San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec

San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec




San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec

Universal access to contraceptives protects women

By Stacey Oparnica, Staff Columnist

Sex. It doesn’t just happen in movies. Regardless of personal morals or religious beliefs, we can’t argue with the fact that sex is a ubiquitous aspect of our culture. Studies prove that out of the 62 million American women “in their childbearing years (15–44),” 43 million — or seven out of 10 — are sexually active.

Evidently, when given the choice, most women aren’t intrigued by, or even minimally interested in, the idea of abstinence. The situation is slightly different for younger women; experts are blaming one-sided abstinence-only sex education programs for not properly informing teens of alternative contraception, thus contributing to our nation’s high teen pregnancy rates. Clearly, it’s time to put down the “Sex-free is the way to be!” signs and start realistically addressing the 6.3 million unintended pregnancies, half of which end in abortions, that occur every year.

The recent health care reform makes a solid 180-degree turn and offers a much more pro-active solution: free contraception for all women. With this law, women would have access to a variety of birth control methods, such as the pill, intrauterine devices, vaginal rings and more. This course of action gives birth to a much-needed dose of obligation and responsibility. We need to help provide women with the resources they need to make healthy, educated decisions about sex. The effectiveness of preventative care must be acknowledged. Anyone who disagrees shouldn’t be having sex in the first place.

With 43 million sexually active women in the U.S., birth control should not be viewed as a “luxury,” but as a necessity for protecting the well-being of sexually active teens and adults. Taking the pill, which is 99.7 percent effective when used correctly, remains unchallenged as the most preferred method of combating unintended pregnancies.

Unfortunately, not every woman has access to these benefits. Preventative care isn’t cheap; hormonal contraception alone can cost up to $75 a month. For obvious reasons, some women simply can’t afford to shell out $900 a year on birth control. Teenagers are especially vulnerable, considering many do not have jobs or means of transportation to get to clinics and pay for services, leaving them excluded and poorly informed.

This is where the health care reform opens imperative doors. Considering that half of all pregnancies are accidental, free access to effective birth control is exactly what women need. As expected, there is strong resentment from religious communities, where contraception conflicts with the moral position of churches.

“We think there are other ways to avoid having children than by ingesting chemicals paid for by health insurance,” John Hass, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, said. It is unclear whether the other ways of avoiding pregnancy he mentioned refer to abstinence or the fertility awareness method. FAM, which is a compilation of methods common in the Catholic religion, relies on a woman’s ovulation cycle to determine which days are “unsafe” for sexual activity, which usually involves abstaining for one-third of the month. Considering the effectiveness of FAM is somewhat unreliable, with a failure rate of about 25 percent, birth control still stands out as the most rational choice for women. If this isn’t convincing enough, a 2009 report from the Guttmacher Institute revealed, “… publicly-funded contraception saves taxpayers $4 for every $1 spent by preventing nearly 2 million pregnancies and 810,000 abortions every year,” which includes “… almost 400,000 teen pregnancies.”

These are two million lives we are talking about here. These are 810,000 abortions we could be preventing. Those insisting that offering free contraception is encouraging women to have sex need to wake up from the naïve, misconceived, head-in-the-clouds reality they are living in. People are going to have sex, regardless. The bottom line: We can either responsibly and actively tackle the root cause of unintended pregnancies and abortions by supplying women with free preventative contraception, or we can simply wait for people to lose interest in sex. Take your pick.

— Stacey Oparnica is a journalism sophomore.

— The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinion of  The Daily Aztec.

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San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913
Universal access to contraceptives protects women