Birth control should be available OTC

La. governor Bobby Jindal speaking to a bunch of gynecologists and obstetricians, suggested that birth control should be made available over-the-counter. And I have to say I agree with him. I would guess that would go further than almost any measure society could take toward decreasing unwanted pregnancies in teens and single women.

Social conservatives will argue that it is equal to society giving tacit approval to pre-marital sex. Teens are already having pre-marital sex, you idiots! The question is what responsibility as a civilized society do we have to mitigate the hardships that come with unwanted pregnancies? We certainly don't hold the men as accountable as we should, why not allow the women who choose to, to take control of their own reproductive lives by making it easy to not get pregnant? Making birth control available to women on an OTC basis wouldn't compel women to have more sex any more than the availability of BigMac's compels people to get fat.

I don't know what the public cost of supporting, either fully or partially, a dependent child from an unwanted pregnancy through age 18, but I'm guessing it's considerably less than the cost of the birth control that might have prevented that pregnancy in the first place.