Free The Condoms Now!

Easy Access To Condoms: Michelle Cottle

The New Republic is a magazine (online and print) that takes a fairly conservative-to-moderate approach to issues and problems that face us. While I do not always find TNR's take on an issue fully developed, I find that there is at least enough thinking through a problem to give them a read and then more thought.

In the past, I have written and advocated for access to condoms for any sexually active person on the moral basis that negligently (or deliberately) passing along a sexually transmitted disease is as big a sin as beating someone in the street, even if it does not rise to the legal standard of doing so. Additionally, from the moral perspective, creating an unwanted pregnancy is a travesty for the conceived child, the unprepared parents, tyhe grandparents that all too often have to provide some sort of support, and the society that has to pick up the bills for pre- and post-natal care, as well as years of child support via welfare, WIC, food stamps, etc.

It is interesting that the author of the TNR piece is a woman. The impetus of this article is the idea that CVS, the nation's largest provider of healthcare products via a chain of pharmacies, is deliberately kowtowing to pressures to put condoms--a perfectly legitimate healthcare product--locked up behind counters and away from public view. The pressure to do so is coming from the ultra-conservative Christian Right. The next thing you know they will be pressuring CVS to hide sanitary napkins, tampons, feminine hygiene sprays, personal lubricants, vaginal douche products as well as medications for hemorrhoids from the public view.

If people are not free to go to a pharmacy to buy healthcare products in an open environment, what are we saying about our society? Are we saying that we want epidemics of various sexually transmitted diseases? Are we saying we want to see a rising number of people dying from HIV/AIDS? Are we saying we are more than willing to have unwanted teen and adult pregnancies, more people on the welfare roles, and more responsibility for raising other people's children?

I've never been a big condom fan. They're awkward to handle. They smell funny. Guys whine about how uncomfortable they are. And if one of the little suckers should ever break on you in the heat of the moment, it's enough to send any sensible gal into a full-blown panic attack.

That said, I consider condoms to be one of life's little necessities--and the widespread, easy access to them a must-have for any civilized society not wishing to find itself awash in unwanted pregnancies. Say what you will about abstinence-only education--though, while you're saying it, be sure to point out that there is vanishingly little, if any, credible evidence showing it to be effective at decreasing either pregnancies or STDs--any society serious about reducing abortions had better get serious about its condoms.

Which is why I was horrified to read in the "Health" section of this week's Washington Post that a number of drug stores around the Washington area--most notably nearly half the stores in the market-dominant CVS chain--have started locking up condoms, requiring customers to summon a pharmacy assistant in order to procure a box. Unlike so many recent dust-ups over the barriers to contraception, the problem here isn't politics, but shoplifting. "We're not trying to restrict access," CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis told the paper. "We're trying to prevent people from stealing."

As DeAngelis explains it, CVS allows individual stores to determine on a case-by-case basis which products to lock up, based on the area's shoplifting problems. (The Safeway and Giant grocery chains have similar policies.) Other high-theft products often stashed away for their own protection include hair-care products, baby formula, and, ironically, pregnancy tests. Unsurprisingly, most of the stores now keeping their Trojans under lock and key are located in less affluent areas--where most people would expect the rate of five-finger discounting to run a little higher than in flush neighborhoods.

At first, I read this explanation with a small sigh of relief that the conservative wing-nutters weren't behind yet another attempt to impose their faith on our genitals. Of course, the Post did include the obligatory quote from an anti-contraception activist--in this case Citizens for Community Values president Phil Burress, who boldly proclaimed his delight at the condom impediment: "I'd rather see them locked up," he said. "It's a lie that condoms prevent all sexually transmitted diseases anyway. People should be educated about that and practice abstinence." But in a piece about stores erecting contraceptive barriers (whoo-hoo! a double pun) for people who have clearly already made the decision to have sex, this line of argument sounded even more absurd than usual.

Burress's comments did, however, point to an unusual problem with this particular hurdle: Precisely because it's not ideologically driven, no one is going to care enough to do anything about it. Seriously. If this piece had been about CVS stores locking away condoms to placate crowds of Focus on the Family types who didn't want their kiddies buying Trojans on the sly, you can bet it would have been splashed above the fold on A1. (Just ask Wal-Mart how much bad publicity a company is asking for by wading into the morality-of-contraception debate.) But even to get people to read to the end of this piece, the reporter felt compelled to search out an unrelated-but-sure-to-be-inflammatory abstinence comment from a third-tier zealot.