The Misguided Birth-Control Crusade Continues

August 2, 2011
By Greg Pfundstein

Yesterday’s determination by Kathleen Sebelius’s Department of Health and Human Services that all FDA-approved contraceptive drugs and devices, as well as sterilization, are preventative care and should therefore be covered without co-payment or deductible by all insurance plans follows on the heels of the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation to that effect two weeks ago. It is a decision that vastly expands the federal government’s commitment to promoting the avoidance of pregnancy as a public-policy priority. The government makes this move in the teeth of a mountain of evidence suggesting that its efforts in this regard have been thoroughly counterproductive over the course of the last 30 years.

President Johnson’s fruitless War on Poverty kicked off the nation’s misguided birth-control crusade with grants for “family planning” in 1965. The effort was redoubled in 1970 when, thanks to the efforts of John D. Rockefeller III and George H. W. Bush, Title X of the Public Health Service Act was signed into law by Richard Nixon the day after Christmas. Since 1970, the out-of-wedlock birthrate has tripled to 41 percent. With the help of the Supreme Court with its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, we have also seen the number of abortions spike through the 1980s and reach an equilibrium today at between 1.2 and 1.3 million annually. Both results are at least unexpected from the perspective of a public policy based on the premise that access to contraception will decrease the rate of unintended pregnancies. the rest

While the HHS regulations allows exemptions for institutions whose primary objective is the propagation of religious faith and which are not-for-profit corporations, there are no exceptions made for religious providers of health care or social services, or for individuals of religious faith or philosophical conviction who, as business owners, wish not to provide coverage for contraceptive drugs and devices to their employees, or who, as individuals, purchase insurance independently, and do not wish to contribute to the provision of contraceptives to others. Are the concerns of these individuals of no consequence? Are they to be compelled to act against their conscience? Will not this be yet another incentive for some small businesses to cease offering health insurance to their employees?