Stupid Complaint #3: Not Buying as Preventing

Stupid Complaint #3: “Employers should not be able to prevent a person’s access to contraception.”  

Basic Reply: Not buying something for a person is different from preventing someone from obtaining it.  

Further Explanation: This complaint is a more of a slogan which is repeated without any actual thought involved.  It assumes that if an employer isn’t providing free contraception to his employees, that employer is thereby preventing his employees from having any access to contraception.

By that same logic, I could say that my employer is deciding whether I have access to video games.  Why?  Because my employer has not bought any video games for me!  And neither have you!  Why are you preventing my access to video games?

This is nonsense, of course.  There are many important and crucial things which employers don’t buy for their employees – and yet we never hear that employers are “preventing access” to them, or “deciding whether employees can have” them, or other such nonsense.   This includes necessities like:

• Food
• Clothing
• Transportation 
• Cell phones
• Housing and utilities
• Internet access
• Over-the-counter drugs
• Entertainment

And yet… somehow people manage to obtain all of those things.  How is this possible?  Well, it’s all thanks to the magic of something called:  Buying it yourself.  The fact that an employer doesn’t buy contraception for his employees doesn’t mean those employees have no access to it… it just means they have to act like adults and purchase the things which facilitate their lifestyle.

We don’t complain that an employer is “restricting employees’ access” to Starbucks coffee by not purchasing their lattes.  Well, contraception costs far less than a Starbucks habit and can be found in far more locations.  Perhaps there would be a valid point if contraception was so prohibitively expensive and rare that it could only be obtained through a company medical plan.  But it isn’t.

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