Historically and recently, there has been a debate between if birth control should be covered by health insurance or not. One side says that birth control should not be covered by health insurance because taxpayers should not be paying for others birth control. This side says that all women should have an access to birth control to help prevent pregnancy for women who are sexually active but do not want or are not able to have a baby. Furthermore, people believe that birth control is a basic human right not only to prevent pregnancy, but also to menstrual pain. Lastly, birth control is expensive, therefore it should be covered by insurance.

As a female myself, I believe all women should have easy access to birth control. Not only do contraceptives prevent pregnancy, but they also are a great resource for women who have immense pain during their period. Not only does birth control help with these three things, but it saves taxpayers more money to have birth control covered by insurance companies than to give birth to a child.

As stated in the previously, birth control helps woman with menstrual pain and preventing unplanned pregnancies which cause taxpayers to pay for. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, birth control, “reduce[s] women’s cancer risk...can lower...risk for ovarian and endometrial cancers...birth control can treat conditions like endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome...uterine fibroids, and heavy menstrual bleeding.”  When it comes to saving money overall for taxpayers, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute in the Washington Post, unintended pregnancies cost taxpayers about $21 billion each year. “Current investments in family planning services, like contraception, family visits and STD testing, save taxpayers $15.8 billion, according to a 2014 analysis in the Milbank Quarterly.”

My solution to this problem, is to help educate all people about how insurance works. With educating people during sex education classes we also discuss different types of birth controls, how insurance works to cover it, and even just making birth control affordable even without insurance. I demand we implement economic education with sex education, and affordable birth control by January 2019.