Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[Descan]

Pretty sure American birth control, especially IUDs, cost thousands of dollars.

[Owlbread]

Good god it smells very strongly of Liberals in here. You all need a good dose of American Conservatism to balance things out.

I, for one, like things just the way they are.

[mainiac]

That's all beside the point, though, that there is no rational reason for birth control to not be over the counter.

Yes, products that can cause an ectopic pregnancy and kill you if certain risk factors are present should be sold over the counter.  What a brilliant idea.  Because you know who's really f#ing good at researching and making expert decisions about pharmaceutical interactions before they act?  Horny teenagers.

Of course you shouldn't need to know that a group of birth control methods was causing dangerous drug interactions back before medical studies unearthed that little nugget of wisdom.  There aren't enough hours in the day to learn all the obscure crap like that.  Doctors literally keep learning all their lives just to keep up to date with their own specialty and the general stuff.  We need to accept like mature adults that we dont know everything.

[SalmonGod]

This link may benefit the discussion.

[GreatJustice]

That's all beside the point, though, that there is no rational reason for birth control to not be over the counter.

Yes, products that can cause an ectopic pregnancy and kill you if certain risk factors are present should be sold over the counter.  What a brilliant idea.  Because you know who's really f#ing good at researching and making expert decisions about pharmaceutical interactions before they act?  Horny teenagers.

Of course you shouldn't need to know that a group of birth control methods was causing dangerous drug interactions back before medical studies unearthed that little nugget of wisdom.  There aren't enough hours in the day to learn all the obscure crap like that.  Doctors literally keep learning all their lives just to keep up to date with their own specialty and the general stuff.  We need to accept like mature adults that we dont know everything.

Even OC drugs have a variety of risks, some even more than the risks of birth control, yet they are still OC.

Oh, and it would seem that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists actually agrees with me on this, so in this case I suppose you'd better gracefully accept their view using the same strain of logic.

[Angle]

...Why do so many people turn into jerks when they argue on the internet? *Cough* GreatJustce *Cough* Mainiac *Cough cough Hack Wheeze*

[mainiac]

Oh yes of course.  Your post was in a conversation about the hobby lobby decision.  This decision affected four types of birth control.  Two are morning after pills, already available over the counter.  The other two are IUDs.  So obviously a call to make birth control available over the counter isn't referring to IUDs but to drugs which are taken regularly to prevent pregnancy.

...Why do so many people turn into jerks when they argue on the internet? *Cough* GreatJustce *Cough* Mainiac *Cough cough Hack Wheeze*

He just proposed a very stupid and very dangerous thing.  It's also something that's offensive to those whose loved ones have had unfortunate experiences with the risks he's so cavalier about.

[GavJ]

Wait, what does this all have to do with contraceptive mandates again?

Nothing. None of the property rights discussion above was relevant to contraceptive mandates at all. Which is why you didn't need to bring up property rights.
My examples were hyperbolic ones to highlight the silliness of applying that same bad logic to other things...

Okay, but those side benefits are not the primary reason one gets contraceptives

Actually every woman I have ever known well enough to have been told about their medical history has used contraceptives for medical purposes at some point for some reason other than preventing pregnancy. My girlfriend is an exception for needing such treatment indefinitely, however quite routinely, contraceptives are prescribed more temporarily to balance out various issues during puberty in particular, and then are not needed later (except for the sexually active for their contraceptive use). However, most children in puberty are covered by their parents' employer-provided healthcare, and if that parent can't afford out of pocket contraceptives, they have to go without treatment if the employer does not provide coverage. This will lead to a large number of actually quite common failures to treat non-sex-related conditions.

Not that that's even necessarily relevant anyway. Sex is a thing. That people do. Treating things relevant to sex is no less "legitimate healthcare" than treating anything else.  However, since for some reason you seem to disagree, the fact also remains that aside from that, not covering contraceptives still hurts lots of non-sexually-active people as well. So even from your perspective, it is still harmful to "innocents." This line of argument should not be taken to suggest that I endorse what I think is an absurd division between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" healthcare, however.

[Vector]

For reference, I am, for example, not covered for gynecology at ALL through my parents' healthcare system. That's not "sex" stuff. That's "having certain organs" stuff.

[Duuvian]

So Massachusetts can't have buffer zones around their abortion clinics with a recent ruling. The zealots will be able to get all up in an innocent patient's business now.

Hmm. How is this buffer zone not okay but designating a remote area as the only place a group can legally perform unobstructive protest is okay?

[Sergarr]

So Massachusetts can't have buffer zones around their abortion clinics with a recent ruling. The zealots will be able to get all up in an innocent patient's business now.

Hmm. How is this buffer zone not okay but designating a remote area as the only place a group can legally perform unobstructive protest okay?

because one hurts people and the other hurts corporations

and corporations in your american world are more valuable than people

[Duuvian]

So Massachusetts can't have buffer zones around their abortion clinics with a recent ruling. The zealots will be able to get all up in an innocent patient's business now.

Hmm. How is this buffer zone not okay but designating a remote area as the only place a group can legally perform unobstructive protest okay?

because one hurts people and the other hurts corporations

and corporations in your american world are more valuable than people

Unfortunately and with some sadness I can't say I disagree with that observation until someone correctly tells me how I'm misinterpreting this comparison.

[GavJ]

Maybe women simply need to incorporate their vaginas and then American law will start protecting them?

[Duuvian]

I think that's only legal in Nevada, and California if you film it.

That was a bad joke, I'm sorry womenkind.

[palsch]

With regard to making birth control OTC, that doesn't solve anything in this case. Looking only at the four methods here, an IUD obviously can't be installed over the counter, and buying one off insurance costs $500-900 or so.

Plan B can be bought OTC, but costs something like $50 for a one-time pill. That can be reduced if you can get to a Planned Parenthood or similar, but those reductions are designed to work alongside insurance, not replace it.

The other drug, ella, is prescription only but can be bought online from automated prescription services for ~$60. Again, discounts are sometimes available, but again these work best alongside insurance.

Given the goal of the two pills is to reduce the risk of a pregnancy after high-risk sex (condom broke, etc) reducing the cost is a valid goal. Especially for low income women.



Regarding the buffer zone decision, SCOTUSblog's plain English summary. It's a bit of a complicated ruling. They did find that buffer zones at abortion clinics are legal, but that;

...the law does restrict more speech than it needs to.  No other state uses a buffer zone like this one, which suggests that there are alternatives that Massachusetts has overlooked.  First and foremost, if the goal is to protect patients and more broadly maintain order outside clinics (which, the Court agreed, is a legitimate interest), there is a separate provision of the law that specifically addresses misconduct outside clinics and imposes criminal penalties for violations.  Or the state could enact other laws to deal with it.  Either option would allow the state to target particular individuals who block access to clinics or harass women, without penalizing people like the plaintiffs who say that they are just trying to talk to women.  The Court also expressed skepticism that access to and public safety around clinics are actually problems anywhere other than one specific clinic:  “For a problem shown to arise only once a week in one city at one clinic, creating 35-foot buffer zones at every clinic across” the state “is hardly a narrowly tailored solution.”

Nor, the Court continued, can the state justify the restrictions by saying that it tried other options but they didn’t work; the five Justices pointedly observed that they saw no sign that the state had tried to rely on those other options to prosecute anyone in the last seventeen years.  And even if the fixed buffer zone was easier for police than some of the other options, the Court was unmoved:  “[T]he prime objective of the First Amendment is not efficiency.”

Again, a strict scrutiny ruling based on the fact that there seems to be a more narrowly tailored or less restrictive manner of achieving the stated goals.

One thing I would note here is the group claiming they just want to talk to women (as opposed to groups who go to court for the right to explicitly harass them?) are 'sidewalk counselors' whose goal is to talk women out of having abortions on the way in.