Birth Control Pill Tax: Forbes Writer Argues Women On Hormonal Contraceptive Pills Should Pay More

[oceandezignz]

While President Obama wants to grant women access to free birth control, this guy thinks women ought to pay more for access to contraception -- $1,500 per year more, to be precise.

Comments

[lurkch]

Yeeah. Let's just overlook the fact that many, many pharmaceutical drug by-products (including male-soecific medication) end up in sewage and can't be removed through current treatments. Let's also overlook all of the industrial chemicals with hormonal effects (e.g. BPA) that end up in the environment and affect wildlife. Let's just pin it all on one drug class and one subsection of the population. Let's also forget about all the money saved and all the pollution that doesn't happen because more humans weren't added to the planet.

In fact, let's just abandon logic, science, economics, etc. altogether then, shall we?

Sigh.

[skellington1]

No shit. My first thought was "And this is an issue specific to birth control pills because...?"

Also, would this mean that I get off without the proposed giant fee because I take progestin only pills (no ethinyl estradiol ), or would he come up with a different way to penalize me for being female? I'm betting on the latter.

[mollywobbles867]

Right? What effect does Viagra have? Antidepressants? Pain medication? Heart meds? Et al? This guy is a sexist piece of shit.

[mutive]

Anti-depressants and birth control pills are the two that I've seen highlighted for screwing with fish. Probably other meds aren't real great either, though.

Really, though, my primary concern is still all those antibiotics we keep feeding farm animals. (The thought makes me shudder.) So I'll worry about that first, *then* worry about sex changing fish. (Or fish who are peculiarly mellow.)

[luminescnece]

Came here to say this. ._.

[roseofjuly]

Thank you for saying everything I was thinking much more rationally than I would've.

[corinn]

Thank you, I was thinking that through the entire article. Ugh.

Tangent: Man, even if you try to be responsible about getting rid of meds so they don't get in the water table from the landfills or washing down the drain, waste removal and pharmacy people are like ¯\_(°-°)_/¯ "Coffee can and duct tape?" There really needs to be a more concerted effort to have a way to dispose the stuff.

[thenakedcat]

Re: industrial chemicals with hormonal effects. If we're going to tackle the hormone-analog pollution problem, we really ought to go after the megadoses of hormones given to livestock first, as well as the mimic chemicals like BPA. Those have knock-on effects for the human food chain as well and I'm pretty damn sure that all told they result in many times more volume of hormonal pollutants than human HBC ethinyl estradiol, WITHOUT also having a direct effect on women's bodily autonomy. You get the hormones out of my milk, THEN we can talk about how to deal with my no-baby pills.