The Pill Quotes
This quotation is very important because it illustrates in the first of our great national political debates, the same views held by extreme, right wing anti-government, and Tea Party adherents regarding government in general and taxation in particular. Singletary turned out to have been absolutely right about the inadequacy of import duties as a federal revenue source although it took many decades and a changing world to make that come to pass. Note also that there was then, as there is today among the extreme right, a deep suspicion and antipathy toward intellectuals—“men of learning” as well as the elites. Some saw the Constitution as a plot of the elite to capture control of the government to the exclusion of the poor and average man. That has always been a problem but these roots are deep in American history. See {634235} and {634238} for more of his arguments at the Ratification Convention.
Pregnancy and childbirth is a health risk to the mother. In some third world countries, the maternal mortality rate is so high that contraception is not just a family planning methodology but a life saving technique where little or no child spacing causes serious additional risk.
Cost of the pill is only one factor responsible for the difference. Even in situations where birth control pills have been provided for free, there has been a slow acceptance and use rate among the poor and developing women. The other factors are resistance to change of any kind, cultural traditions, women tending to make no decisions without the husband’s OK, religious taboos where the affluent tend to ignore religious strictures when they interfere with desired lifestyle, while the poor tend to be more obedient, and most of all the sad fact that children are a woman’s social safety net in developing countries that do not yet have one built into the body politic.
