Birth+Control+and+Contraception+(Pay+or+Not+to+Pay)

Birth Control and Contraception: Pay or Not to Pay

Birth Control is a widely used contraceptive to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Many people have different viewpoints on this contraceptive. Some people believe it should not be used, others say it is up to the woman, but religion seems to play the biggest role into if a women should use a contraceptive or not. Birth control should be available to every woman who wants to protect herself from an unwanted pregnancy regardless of religion.
 * History: How it All Came About **

On January 22, 1973 the great debate about abortions came about. The Roe v Wade case is a nationally known case that has changed the outlook on abortion. Roe is the plaintiff that said it was the women’s right to decide about abortion since it is her body. Wade the defendant, which is also the state of Texas said that abortions were not good for the health of mothers. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff saying that abortion is fine within the first trimester only if the mother is healthy. The verdict fell under the fourteenth amendment right to due process and privacy. (Linton).

This court case is the prime example of why birth control is so important. If birth control is a factor in women’s life abortion would not be necessary. Birth control should be left up to the woman to take since she is the one who has to bare the children. She also does majority of the work when it comes to taking care of them. So she should have to sole choice and decision in whether or not to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. An unwanted pregnancy can cause so many problems from having an abortion to forcing a woman to grow up to fast and turn into a loving care taking mother. An abortion can cause not only physical harm but emotional harm to. So to avoid all these complications birth control seems to be the perfect solution.

The Catholic Church would beg to differ. They see contraceptives as an evil thing. Obama’s healthcare coverage at first stated that every woman has a right to receive contraceptives if needed. The Catholic Church didn’t agree with this. So Obama went back and revised the coverage to state that every insurance company has to give a woman free birth control within the insurance policy and the religious jobs and schools don’t have to offer it. (Gibson).

This is a highly disadvantage to Catholic women and doesn’t make any sense. I know the Catholic faith doesn’t encourage out of web lock children and doesn’t support premarital sex, but at the same time it doesn’t mean that it is not happening. Every woman doesn’t want to have kids and birth control gives them the right to protect themselves from having unwanted pregnancies. In Gibson article he states that “The furor over the contraception mandate had appeared to catch the White House off guard, as it struggled to keep the focus on access to contraception, which is broadly used by American women, even Catholic women.” If the Catholic isn’t receiving it from their place of employment they are going to outside insurance companies or might even be paying for it their selves out of pocket. Catholic women are no different from any other women they can get pregnant and not want the child and have an abortion and I feel like abortions are worse than giving away free birth control. I rather you prevent a life than take it away. The cost of birth control versus the cost of abortion doing the math is easy and simple. Everybody would choose birth control especially since Obama is making it free. The Catholics aren’t the only ones fight against it. An oral form of birth control has been available since the May 1960 and it has been over half a century and we as Americans seem to still not agree upon this issue. According to the authors of "Love, Sex, Freedom and The Paradox Of the Pill”, “Its main inventor was a conservative Catholic who was looking for a treatment for infertility and instead found a guarantee of it. It was blamed for unleashing the sexual revolution among suddenly swinging singles, despite the fact that throughout the 1960s, women usually had to be married to get it. Its supporters hoped it would strengthen marriage by easing the strain of unwanted children.” It is ironic how a conservative Catholic discovered this and now the Catholics look down upon this. Birth control is really not a bad solution to not having kids. I believe it should have been given to teens more so married couples because married couples can afford children and teens can’t.

“In 1960 the typical American woman had 3.6 children; by 1980 the number had dropped below 2. For the first time, more women identified themselves as workers than as homemakers.” “Love, Sex, Freedom and The Paradox Of the Pill” makes it clear that the role of the woman was changing. I believe birth control was an empowerment for woman to see what life is really like outside of being a caretaker. They have more options in life when they didn’t have to worry about children. This is why birth control should be given to every woman so they have time to find their selves and establish who they are, what they want to do, and then decided if a family is what they would like to have. “But beginning in the 1990s, many conservative Christians revisited the question of what God intends in marriage and pondered the true nature of the gift of sexuality. The heart of the concern, in this view, is that using contraception can weaken the marital bond by separating **sex** from procreation. The biblical ideal of marriage as a "one-flesh union" places the act of intercourse, with the possibility of creating new life, at the center of the relationship.” States the authors of “Love, Sex, Freedom and The Paradox Of the Pill”. This is true but God wouldn’t want to put a woman in a position to take a life away because she isn’t ready for that responsibility. People should have kids when they are both ready. Just because a man and a woman have sex doesn’t mean they are ready or mature to bring another life into this world. By having birth control monitor when a woman can get pregnant is a great way to ensure that a new life will be taking care of and not taken away.

In conclusion there really shouldn’t be a debate about giving out free birth control whether it is from insurance companies or religious based jobs or schools because a woman should have the soul right to determine if she wants a baby or not. All the wrong people are making the decision instead of the ones that really matter and that is the woman. Regardless of what the government decides or a religion if a woman wants to be on birth control she will.


 * Contraception funding Religious**

Religion vs. Birth Control What is birth control? Birth Control is a contraceptive technique, a control of the number of children one will conceive. It allows you to choose whether or when to have a child.  There are a lot of opinions out there floating about birth control, but do any of them matter, or do all of them matter. There’s a huge debates on rather or not the power of the availability to receive birth control should lie in the hands of the business owner. Should the business owner have the power to determine if their workers should receive birth control for free or not? I think not, the power to receive free birth control in your insurance should not lie in the hands of someone’s boss. Birth control is a serious matter and can affect a person’s life for the rest of their life. In my mind using birth control is a decision that the person taking it should make, not a boss at some job. That’s like putting the future of an employee into the hands of your boss. That’s not right because at the end of the day you are the one that has to live that life not your boss. Birth Control can have a huge impact on a person’s life, especially a women’s life. For instance a young lady just graduated from high school, and this young lady wants to go to college and become a therapist. She starts getting very intimate with the love of her life, but doesn’t want to get pregnant. Without the use of birth control it’s very likely for this young lady to get pregnant. Now keep in mind that getting pregnant will put a huge hold to her plans or even a stop to it. Without the use of birth control your life could change tremendously. According to <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none;">Sullivan, Andrew <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> of Newsweek, Obama’s decision on birth control, he thinks that birth control should be free to all employees receiving insurance through their company. In January 2012 The Obama Administration issued a new rule that demand church affiliated institutions to put aside their religious moral beliefs and include free birth control for their employees in their insurance plans. Once catholic owned businesses got ear of this new rule this created a uproar in the catholic community, so they got together and tried to attack the regulation as a violation to their religious liberty and refused to go along with the new rule. Obama responded by taking a poll in regards to the new rule. Results showed that most American citizens and most Catholics backed the new rule. With that said, on Feb. 10, 2012 Obama relayed the message to our fellow Americans that the new rule would be modified. Obama promised that religious affiliated institutes won’t have t pay and more for the birth control but the fees would lie in the hands of the insurance companies. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">In most cases dealing with Conservative Catholics birth control is looked upon badly, especially Conservative Catholic business owners. Their view on birth control is looked down upon, their conclusion is why should they have to pay to for women to be more comfortable with having premarital sex and that’s goes against everything we believe in. They think this gives American women the ok to have premarital sex with an ease, know that their chances of getting pregnant is slim to none. But what these Catholics fail to understand is that not all women use birth control to have premarital sex. All women don’t use birth control for the same reasons. Some women use birth control for medical reasons. Some women take <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">birth control to reduce the severity of their extreme menstrual pain or to regulate their period. And with these different reasons for birth control I think these disapproving Catholics should really do their research on why women take birth control. Even if it’s for the reason they disapprove of, the power to determine rather or not these women receive it should not lie in their hands.


 * Contraception Funding Social**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">There are so many opinions and voices that want to be heard about contraception funding. But I think that the most important points of view should be from the people that are going to use them the most which is women. Why not allow businesses to cover women’s health and happiness. There are even controversy on whether there should be teaching about sex and contraception in school. In our society we have come so far in understanding women's rights. Therefore; businesses insurance should cover women’s contraception. So many government officials think that this will put less stress on Americans but people don’t really care about that anymore.

<span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">On TV heard the points of views of men in power and some catholic leaders but America did not even ask us personally. There are people who believe that women have the right to be in control over their body. But don't you think that people have that choice we can have businesses and American taxes go to male enhancement pills but not birth control which some women need for medical reasons. Some people don't care about others like the TV reporter who called the young woman who was in law school a hoe and a slut because she thought that businesses should cover contraception.

<span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Jeffrey Paul Jarosch a professor at the Northwestern University of law has his law students doing a survey and investigation into the debate about contraception. They look up laws, ask people what they think, investigate the people that are involved and in a way have their own personal case and debate about it. They try to see the perspective of the most important sides; women, religion and government. He tries to teach the importance of this topic by actually letting his students experience what is actually happening. If we let our children also experience what is there to offer to them in school they would be prepared. The national school board tries to take sex end classes out of school especially since 2005 when religious groups had took schools to court about teaching their children about sex. The religious groups opinion was that why teach their kids about contraception when to them using it is a sin and it’s the same thing as killing a baby. So the government almost completely took sex end out of school. Margaret Putney a child psychologist asked the opinions of children from grades 8 to 12 about the things they know about sex and contraception. She found out that children have fallen behind on all the things that they should know because of religion based rules changing the learning plan.

<span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Women all over the world some Catholic and some who are not; who think that they deserve their companies should cover them on their birth control. The reason is that if they are not able to go to work it takes away from their income, the company's profit and they feel like they are not being treated fairly because men’s Viagra are being covered by their companies insurance. That most women especially when they just start a job and it's run by men they don't want to get pregnant so it would make them a hindrance to the company. That if their jobs covered them they would have a better chance to move up and get promotions. It also gets to the point where they think that their bosses want them to get pregnant so that they won't have to deal with women and their so called emotions.

<span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">President Obama thinks that passing this bill will give women a chance to become more involved with the jobs what denomination they are from are involved with. He is also trying to give people who have an illness or too bad of a period that its life threatening the same option as anybody else who is being covered by Medicare or even benefits from their job. “Why should unmediated drugs be covered by businesses when women contraception is also a medical drug” ( Caroline Wellbery). Caroline who is a Family Physician states that birth control pills help with pregnancy, smoking, periods and even gallbladder disease. So why women aren’t insurance covering these medications. <span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">As a country we have accepted other cultures and beliefs but we have not completely accepted the rights that women have to their own body. In the last 5 years unplanned pregnancy in teenagers and working women have increased and some could say it’s because of the price of birth control and people not knowing that its theirs. Even Catholics have become a major force in this country but they care about their beliefs more than how their daughters and wives feel about their bodies. If Catholics really want their women to be healthy and not kill their babies then they must be able to see that the pills can do so much more it could even stop uncomfortable bleeding.

<span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">We should pass this law and end the debate on the funding of contraception because America wants and needs it. If we don't women will be unhappy and feel like they are being suppressed by men and the government. If we can look into the prices the rate that we are growing and actually ask people what they want all this time that we are wasting asking men and male catholic leaders about how they want women to live. It has nothing to do with men this debate should be discussed by women of all races and religions.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Costly Choices of Contraception: Financial **

<span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">One of the main issues in today’s society is about birth control and babies. Almost half of all pregnancies are not planned (Phillips). As Americans, people try to prevent pregnancy as much as their wallet allows them to however; money does not grow on trees. Many women cannot afford birth control pills, IUDs, or birth control shots that help prevent pregnancy. So the dilemma appears; should businesses pay for a woman’s health insurance just as they do a man’s? Businesses should pay health insurance costs to help provide for not only single women, but for their unplanned families as well.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Health insurance is a simple way to help pay for health bills of any kind, including doctor visits, hospital visits, etc. Thirty percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 are uninsured (Nearnes). Many questions are constantly being asked. For example, what types of health insurances are there? There are two main types; individual and group health insurance. Individual health insurance is used by one person, or a person’s immediate family. Group health insurance is chosen by a company and that company offers that specific insurance to its employees. One major difference is cost. Individual health insurance is usually sold at a higher cost than group health insurance because group health insurance is generally flexible and consumers are able to avoid additional charges and fees (“What You Need...”). Another common question about health insurance is what all does health insurance cover? Well, this is a very general question that does not have a specific answer. However, most health insurance policies cover the necessities: prescriptions, annual doctor visits, birth control, x-rays and vaccinations (Roizen). Birth control was not added to this list until March 1, 2012. That is when the Senate ruled that health insurance companies must cover a woman’s contraception costs (“Senate Scores Win…”). What someone’s insurance policy covers depends on the specific plan they want with that health insurance company. Every plan is different, and each one is in a different price range. This interesting fact may come as a surprise to some people, but women’s health insurance is higher than men’s. This is because women are likely to go to the doctor than men. Women have to go to the gynecologist and to other offices to get mammograms. (“Roadblocks to Health…”).Though the health insurance costs for women is more, businesses should pay it. Business health insurance covers men’s Viagra and male enhancement drugs. There is no reason why businesses shouldn’t pay for a woman’s contraception if they already pay for a man’s Viagra. <span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">

<span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Contraception can easily be defined as any way to prevent pregnancy. This includes condoms, shots, birth control pills, intrauterine devices, etc. Costs vary from a dollar to a few hundred dollars. Condoms for males and females are inexpensive and can be bought at gas stations or super markets. Unlike condoms, birth control pills/ IUDs/ birth control shots must have a prescription. Business health insurance can play a big role in these contraception costs.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Birth control pill costs can vary depending on if the patient is covered by health insurance or not. If a woman is not covered by health insurance, the price for birth control pills can cost anywhere from $20.00- $50.00 a month, adding up to be from $240.00- $600.00 per year. If a woman is covered by health insurance, the price for birth control pills can be around $5.00-$40.00 a month, adding up to be around $60.00-$480.00 a year (“Birth Control Pills…”). That’s a savings of up to $180.00! Health insurance basically pays for itself here. An intrauterine device (IUD) can cost anywhere from $250.00-$1,000.00. Fortunately, IUDs can last years at a time. The only other type of payment a woman would need to make would be her follow up visits to make sure that the IUD is functioning properly and that she is happy with this form of birth control (“Intrauterine device <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">media type="youtube" key="eL1fibjPMKk" width="425" height="350" align="right" (IUD).”) Health insurance pays for itself here as well. Though $1,000.00 is a lot of money to put up front, that’s a monthly birth control payment that women don’t have to pay. The next type of contraception is the birth control shot. A birth control shot can be given once every three months. One shot can cost anywhere in between $35.00-$75.00, adding up to be around $140.00-$300.00 per year (Cullins). These costs prove that businesses need to provide women with health insurance because birth control is not that much, once covered by health insurance. This saves everyone money because the mother can now use multiple ways of contraception (condoms and birth control simultaneously) and this in turn saves money for the woman, and the business who will end up having to pay a replacement for the woman’s maternity leave. Multiple appointments have to be made for a pregnant woman, but if she is covered by her companies insurance policy then that will save her money.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Appointment costs must be added into the overall cost of contraception. Obviously, the condom form of contraception does not need to include appointment visits because condoms are used on an as needed basis. However, all of the other forms must include doctor visits in order to assure that the forms of contraception are working properly and are effective. Once again, depending on if a woman is covered by health insurance, doctor appointment costs can vary. If a woman is covered by he

alth insurance, it depends on the plan that she is covered by to determine her annual doctor visit costs. What about the scenario when it’s just a sick year and a woman goes to the doctor multiple times? Well, compared to an actual doctor visit cost, the health insurance company is really losing money if her co-pay is only $20.00 for a $50.00 visit. That’s the plus about having health insurance; no matter how many times a woman goes to the doctor, the co-pay is the same! This means that not only are women are saving money but the company providing the health insurance is too!

<span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">The costs of just giving birth to a child in a hospital have a drastic change, depending on if a woman is covered by health insurance or not. If a woman is not covered by health insurance, the average cost of her giving birth to a baby in a hospital is anywhere from $9,000.00-$16,000.00. If there are little to no birth complications, the cheaper the price will be and vise-versa (Hatfield). However, if a woman is covered by health insurance, then the cost of giving birth in a hospital can cost just about anything. It all completely depends on what her deductible, co-pays, and her coverage amount. Companies should have insurance policies that not only cover women, but that also helps with her hospital bills if she were to become pregnant. Anyone who is under financial stress at home cannot give their best at their job. Their mind is going to be on how they are going to get the money to pay doctor bills or hospital payments. There comes a point when companies excel because they have focused employees or the company falls through or just becomes average because their employees are side tracked by other issues in their lives, like money.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">After the actual birthing process, child costs tend to add up. In a house that has an income under $44,500.00 the average amount of money spent on a two year old child is approximately $10,600.00. This estimate is the total from newborn to two years old. This estimate also includes housing, food, childcare, food transportation, clothing, and health care. By the time a child has reached the age of seventeen, parents with a combined yearly income of less than $44,500.00 will have spent around $143, 790.00 on their child (“How Much does…”). Health insurance cannot only benefit a pregnant woman, but can also help provide a child with more toys at Christmas or a car when he/she turns 16 years old. Unfortunately for women without health insurance, that money was spent on doctor bills and hospital costs.

<span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Overall, the cost of birth control without insurance can be very expensive. If a woman has health insurance not only will she be able to save money from month to month, but if her contraception method fails, and then she will be able to take advantage of the health insurance benefits; benefits that include only co-pays at the time of doctor visits. These benefits can also benefit companies who decide to provide health insurance to women because not only will they have a financially stress free mother at work, but their business could excel. These benefits can then help save the parent(s) money that can help go toward the child’s life, like a big birthday party or graduation present. Health insurance for women really not only saves her money, but helps her child out in the long run. Her child may be able to drive a car that he/she wouldn’t have had if it wasn’t for the savings that health insurance gave his/her mother. The planned or unplanned child can grow up in an economically stable home and environment because of health insurance provided by companies. Companies owe it to the people who keep them in business to provide women with health insurance.