The only difference between a Pap test and contraceptives is that some religious authorities object to one on 'moral' grounds. I don't think public policy or health care should depend upon the framework of one religion - that is against everything the founding fathers meant to achieve for us.
The Founding Fathers never intended for the government to be the administer of health care, either. Taxes were never meant to be for the public good insofar as family planning and women's health care. Taxes were meant to keep the government functioning to provide for security, roads, commerce and foreign policy objectives.
Unplanned and unwanted pregnancies and babies are a stress to more than the women involved, they're a stress [and a costly one] to society in general, and that makes it a matter of the public good.
That's a classic cart-before-the-horse argument. The
reason unwanted pregnancies and babies are a costly stress to society in general is
because tax money is being used to pay for it. Remove the tax money and the problem is largely mitigated.
Unwanted pregnancies and babies were never a stress on society at large until taxes removed the responsibility from the individual and placed it onto society at large. Unwanted pregnancies and the babies were a rare thing, relatively speaking, but now, thanks to taxpayer money assuming the responsibility for it all, it's running rampant. The 'give a man a fish' analogy applies here, where you can teach someone the responsibilities of pregnancy, abortion and babies and they will live their lives within society accordingly, or you can give them the option of no responsibility and end up with a pandemic of unwanted pregnancies, easy, free abortions and unwanted babies.
Every thing that taxpayer money gets thrown at gets bigger, wasteful and more expensive. Family planning and women's health care (as if men don't have health care issues) is one of the more glaring examples. Medicare and Medicaid pay every day for unnecessary procedures and tests, and the prices are higher than they should be simply because the health care industry can get that money from the government.
But just look at college tuition costs, an another example. It used to be that the cost of tuition was relatively cheap, where the middle class could easily afford it, and many students could work their way through college in a part-time job. Now that taxpayer money has been pumped into the system, colleges know that they lo longer have to make tuition affordable in order for people to attend. They'll get the money as long as federal funding and federal guaranteed loans are available, so the tuition has gone through the roof. Using today's dollars, in 1980 the average tuition cost for a public university was $3101, and about 15% of students received financial aid in some form. In 2010 the tuition figure rose to $22,092 with more than 80% of that money coming in the form of financial aid. Remove the financial aid from the university coffers and the cost of tuition drops like a rock. College tuition has outpaced inflation by an insane margin. Since 1982 income has increased 147%, but tuition has increased 492%. Interestingly, financial aid from the federal government has increased over the same period by 466%. 492 - 466 = 26, which ironically is precisely the amount of increased costs that can be directly attributed to inflation over that period, 26%. So federal funding is not getting more people education, it's just costing more, and putting more into the bank accounts of universities and staff.
Every college student now causes a stress, and a costly one at that, on society at large. Why? Because taxpayer money is used to pay for it. Stop that and the stress ceases. It works for things other than college, too, like, you know, family planning and women's heath care issues.
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