maternity care & men

This whole debate about men being forced to pay for maternity care in their health insurance plans has me in such a rage that it feels like old times (you know, now that I'm not quite as generally rageful as I have been in decades past).

Here's the thing. Or a couple of things. You don't get to pick and choose what's in your insurance plan. You can probably pick another plan if you don't like the one you've got, but you don't get line-item veto power with the plan you have. You're not the fucking President. If your insurance covers a certain number of therapy sessions per year, just for example, and you are lucky enough to be in pristine mental health, you don't get to say, "Oh hell no, I'm not paying for that!" Or if you're lucky enough to have insurance that includes dental but all you need is an annual check-up because your teeth are made out of goddamned diamonds, well, you're still stuck with cavity coverage. But no one's forcing you to use it.

So there's that.

But even more enraging is that many of the people who are all up in arms about men never having babies and still having to pay for maternity care (Republicans) happen to also be the same people all up in arms about women controlling their own fertility (Republicans).

You know what's cheaper than maternity care, foks? Contraception and abortion!

That's right. By tens of thousands of dollars per pregnancy. On average, maternity and newborn care in the United States costs $30-50,000. The average abortion, on the other hand, runs you a mere $400, give or take. You want to put your money where your mouth is, than make sure those two things are covered and you won't have as many freaking pregnant women to pay for. Or babies, for that matter. Because clearly they're a burden on society.

So there's that.

But even more infuriating to me than that is this: every single man had a pregnant mother. That's right. Every single man has quite possibly ALREADY BENEFITED FROM MATERNITY CARE. But that's the thing about so many of these so-called conservative Christian attitudes. It's all, "I've got mine, so screw you." And where exactly is the Christianity in that, I ask you?

So there's that.

But there's even more! There's this: basically these up-in-arms-about-the-horrible-injustice-of-having-to-pay-for-maternity-care-folks are saying that women alone should be financially responsible for the FUTURE HEALTH OF THE HUMAN RACE. By dint of biology.

So then let us fucking run the human race for awhile, why don't you.