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TechnoratiSticker Shock: Skyrocketing Birth Control Rates Are Only One Way Bush Administration Obstruct Access to Contraception
When Emory University incoming senior Nora Kleinman discovered last winter that the cost of NuvaRing, her preferred method of birth control, had nearly doubled at her campus health center- going from $27 to $44 a month-she was forced to make a quick decision: find a way to come up with an extra $204 a year or switch to her parents' insurance plan, and thus give up the privacy she had enjoyed at the student health clinic. "Everybody's fairly irritated about it," says Kleinman.
"Myself and so many other women I know were depending on health services at universities for cheap and affordable contraception."Millions of women who purchase contraceptives at student and community health clinics across the country have seen prices go from about $10 a month to anywhere between $30 and $50. Such out-of-reach prices are putting intense financial stress on women who can't afford to pay retail for birth control. And the pressure goes beyond the individual level: Some family planning clinics serving low-income women may be forced to shut down if prices aren't soon reduced, leaving poor women with even fewer resources to determine the number and spacing of their children.
Among college undergraduate women, some 3 million of them (39 percent) use oral contraceptives, while others use NuvaRing, the contraceptive patch and other forms of birth control, according to the American College Health Association. Those who cannot find a way to come up with more cash are being forced to switch to an alternative make or method of birth control, says Mary Hoban, a director of the association's National College Assessment Program. Some university health centers and clinics have now even stopped carrying devices such as NuvaRing-a popular method which delivers contraceptive hormones through a vaginal insert-because of their increased price.
For many women, changing birth control methods or makes is not easy. NuvaRing and the patch have no generic alternatives, and women are often reluctant to switch brands of oral contraceptives after finding a good fit without undesirable side effects.
The soaring costs are the result of an obscure provision in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 that stripped away a long standing incentive encouraging drug companies to provide steeply discounted birth control to certain low-cost health-care providers. The law took effect in January, forcing many health clinics across the country to ratchet up their prices. Some temporarily defrayed costs by stockpiling drugs before the law took effect, but those reserves are rapidly depleting.
Pro-choice advocates see the change as part of a broader attack on contraception access. "It's a horror," says Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who has led the fight in Congress to preserve access to birth control. She points to U.S. pharmacists refusing for personal or religious reasons to fill birth control prescriptions, and four states- Arkansas, Georgia, South Dakota and Mississippi-enacting laws allowing them to do so. She also cites a crackdown on birth control by anti-choice Republicans in Congress and the White House. In 2002, the Department of Defense approved a plan to make emergency contraception (EC) available at all military treatment facilities, but political appointees later reversed the decision. And in 2004, the Department of Justice did not include EC in its recommendations for treating sexual-assault victims-an omission Maloney calls intentional.
In every year he has held office, Bush has sought to freeze Title X funding, which pays basic operating costs at more than 4,500 family planning clinics serving millions of low-income women. Congress nonetheless approved slight increases in Bush's first five years, but those were not enough to keep up with inflation. In fact, taking inflation into account, Title X funding is now 61 percent lower than it was in 1980, according to the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. Had funding levels merely kept up with inflation, clinics would now receive more than $725 million a year; instead, Bush wants to freeze Title X funds at last year's $283 million level.
Meanwhile, anti-choice Republicans have found pots of money to pour into abstinence-only programs, which gag educators from discussing contraception outside the context of its failure rate. Critics have long questioned the efficacy of these programs, and they got a clear answer in an April report conducted on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services: It showed that abstinence- only education does not prevent young people from having sex, nor does it influence the number of sexual partners they have or the age they first engage in intercourse. Still, federal funding for abstinenceonly has exploded from $80 million in fiscal 2001 to $176 million, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America.
What has shocked reproductiverights advocates is that Democrats in a House Appropriations subcommittee voted to approve $28 million in additional funding for communitybased abstinence-only education. In turn, the subcommittee also approved a $28 million hike in Title X family-planning funding. But the advocates thought the compromise both unnecessary and wrong: "There is no other way to describe this concession but as shameful," reads a statement from William Smith, vice president for public policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.
Other Democrats continue to push a pro-family-planning agenda, however. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to change the language in the Deficit Reduction Act to bring down the price of birth control at health clinics, while other rank-and-file Democrats are promoting bills to require that the Justice Department mention EC in sexual-assault treatment recommendations and the Defense Department make EC available at all military treatment facilities.
And they're counting on support from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Rules Chair Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) to push through the Prevention First Act, which would ease access to contraception, require insurers to cover birth control, increase funding for comprehensive sex education and ensure that women can get their birth control prescriptions filled. The prevention push is also playing out in the states: Between January and June 1, state legislators introduced 151 measures aimed at preventing unintended pregnancy, and eight states passed pregnancy-prevention laws.
Still, with a majority of federal lawmakers opposed to access to full reproductive health care, and a president who bends to the will of antichoice leaders, progress is slowgoing, says Mary Jane Gallagher, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. She notes the huge disconnect between a vast majority of voters who support unfettered access to birth control, and their government representatives who are unduly influenced by a small but powerful faction of conservatives.
"We're not there yet," Gallagher says. "Clearly, the conservative right made some serious inroads into policymakers and so it's not going to happen overnight."
Allison Stevens
© 2007 Ms. Magazine
25 Comments so far
Show AllLiberty and others who preach "personal responsibility" make me sick. We live in a country where, if you want birth control pills, you have to submit yourself to all sorts of prods and tests, and otherwise "submit"yourself to medical "experts." They tell you that Pap smears will save your life (they are about 50% accurate--you might as well flip a coin) AND they charge you huge sums of money for all of this, and they tell you that they "know best" because they have a white lab coat. I should be able to medicate myself anyway I chose, and to order the damn drugs from Amsterdam, nay, I should be able to buy the drugs here--but no, I live in a country where every friggin thing is against the law and if I chose the "personal responsibility" of free choice, I would land in jail. For health reasons? No, for control. They want to control your access to medicine, control your ability to control your own body. Piss off, liberty, I don't see any. Hell, they keep trying to put aspirin and vitamins under prescription--one more thing to put you in jail for if they find them on you. Fascism is alive and well. Don't preach to me about personal responsibility--I would take all of that back if I could. Birth control pills should be in bubblegum machine-like dispensers at a quarter a pill--they've been around since '57--they ought to be dirt cheap and freely available.
LUCKY LEFTY: Passionate and powerful posting. There are 2 aspects still to address. Because men and women are cued to different cosmic drumbeats, we don't always LIKE each other. Therefore SEX has to be such an overwhelming FORCE as to bind us, regardless. That's nature's way of insuring a continuum of species, even ours! Because sex IS such a powerful force, the way the rightwing uses it--as intended contents under pressure (as in abstinence) makes for a lot of repressed ANGER, and ANGER is the ultimate fuel for war. Note the analogy between repressed female reproductive freedoms and rights (increasing now with Bush & co) in the US and those used by primitive Islamic tribes?
The second point involves capitalism AS hierarchy. Because American good jobs are in shorter and shorter supply and this defict impacts blue collar workers who see their checks decreasing, these guys feel POWERLESS and like their 3rd world counterparts they are being enculturated to heavily subscribe to unconscious doctrines of machismo (a/k/a misogyny). They don't want to feel like the bottom rung on the success ladder, so it feels good to have "the little woman" to step on.
My buddy told me of a guy he works with who gets viagra on insurance, and this bastard does not fulfill child support for the nine children he's already fathered. Patriarchy is all about male dominance one way or another. Controlling women's bodies turns them into breeding animals, and it is DISGUSTING! Just about every "value" the right wing espouses and seeks to embed into US culture today is equivalent to NAZI authoritarianism. And we know where that leads...
Fairly well said Liberty - I believe we should all pay for our own birth control AND men should pay for their E.D. pills. However, so long as they get their recreational drugs, then b.c. pills should be covered in my opinion - besides it's cheaper than adding more babies to the population for a # of reasons. Abstinence always worked for me and my sisters until we married and dammit it's worked since I ended the marriage! (Smile dammit - this site could use a few smiles now and then.)
I was born a feminist and have never had a "damn the consequences" attitude so that one YOU need to work on.
Nonetheless....peace!
Wow - lots of energy on this issue. What about personal responsibility people? Speaking as a woman, i'm always amazed by feminist types who want the 'freedom' to do whatever they like, damn the consequences, and make it someone else's responsiblity (taxpayers, for example) to provide them with these so called 'rights'. Hmmmm. Seems to me that the 'freedom' to have sex with whomever you please comes with the 'responsibility' to manage your own birth control (also ladies, NOT having sex is also very effective birth control). If you CHOOSE a particular method of contraception, that's YOUR CHOICE. Nobody is responsible for paying for it on your behalf. Seems like taking from one person to give to another is just robbery with a pretty face on it. Condoms are cheap. Abstinence is free. News flash ladies, you aren't owed anything, including subsidies. Sorry. Growing up is hard to do.
Gringo: Most men have their E.D. pills - a purely recreational drug (no man HAS TO HAVE an erection) - paid for by insurance. My employer's insurance plan pays for them but it does not cover birth control pills. (I bet that goes right up your backside doesn't it?) When b.c. pills are prescribed for NON birth control reasons(it IS a medicine, after all), the woman involved has to go thru a rigorous process of obtaining doctor's letters and release of private medical records that many just pay for their medication in full. I won't even go into the # of pharmacies that refuse to fill b.c. prescriptions on so-called "moral" grounds (while the men still get their e.d. pills - goddess what a screwed up system!).
As for your use of the word "guy" to encompass all - including those of us who by gender are NOT guys - Alice Walker said it better than I could:
Conjure up an image of a guy. What attributes does it have? Is that really you? Is this a label you gave yourself?
What does being called "guys" do to young women? To little girls?
Isn't the media responsible for making it "cute" to be a guy, as if that's all the Women's Movement was about, turning us into neutered men, into guys? For guys don't have cojones, you know. They are men, but neutered, somehow. So if you've turned in your breasts and ovaries for guyness, you've really lost out.
Peace
Ahm. I feel like all you guys went nuts. Women are losing their reproductive liberty? They are being enslaved by the evil republicans? The Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms are taken away. Ahm. So, students lose subsidies for birth control, and now they have to pay the full price for the pills, which amounts to extra $17 a month, nearly 50 cents a day. Ahm. Is this what you are decrying as a "loss of freedom"? You guys are nuts. Seriously. Since when is a government handout a right? Since when making a grown up woman pay full price for the pills she chose is a violation of her rights? And it's only 50 cents a day! Come on. I am waiting to know what student cannot afford 50 cents a day for a pill. And if she is so damn poor, and yet in such dire need of sex - can she switch to condoms?
Anyway, guys, this article proves that you are way out there, above the clouds. Seriously.
Well said LuckyLefty - I have noticed a dramatic increase in hatred against women on the airwaves, especially since progressive radio left Ohio this past spring (you see we NEEDED yet another all-sports radio station, though I still don't buy that that is what happened). As someone who loves talk radio I switch around trying to find something other than Rush and his ilk. What I have learned is how much certain sub-classes of males hate women. It's rampant - the name calling and even the call for people to call in with rape jokes!!!!! Years ago @ the planned parenthood clinic where I volunteered, the clinic director told me of her belief in "women taking care of women." Perhaps the answer is that more of us women become pharmacists, doctors, nurses, surgeons - take over OUR OWN HEALTH CARE NEEDS AND STAND IN THE WAY OF ANYONE WHO TRIES TO TAKE THEM AWAY FROM US - USING OUR MINDS, OUR EDUCATION, AND OUR MONEY.
I'd love to live in that world. Onward feministas!
At this time, the neo-cons controlling our collective fate talk of the 'killing of innocent babies' etc, with nary a word once this child is born. My take on this, like much of the agenda is stealth. To get the support of the 'barefoot and pregnant' fundamentalist types, today it is phrased in terms of the choice to NOT conceive. If I want to have a baby, the government isn't going to interfere. I worry that the day will come when the choice to HAVE a baby(if I so desire) will not be within my freedoms. The ability to choose goes both ways and I don't think the fundamentalists are seeing into the 'no choice at all' future. The fundies are simply pawns in the NWO.
luckylefty,
Aryans, huh.
Let me see, most statistics reveal that the white man is most likely to get a vasectomy. The more educated, even more so. Non-white ethnic group males, unlikely. You can google that stat easily. .
A sexually active female has to insist on a condom, if for nothing else, disease prevention. A male has to be taught how to respect his own sexuality and a female needs to be taught what she should expect from a male. And that should originate from what they expect from themselves.
I think the real issue here is exploitation and perhaps abuse of power. The problem with getting "fixed" is the finality of it. It can be expensive and difficult to reverse, and is not always successful. It is best to stay away from the blame-game mentality, which only increases polarization and division in society and look for lasting solutions.
luckylefty, wow great posts.
I won't be your beast of burden. Gender slavery all right. I know what it's like to eat last or not at all. Just how many job choices do I have in my mid fifties? None. If it took me to climax by the men I've known, I never would have had any kids at all. Just why are so many men afraid of getting themselves fixed? Too much of the birth control available to women isn't healthy or safe to them either.
Nice theory, luckylefty, but your context is not broad enough. Egoistic human beings always want power, whether male or female. Many females learn how to use their sexual appeal to manipulate men to get it. So, in a way, a female has her own route to power and exploitation. Slavery? Maybe, but not quite in the way we might think. Sure, some religious fundies are against birth control, but are they a majority, even among religious believers? I wonder. What seems to be left out of the discussion is the gouging of consumers by the pharmaceutical companies in general, along with the government sanctioning of it. Birth control has to be subsidized, which amounts to corporate welfare (again for the pharmaceutical companies). One possible solution against the onslaught of outrageous drug prices might be national health care, where everyone gets equal access to some level of health care, and where lower drug prices are negotiated to provide it. The big boys (and now some of the big girls too)really only care about power and profit.
"I Can't Get No!
"I Can't Get No!
"I Can't Get No!
Saa Tis FACTion.........
Our last 40 years or so has seen a major disruption in very very old social/psychic patterns. Since women were finally "given" the vote, only in the last 40-45 years have we seen some reversals in the gender slavery of our culture and the death of some aspects of Patriarchy and Primogeniture. Some. This has produced what can only be described as major social dislocations in the ways the genders court, engage, and bond to each other, or not. For millions of men and women patriarchy and gender slavery are a part of the past but the new behavioral models of gender equality are not fully formed. This has produced great pain for both genders. I think we have learned however that without economic or biological self-determination, we are slaves, all of us. How many job choices do you have when you're past 50? Or were we just supposed to fall down under the bus and disappear? Useless slaves are always discarded by the side of the road, in a wet muddy ditch, covered in quicklime and earth, and buried. They didn't much notice or care if he was still breathing. He was a slave. You bet we got problems.
Peace.
I would think a grass roots organization could be put together (especially on college campuses using email, newsletters, and student organizations) such that if the Democrats do get into office in large numbers, but balk at enacting or changing the legislation of your choice, you could have the strength in numbers to pressure it through. (It's now September 2007; even if it took two years to get fully organized, it would only be six months into the next administration.) I realize this is based on speculating that an agreeable President and Congress might exist. I don't know that I'd seen a time when that likelihood was greater; I don't know if I ever will again.
Love and luck!
(Mandated bumping in 2009? One I missed?)
Paul M. If the ladies were selling sex, they could pay for the increase in birth control themselves couldn't they? Unless of course you're their pimp, I suppose. Funny how right wingers in the world think that only males have a sex drive (or that only men have the right to have one) Gone without nookiie, good for you, so have I. Unlike you I don't mind the fact that others enjoy bumping away with each other. I'd rather that the product of their bumping was wanted tho...
The longer Republicans surge in Iraq, the more likely Democrats will surge into office in 2008. It's time to plan for new progressive legislation to reward the sacrifices of our returning troops and their families, and all families in America and around the world. We may be hamstrung when it comes to offering our troops and ourselves a brighter today, but the same may not be true of offering all of us a brighter tomorrow.
How about health care for all Americans, in 2009?
How about some legislation that really addresses Global Warming, in 2009?
How about a Constitutional Amendment on the right to choose, in 2009?
Let's make America a country our troops will come home to with pride and with confidence in the future for themselves and their families.
The restriction of women's access to birth control and the takeover of what were once personal decisions by the state is the greatest sign to me that we are descending into tyrrany and our Constitution is ceasing to mean anything. Women need to get organized around this and loudly assert that women have a right to unrestricted healthcare and a right to make decisions about which medications they will take. Our youth have a right to accurate information in school. We cannot be complacent about this. This may be the only silver lining to the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on Congress; birth control is too profitable for them to sit back and totally let Congress and Bush remove it from the market!
They could always simply stop fucking. I've done it for years at a time, if involuntarily. It doesn't kill you. But I understand their dilemma: without their sex to sell, who is going to take care of them?
luckylefty, nothing else really need be said, excellent post.
Lots more babies with low income parents will feed the fast growing prison industry in the future. Progress in industry!
I'm in favor of more babies to make America's population larger relative to other countries. Why don't the Republicans restore the AFDC program to support welfare moms who want to have lots of kids and stay home to care for them? Oh, you'd have raise taxes on the rich. Never mind.
National healthcare, national healthcare, national healthcare!!!
Kinder, Kirche, Küche -- the Rethugs love the KKK acronym both in German and in English . . .
An idiotic policy encouraged by the foolish. Way to go tories, should you get away with this there'll be lots of kids in the comming years for you to abuse (sexually, physically and militarily), others that you can ignore (disabled, born but unable to survive 5 years, etc....) Not to mention the women who will be fucked over by your stupidity...
Altogether now "every sperm is sacred..."
Clearly the powers that be want free workers and soldiers, provided by women who otherwise might have gotten an education, but are forced into worker slavedom to provide for their offspring. Disgusting.