The easiest thing would be to realize that sexuality is a business, and usually the promise of profit makes conservatives drool. Yet we’re the country that thinks that nudity is wicked, and American tourists get either uncomfortable or unnecessarily stimulated when they visit Europe and see bare-breasted women on billboards. (We’re also the nation that objected loudly and often when cable television first debuted and offered X-rated content… as an option… and when courts decided it was, in fact, an option that wasn’t included as part of the basic package, people relaxed… and signed up for porn in droves.)
Promiscuous profits
Contraception has been profitable for generations. Condoms were initially promoted as a way to prevent sexually-transmitted disease. Only later did anyone concede, publicly at least, that they were a form of birth control. But they were a worthwhile, profit-generating business for ages.
The interesting thing is that they were aimed at male customers. Birth control in the form of IUDs, diaphragms, and the pill shifted the focus to women — women who, in the women’s lib era, wanted to enjoy sexual activity without the risk of pregnancy. What was wrong with that? Oh, lots of things.
The price of pleasure
First, it suggested that, as validated by Kinsey and Masters & Johnson research, women actually enjoyed sex. Well! As any Bible thumper can tell you, that’s horrible. It puts those women — single women — up there with Jezebel and Delilah. We can’t have that now, can we?
Second, birth control, whether condoms or anything else, has a cost. That’s how the manufacturers earn their profits, but it’s why so many people don’t use birth control because, well… they can’t afford it.
For the “oh, in the throes of passion, there’s no time to rubber-up or put a diaphragm in place” crowd, there are, as they say, consequences. Like VD. Or AIDS. Those two things support the sexual-industrial-pharmaceutical-medical complex. They are, in other words, good for business. But pregnancy? Whole ‘nother thing.
The price of prevention
Sure, pregnancy keeps OB/GYNs in business, but only for the women who can afford them. It also used to support clinics that help women who cannot afford birth control or proper medical care. The morality police, however, never liked that part of the overall equation.
What’s left then? Three very obvious things that mimic basic crime prevention and law enforcement: access to prevention, accountability, and prosecution for avoiding obligations.
Free or subsidized condoms, IUDs, diaphragms, and birth control and morning-after pills will reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. It’s a ridiculously cheap alternative to having unwanted children wind up on public assistance rolls.
Who me?
Accountabilty? There’s the rub (and not the sexual variety). Everyone, particularly male legislators and judges, puts the blame for getting pregnant and the responsibility for raising unwanted children on women. But tell me: how did those women get pregnant? Immaculately? Au contraire. There was definitely a penis involved. Which was attached to a man. Who is, as far as those legislators and judges are concerned, not obligated in any way. Let’s change that.
Rule, instead, that any woman who is prevented from having an abortion and is compelled to give birth is entitled to have the child supported by the man who got her pregnant. There should be no such thing as “fun and run.” If a man can get into it, the woman he gets into must get something out of it… besides a newborn.
If men refuse to provide child support, they do not pass Go, they do not collect $200. They go directly to jail. If a guy claims, “It isn’t mine,” a DNA test will settle that in a couple of hours.
The wages of sin are paid in secret
This will not please the sex-out-of-wedlock-is-sinful crowd. Just don’t catch them at it, as too many politicians have been. Just as with X-rated cable, what people say and what people do have very little in common a great deal of the time. Besides, if it weren’t for infidelity (and pickup trucks, dogs, guns, and trains), there’d be no country music.
The we-won’t-pay-for-anything contingent — nothing for birth control, nothing for prenatal care, nothing for delivery or medical complications, and certainly nothing for post-natal child support — probably won’t be swayed by the reduced cost of legislation, regulatory enforcement, criminal procedings, incarceration, and lawsuits. That simply proves that those people failed both math and economics and, since most of them claim to be good Christians, that they have no understanding of Christ’s teachings. They’re too busy throwing stones.
The balance sheet
What the access-to-birth-control/healthcare-and-accountability-for-men alternative can do is
• improve mental health
• reduce sexually transmitted disease
• keep women in the workforce (and paying taxes on their income)
• preserve government resources for providing beneficial services
• lower the cost of enforcement and prosecution
and, most of all,
• increase happiness.
If most of the anti-abortion legislators could be honest, they might admit that their decisions have nothing to do with women. They’re focused on having power over women. When that’s the only way a man can feel like a man, he’s admitting that he’s less than one.