Birth Control should not only be completely free, but automated for both sexes once they reach a certain age.
If your parent(s)/guardian(s) take you to the doctors on a regular basis, once your puberty progresses far enough and your sexual organs mature, you should be put on birth control, both boy and girl, regardless of legal age of consent for sex or sexual activity.
This should be a basic health care package, and even if you can't manage regular check ups, free clinics should provide this like they do condoms at the front desk, albeit with a few appointments and health screenings.
If you want to have kids, you'll have to go to the doctor in order to stop taking the birth control/get the implant taken out, and then a investigation of your home and job will take place to see if you can handle raising a child, just like they would if you planned to adopt.
Tampering with birth control implants yourself will be considered a federal crime.
Tell me why I'm wrong or right.
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I agree birth control should be free for anyone who has hit puberty, however I don't believe it should be forced on anyone. I don't really know any side effects of birth control but there's sure to be some and it's just wrong to force non-lifesaving medication on someone who doesn't consent. Plus if they don't want it, they'll just get rid of it.
"Lifesaving medication" is a vague term, though. Plenty of treatments we get can be considered non-lifesaving in today's society, like vaccines. And cultural opinion has made them nigh compulsory. If any, they're more of a life-enhancement treatment; why not treat birth control in the same way?
I would also like to point out that now it's mandatory that people have healthcare. It's not necessary in most day to day life, and the struggles to get it pun a burden on the person. This would be as simple as walking into a clinic, healthcare or no.
There's a huge difference between vaccines and birth control. With vaccines, what you're trying to prevent cannot be prevented in other ways without drastically changing your lifestyle (avoiding all other people or possibly germaphobic levels of caution), while pregnancy can be prevented other non-medical ways (not having sex or using condoms). Vaccines also affect more than just you, they affect everyone around you, while birth control only affects you and your partner.
As I said, I'm in full agreement with it being available for free to everyone, but I see no reason to force it on people who either don't want it or don't need it.
The difference isn't as huge as one would think. Some vaccines are pushed on people out of simple precaution and cultural mindset that says "why not play it safe?".
If I'm not sexually active, why should I get vaccinated for HPV, an STD at 15? I did anyway, just as a precaution. Why should I get the flu vaccination they do yearly when if I get the flu, I'm in the right environment and healthy enough that my body could naturally fight it if it came along? Half of the vaccines given to people aren't as necessary as they're made out to be and also can be mitigated, without medication. Humanity wouldn't be here if that was the case.
Hell, sometimes it's strongly recommended people go on birth control to regulate periods, even if the irregularity affected them in no discernible way.
Sure, pregnancy can be prevented in non-medical ways, but why risk it when you don't have to? Why let drunken one night stands keep women anxiously waiting for their next period, when they can have that worry taken away from them?
Why let a poor family dig themselves in deeper with each new mouth to feed? Why let a young woman's bright future get dashed the bits because of one mistake?
Birth control and it effects only concern you and your partner if you don't bother to look at the bigger picture. Teen pregnancies will decrease, along with the young single mothers who bear the brunt of the burden when unexpected pregnancies tend to develop. Good people with the potential to help society would be lost if they had to suddenly drop all their plans to raise a child they weren't expecting. People who don't want a child in the first place and don't have the means to care for it don't have to burden an already straining system.
I understand that people hate the idea of some nebulous, vaguely sinister government having control over something so private as the right to procreate and children, but that concern comes from the idea that sexual intimacy is sacred and children are precious.
But if that's truly the case, shouldn't ensure the safety and security of both?