Charlie Cooke: Why, Despite The Assertions of the Left, I Was Able To Gather A Veritable Cornucopia of Free Contraception Within Blocks of My Office

Really!

I'm beginning to suspect that sometimes The Left resorts to saying things that aren't quite true to win a cheap Culture War point.

Installing a free app -- "NYC Condom" -- on to his smartphone, he located 309 free or taxpayer-supporter contraception centers within 5 miles of his office.

Kenneth Cole, the designer-clothes store, was the most bizarre of my visits. I had expected at least to have to sidle up to an assistant and ask sotto voce if they had “something for the weekend” behind the store counter; but evidently one need not even go to the trouble of speaking to a staff member, for, on each of the tables — which sit out in the open, next to the racks of clothes, in case, perhaps, one be put in the mood by buying a couple of shirts — are large glass bowls full of the branded “NYC Condoms.” The branch I went to was at Grand Central Terminal; let it never be said again that visitors coming into the city by train have restricted access to contraception during their inaugural moments in New York.

...

Such facts, however, do not really matter. As H. L. Mencken acerbically noted, “the whole purpose of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed . . . by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” To listen to the president and the various women’s groups who have so enjoyed throwing around the absurd “anti-women” hyperbole over the last month, one would think that Americans were still required to ape the cloak-and-dagger subterfuge of a drug deal in order to get their hands on contraception, and that they were paying a hefty premium into the bargain. This could not be further from the truth. In my foray, remember, I looked solely for “free” contraceptives. But — quelle horreur! — it is still possible, even normal, to buy contraceptives in every drugstore in the country. Indeed, so ample and various is the supply that it comes in a startling array of flavors, methods, and combinations. No questions are asked. Nobody is excluded.

Meanwhile, in pricey DC (the only city flourishing in this Great Recession), Target will sell you birth control pills for nine bucks per month.

But Fluke's testimony was very misleading. Birth control pills can be purchased for as low as $9 per month at a pharmacy near Georgetown's campus. According to an employee at the pharmacy in Washington, D.C.'s Target store, the pharmacy sells birth control pills--the generic versions of Ortho Tri-Cyclen and Ortho-Cyclen--for $9 per month. "That's the price without insurance," the Target employee said. Nine dollars is less than the price of two beers at a Georgetown bar.

You know that chick who claimed that, while she was well-off, she had lots of friends who (not under oath) swore to her they were unable to front the high costs of birth control?

There's a Target less than three miles from her campus:

Does she want me to pay for her new Vespa too? Because I'm guessing her next testimony will be that she has lots of poor friends who have Strange Diseases which will cause their feet to fucking explode!!!11!!11 if they are required to walk such an impossible distance.

Oh they have a Metro in DC? Well, I'm sure her friends also suffer from debilitating subway claustrophobia.

I have my own policy: If you're too fucking stupid, cheap, lazy, entitled or infantilized to buy a pack of rubbers at CVS, I will in fact pay for free contraception for you.

That contraception is permanent sterilization. I will pay for this, and I will not call it charity or welfare; I will file it under National Defense.

posted by Ace at 04:03 PM

| Access Comments