A brilliant and innovative solution for women who want birth control!
Ready for it?
I’ve poured through mounds of research, read pages and pages of court precedent; I’ve reflected on it, meditated, retreated into the mountains to ponder this mystery in peace; I’ve even Googled it, and all of these measures have brought me to one incredible solution for women who want birth control:
Pay for it yourselves.
Or find an employer that chooses to provide it.
Or have sex and don’t use it.
Or don’t have sex.
Basically, take responsibility for your sex life, one way or another.
There you go. I’ve solved this dilemma. You’re welcome.
I only bring this up because the Hobby Lobby challenge to Barack’s Birth Control Mandate has finally reached the supreme court.
If you aren’t familiar, Hobby Lobby – a store known for its picture frames, fake indoor plants, and dangerous religious extremism – has refused to comply with the president’s decree that all employers must provide whatever kind of “health coverage” he personally feels we all should be using.
The store already subsidizes several forms of birth control, but wishes not to purchase things like morning after pills and IUDs. The government has responded to their concerns by making three basic points:
1) Hobby Lobby is not a religious organization.
2) Emergency contraception is not abortion.
3) Lots of women use contraception.
To which all rational and reasonable adults respond with three counter arguments:
1) That’s irrelevant.
2) That’s irrelevant.
3) Oh, good point. Actually, just kidding, that’s irrelevant.
Unfortunately, it might be necessary to offer a more detailed retort.
Here goes:
1) It doesn’t matter if Hobby Lobby is a religious organization. Nowhere in the First Amendment does it stipulate that only religious organizations are afforded religious protections. This argument is like something out of a 20th century dystopian science fiction novel.
We have the right to live by our convictions, but only if we are officially employed by some group that the government defines as “religious”? Religious freedom, but the government gets to decide what constitutes “religious”? By that logic, only priests count as “being Catholic,” and only rabbis really get to be Jewish.
What an impossibly ridiculous argument. Besides, where is it written that only “religious people” might prefer to forgo purchasing some forms, or all forms, of birth control? Other kinds of people might have other kinds of objections. In the end, it doesn’t matter. They own the business. They purchase the plans. They make the decision.
This is exceedingly clear to anyone with their brain fully engaged, but sadly, the sheep will follow the pigs on the Animal Farm, because they’re too dumb or too selfish or too apathetic to realize that this sort of tyranny will eventually come back around and destroy them.
2) For the purposes of this debate, it doesn’t matter if morning after pills are or are not abortifacients. Hobby Lobby has an objection to them. Their reasons are of no consequence at all. Since when do we have free speech, but only if the government agrees with our motivations and conclusions?
3) When debating the merits of the government forcing employers to provide birth control, my favorite pro-argument is the one where the Apologist for Oppression breathlessly insists, “almost all women [insert arbitrary, fabricated percentage] use birth control!”
Even if this is true, the Apologist seems to be making two startling and contradictory assumptions: First, that our liberties are dependent upon the whims of the popular majority. Second, that “almost all women” use contraception, yet there’s still a crisis of women not being able to afford contraception.
Truly, only a modern leftwing progressive can get away with asserting their right to a particular good or service by simultaneously arguing that everybody uses it and nobody uses it.
Stunning. Absolutely stunning.
They’re right, of course — birth control is popular. It’s popular because it helps you have less babies, and we all know that babies are a disease (which is why the morning after pill is called “preventative medication”) and a punishment (according to the president, anyway).
Bacon is almost as popular as birth control, but I still don’t think Muslim employers should be forced to stock the vending machines with bacon Hot Pockets.
But what if the employees really WANT bacon Hot Pockets, you ask? Well, I don’t blame them. Still, this one philosophical and constitutional reality remains (I will write in all caps, just to make sure that the tl:dr skimmers see it):
YOU DON’T HAVE A RIGHT TO A PRODUCT THAT MUST BE PROVIDED TO YOU THROUGH GOVERNMENTAL COERCION OF A THIRD PARTY.
At least, that’s how it used to be.
But something strange has recently occurred. I’m sure you’ve noticed it.
A tectonic shift. A philosophical transformation. An evolution. A devolution. A reconstruction. A collapse.
The very point and purpose of our nation has gone from something solid, real, and formidable, to something shallow, fluid, and absurd.
We used to be a country devoted to protecting and ensuring the rights of its citizens. Our rights were those innate human qualities and capacities, endowed by a Creator God, infused into the human spirit, needing only to be expressed, not provided by any manmade authority.
Now we are a country devoted to fabricating and engineering the rights of its citizens. And now our rights are those modern human desires and preferences, developed by cultural trends, promoted by political agitators, needing to be provided by unwilling third parties through governmental coercion and force.
It used to be that your rights were infringed upon if the government punished or threatened you for expressing your sincerest beliefs.
Now, your rights are infringed upon if you want something but someone refuses to buy it for you.
It used to be that the vision of tyranny was a man or woman bound, gagged, and shoved in a cage for speaking his or her mind.
Now, tyranny is the tragic image of man or woman forced to spend their own money on something because nobody would give it to them for free.
We used to fight and die for free speech.
Now we sit around and whine for free birth control.
Times have changed, in other words. And not for the better.
But I’m extrapolating unnecessarily on something that I rather sufficiently covered in the first few sentences of this post.
Forget the Constitution (most of us already have), forget these high falutin’ philosophical concepts, forget the Supreme Court and Hobby Lobby, this all really boils down to one basic and immutable fact:
Adults must take responsibility for their sex lives. Adults, in fact, must take responsibility for their lives, in general.
If you want birth control, spend the 15 bucks a month and buy it yourself (hint: that’s about an 1/8 of your monthly cell phone bill, also a fraction of your cable bill, a fraction of what you spend on smoothies and Starbucks coffee, a fraction of your entertainment budget, a fraction of your alcohol expenditures and a fraction of what you spent on your TV, your clothes, your computer, and your iPhone). Or find a job that will provide it. Or don’t have sex. Or have sex and don’t use it.
Want the government out of your sex life? Stop asking them to subsidize it. Stop asking them to force employers to subsidize it. Stop making your sex habits into a public issue.
The tyranny of the Pigs on the Animal Farm might work in your favor for now, but eventually you’ll wish to claim for yourself those rights which you asked them to steal from others. And by then, it will be too late. God help you.
And, seriously, in case I forgot to mention it: pay for your own birth control.
The end.
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