My Liberal Agenda

Last week the Institute of Medicine made recommendations that eight preventive services be provided to women at no cost. Included on the list was birth control counseling and prescription. If these policies are adopted, it would mean no co-pays at the pharmacy for monthly refills of the pill. It would mean that women who previously had to forego such medications because of cost would now be free to join the 15.3 million Americans already utilizing hormonal birth control to prevent unintended pregnancies.

This should be welcome news, since three-quarters of Americans support government funded birth control. According to Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, however, the recommendations were akin to a left wing conspiracy aimed at "eradicating the poor." His reasoning, if that word can be applied here, is presumably that if poor women are those most likely to benefit from free birth control, fewer children will be born in poor households. This would subsequently result in a drop in the total number of poor people in the country and this (help me understand this here) is a bad thing?

So I find myself in a bizarre form of agreement with Greg Gutfelt. I am liberal. And I do want to eradicate the poor.

We have, in this country, more than enough to go around. Paris Hilton certainly has more than she needs. And while I certainly don't want to call for socialist reform that would take away her drive to bring us such valuable series as The Simple Life and The World According to Paris, both of which I am certain are lowering IQs wherever they are shown, I do think that an ultimate goal of having fewer people instead of more people living below the poverty line is both achievable and GOOD.

If women struggling to make ends meet use the pill to delay childbearing and finish school or to space their pregnancies to avoid having more than one baby in diapers at a time, they will be doing no different than the 15 million American women already lucky enough to be exercise this choice. If having a baby at 22 instead of 18 makes the difference in obtaining a high school diploma instead of dropping out, then she is likely to earn (on average) nearly $7,000 more annually than if she stopped school just short of graduation. If she manages to get through college, her salary would likely jump by 76%.

Money isn't everything, unless you don't have it. Greg Gutfeld is neither a woman, nor is he poor, and he does not know what he is talking about.