Viagra and Contraceptives are not Equivalent
In the wake of the Hobby Lobby verdict by SCOTUS, I’ve seen many different people posting graphics lamenting the fact that there is obviously a bias against women because Hobby Lobby doesn’t want to provide certain forms of birth control through their health insurance but Viagra is covered. If you think the owners of Hobby Lobby are off their knick-knacky rocker, fine, but try to be honest in your comparisons.
Right now, I’m not primarily interested in getting pro-choicers to agree with my conclusions about when human life beings or why and how it should be protected; I just want us to be as fair and honest in our conversation as possible. This form of humoring can go both ways too. Let me show you:
Pro-choicers don’t believe that a fertilized egg is a human child. So, if I truly believed that, then I’d have no problem with drugs or other means used to kill that thing and stop me (or my daughter, etc) from having a baby. Why would I? If something is no more morally significant than naval lint, why would I care if it were destroyed?
The reason that Hobby Lobby, and other pro-lifers, are opposed to various forms of FDA approved contraception is that they believe that these specific forms have the likelihood of destroying a fertilized egg (read: kill a baby). Now, again, feel free to disagree with the presupposition (i.e. fertilized egg = fully human baby) and the resulting conclusion (destroying that fertilized egg = killing a human baby), but understand that if someone believes that human life begins at the time of fertilization and they also generally don’t like the idea of killing people, then that is why they don’t want to have to pay for something that very possibly will end up killing a baby.
So bear with me as I try to use a really bad analogy (RBA) to examine at the Viagra/birth control comparison that is clogging up the Internet:
Viagra and Contraceptives are both related to sexual intercourse. Viagra has to do with a man’s physical ability to participate in sexual intercourse while contraceptives try to stop what naturally follows intercourse: the creation of a child.
Bullets and Gun ranges are both related to shooting guns. Bullets are what get shot out of guns, and gun ranges are where you can safely (relatively) shoot the guns.
Just because I am not opposed to the idea shooting guns or of having a safe place to shoot them does not mean that I will participate in putting up a gun range behind a daycare facility.
Sure the gun range is supposed to be safe and it is supposed to stop all of the bullets from getting outside of its property, but there’s still the off chance…the very slight chance that someone with a loaded gun could accidentally fire the gun and hit a child at the daycare.
If me and my neighbors, or even the owner of the daycare center, got together and protested the building of a gun range, it doesn’t mean that I hate gun owners or that I have a prejudice against hunters or little old ladies who carry a 38 in their purses. It just means that the possibility of tragedy and death is unacceptable.
So, please, if you’re actually interested in changing the minds of thinking people and not just in whipping up support from the masses that’ll get hysterical about anything, stop with the Viagra/birth control pill comparison in the hysteria following the Hobby Lobby Decision.
PS – Medical coverage for vasectomies is a closer comparison than Viagra, but I don’t believe that anything resulting from the vasectomy can actually cause the death of a baby/killing of the fertilized egg. So, good try with that one too, but still…not the same thing.
