Planned Parenthood has deemed birth-control pills a “preventive service” that should be dispensed free by providers. Some folks are upset because this would make contraception an entitlement. But I’ve got news for them, they’ve been an entitlement since at least 1985.
I use that date because, as a reporter newly arrived at The Durham Sun, I was assigned to do a story on the Lincoln Health Center in Durham. It was to be a feel-good story on the center on its anniversary, so there was no controversy. Just some background and an interview with the director.
While on a tour of the facility I noticed racks and racks of birth-control pill dispensing devices on the shelves. I asked what they were for and was told that any teenager, or female, really, who asked for them, got them — for free. Even then, when I was not nearly as conservative as I am today, this struck me as exceedingly inappropriate in that it used taxpayers’ money to encourage promiscuity.
