By Selwyn Duke

While many points have been made about this campaign’s
contraception controversy, there’s one that I haven’t yet heard anyone mention.

Why do we accept contraception as a women’s issue?

After all, there is a prophylactic designed for use by men,
and insurance policies would have covered it no more than they would female
birth control. Even more significantly, contraception is unnecessary unless there’s
the possibility of conception, something impossible without the participation
of a man. In other words, contraception is always used by both sexes.

The likely response here is that I’m being obtuse. “Don’t
you know, Duke, that women generally have to assume the responsibility for birth
control?” But hold the phone. The feminists have long maintained that men
should shoulder half the burden of contraception and that thinking otherwise is
“sexist.” So why did they make that antiquated, “sexist” assumption an implicit
centerpiece in their argument for government policy?

Additionally, the burden stressed when defending the
contraception mandate is the financial one. But not only is birth control quite
cheap, it isn’t entirely true that this expense is footed only by the fairer
sex. After all, if a man and woman truly are a couple, expenses are often a mutual
responsibility. And not only is this especially true of married couples, it’s
also a fact that husbands are much more likely than wives to be the main or
even sole income source. So is it primarily “female” or “male” dollars that pay
for birth control? It would be interesting to see a study to that effect.

Of course, then there’s the type of single woman targeted by
the statist contraception appeal, the species known as the Fluke. Single women
who have one-night stands or who enter into other low-commitment sexual
relationships aren’t going to collect tolls before allowing partners in lust to
cross the bridge to nowhere, so they would have to pay to play (who, however,
pays for the dates?). But this raises a question: is facilitating such behavior
good social policy?

So our government funding has gone from midnight basketball
to midnight…well, you know. Paying for people’s healthful recreational
activities was bad enough; now we have to finance their recreational sex. And
since these tax dollars come partially from women, robbing the taxpayer to pay
for contraception is as much a “women’s” issue as is the use of it.

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