopefully ignore those anyway.

You don't have any claim to the 'real deal' more than I do. Certainly not. Your claim to truth isn't more valid because of your gender, your race, or your marital status.

I haven't made any argument about birth control doing this or that to people's morality. There may be such claims to be made on a societal level, perhaps, but there are all sorts of counter claims as well. That's a big kettle of fish and I'm not dealing with it at the moment. I certainly haven't in this thread though other people have tried to treat me like I am.

I'll dispense first with the obvious nonsense. A hysterectomy can be a form of birth control. So can decapitation. However, only in communist China would such rhetoric pass muster. Similarly, if hormone pills are being used for a critical medical aim other than suppression of pregnancy, they are NOT birth control even if we call them "birth control pills." I might object if a hospital starts handing out belts, but the moment they are used as tourniquets, I change my tune about those particular belts.

Next: the idea that we should allow the insurance companies to dictate lifestyle 'choices' as fundamental as parenthood because it might impact their bottom line is as ridiculous as it is perverse on its face. To say that they should subsidize birth control as a way of controlling their own costs is abhorrent; and it fits right in with euthanasia, killing the handicapped, and abortion.

Now, I know people who say that birth control in various forms is a good thing - for women, for children, even for people who don't want to pay child support. Heck, even the Roman Catholic Church supports family planning and suggests that married couples take a break for about 5 days a month when they aren't particularly interested in being parents. Talk about affordable, available, and accessible. Anyway, I have no interest in denying other people their desire to not be parents. *shrug* It runs counter to all sorts of norms, instincts, philosophies, and so on, but where I draw the line is when people start treating having children, or even the ability to have children, as a disease to be cured.

This is frankly perverse.

Speaking as someone who never wanted children, I married a man that thought as I do. I love my life. I would never trade it for anything. We made the right decision.

Thankfully, we live in a time when having children is a choice, not, as it was in the past, a life sentence. You go through 17 pregnancies before your 40th birthday. Have fun with that. (Yeah, really. My double great grandmother.)

Personally, I don't care if you have 12 kids. I wish you joy of them, and since you're a sensible sort, they would probably be lovely human beings.

However, if you presume to tell me what I should or shouldn't do, you are the perverse one, not me. It's like lecturing someone on the benefits of Metamucil. It just really isn't your business, now, is it?

...to be cured, then you'll have no trouble with insurance companies refusing to pay the costs of childbirth. After all, if life without reproduction is meaningless, you should be happy to bear the costs on your own. And certainly you understand how unfair it is of you to increase the costs of my health insurance to make your life meaningful.

Apparently this isn't widely known, but hormones for noncontrarceptive purposes are *always* covered by *any* U.S. health insurance plan that covers *any* pharmaceutical drugs. The question at hand is whether a 20-year-old lesbian woman or 50-year-old postmenopausal woman should have to pay an extra couple of bucks to have BCPs *for contraceptive purposes* included on the list of covered drugs.

Believe me when I say I'm very glad that you have found happiness. I wish misery on ... well, very very few people.

And I shouldn't wish it on them, but I do, and that's my problem.

I certainly wouldn't wish parenthood on anyone who thought it was a 'life sentence.' However, I feel the need to point out that as a society, this is likely a unique assessment of the situation. No society that takes this view can survive very long, and I pity children born into a situation in which they are viewed as a symptom of an improperly medicated disorder.

Take a page from Kant, a book from Buber, and consider what it means in a society if people think of kids as inconveniences or pets, and spouses (or any relationship, for that matter) as a form of entertainment. As much as slavery devalued persons, as much as prostitution devalues persons (often involuntarily), as much as rape devalues people, as much as women as chattel devalues people, any system that accepts this view of children and spouses devalues people - but it does it systemically rather than selectively.

Hardly do I say you should have children - just as I don't say you should be wealthy. There are certainly people in every culture who have wisely been counter-cultural and not desired wealth, often for good reasons. Similarly, some people have chosen not to marry (out of choice, not lack thereof). Some people will choose not to have children for good reasons - but when society collectively devalues them, we have a problem.

Is it a problem similar to a culture that all needs laxatives or fiber? That's a question for Archeopteryx

Actually, there are quite a few health insurance plans that do not cover normal childbirth on the grounds that it's not a disease. (Not all states allow this; I don't know where you live.) An emergency C-section is always covered under the major surgery provisions, but many people have health insurance plans that exclude the costs of normal childbirth. Apparently they're popular with women who prefer homebirths.

Frankly, I would agree. Unless there are complications, I think that insurance has no place paying for childbirth.

However, the choice to forgo the attendance of trained persons at the birth should probably result in serious cost increases in the insurance for the child and mother.

Of course, some countries believe that children are so valuable that they should be subsidized - education, for example - so possibly this would pay for things like childbirth. That's a very different thing than insurance.