Contraceptives should not be morally obligatory, nor should the bedroom be the business of the government.

The way the current healthcare system works to provide federally subsidized birth control provides publicly-funded Title X “safety net” health centers around the United States, which provide family-planning services to women and men across the country. About nine out of ten of these centers provide some sort of birth control, whether it be pills, injections, condoms, or other types of contraception.

To the people obtaining birth control at the counter, everything seems convenient, incredible, and free. However, the people behind the medicine still need to make their money; thus the lack of a cost is an illusion.

So where does money behind “free” birth control come from? Taxpayer dollars.

Family planning services are subsidized by the United States Federal Government, so a small part of everyone’s taxes goes toward this funding. There are quite a few valid reasons for not wanting to have federally funded contraceptives:

The first reasonpertains to religious beliefs which, while separate from the state, mean taxpayers should not feel mandated to abandon their First Amendment Freedom of Religion. Some religions believe it is wrong to use contraceptives because it prevents the creation of a human life that otherwise mighthave existed and therefore, these individuals find it immoral to be forced to provide a part of their own incomes to fund it. The Freedom of Religion policy could easily be fixed by mimicking a policy that is implemented on many college campuses around the country: Here, if a student feels that a student group being funded through the university is against his or her own morals, that student can request to have that portion of their student services fee dropped fromhis or her tuition.

The second reason, which can admittedly be used either for or against this argument, is that birth control really does not cost all that much. Condoms are forty cents a pop, and the birth control pill is maybe 30 dollars a month, depending on one’shealth insurance. If someone really needs to be having birth control all that often, they should be willing and able to pay for it themselves. Not to mention that even if someone cannot afford birth control, there are still multiple ways people can avoid conceiving a child together without contraception (which are provided on Planned Parenthood’s website). Thus, claiming these peoplerequirecontraception when they really do not promotes a false reality.

A third reason, and probably the most important of them all, is that the United States’ citizensneed to stop depending on the federal government for everything and avoiding responsibility for the actions that we take. The responsibility of government is to protect and defend its people from injustice and tyranny, not to stick their noses into the bedrooms of its citizens, especially if it means using taxpayer dollars to do so. True independence means the ability to pay one’s way through society, and non-necessities such as contraceptives should be purchasedwith one’s own money, on one’s own time: not the other way around.

The one argument that can most effectively combat the above reasoning is that studies say that publicly funded birth control from Title X prevents somewhere around two million unwanted pregnancies, which includes seven hundred thousand estimated abortions. Even with this in mind, (and in reiteration,) Americans need to start being responsible for ourselves again. By allowing people to completely rely on subsidies and welfare, the government has completely destroyed the family in inner-city communities (where most of these Title X facilities are).

Since 1960, the United States birth rate has dropped steadily and is now the lowest it has ever been. Typically, birth rate is an indication of economic success (throughassessing whether or not the average household income is able to support raising children); this new wave of the “do whatever you want without consequences” way of life in the United States, however, needs to come to an end: It can only end poorly. Americans need to start taking some responsibility upon themselves in the household again, and one way to start is by forcing them to buy their own birth control or come up with other means of pregnancy prevention, which do exist.

After all,the business of Americans is the business of Americans, not the business of America itself.