Free Birth Control

Your free birth control choices are going to be limited. There are numerous sources of free birth control in the form of giveaway condoms. But isn't this something you'd be willing to spend some money on? After all, it's your life here, and the possibility of another life. Getting pregnant will change your life, for better or worse, and if you know you don't want to get pregnant right now, then should getting free birth control really be your main concern?

A purely economic argument for distributing Norplant systems to teenagers makes the policy very compelling. I will presume that the government can purchase a large quantity of Norplant systems, implement them, and maintain them for five years for about $700 per unit. If we sent a buyer to Sweden and purchased them from Leiras instead of Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, the cost would go down to about $200 per unit. There are ten million sexually active teenagers in the United States. Presuming that each successive year, five million different teenagers become sexually active, the total of sexually active teens over five years would be 30 million. If we supplied every one with Norplant, the cost would be $21 billion in the poor scenario and $6 billion in the relatively good scenario.

Each year, babies born to teenage mothers will cost the government six billion dollars in social services over the next twenty years. That the cost is spread out over the years actually makes the situation worse, considering the figure does not account for inflation. Meanwhile, the taxpayers’ cost caused by teenage pregnancies over five years will well exceed $30 billion. If you're looking for Free Birth Control then your options are limited. Free condoms can be found but is this something you really want to leave to chance?

This is still $9 billion more than in a very poor Norplant scenario. Furthermore, the difference between the costs will grow further apart with time. The difference in cost is even more alarming when you remember that both female and male teenagers are sexually active. The number of sexually active females should be much lower than accounted for. To keep the scenario very poor, however, this high number could assume that many non-active females will also opt to get a Norplant system.

A common concern about a Norplant subsidy program, or just the drug itself, is that it will encourage teenagers to avoid using condoms and visit attending health clinics less regularly. Presently no information confirms this hypothesis. However, evidence suggests that condom birth control use does not significantly differ from teenage Norplant users and their oral contraceptive using peers. Norplant use does not seem to affect the teenage attendance of health clinics either. Neither the number of follow-up clinic visits, the rate of duration of the follow-up, nor the rate of return significantly varied between observed Norplant using teenagers and their oral contraceptive using counterparts. This evidence suggests that the increase in the use of Norplant in teenagers would not likely affect their condom use or their regular attendance of clinics.

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