As I’ve said before, everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.
In Mill’s Utilitarianism on Birth Control, he attempts to convince the public that President Trump’s rolling back of communist Affordable Care Act provisions that mandated employers to pay for their employees’ birth control are immoral. I, Ayn Rand, beg to differ.
The idea that employers would have to subsidize birth control is just a step away from socialism. Many years ago, the support of socialism may have been somewhat forgivable. The concept of a political theory that aims for benevolence and wellbeing is admittedly appealing. Today, however, we have all seen the results of socialism across the world. Supporting socialism can no longer be considered innocent.
Mill tries to mitigate his immoral argument by listing the benefits of socialized birth control: “Birth control is not only used for pregnancy prevention, but it also has other health benefits. In order to establish greatest happiness, pain must be absent, and if birth control can fight pain, then we most certainly should make it easily accessible to women. In addition, birth control prevents teen pregnancy, in which the economy arguably pays heavily for in the long run. Essentially, birth control is small price to pay compared to the latter of paying for children’s food, education and healthcare.” This appeal to emotions is thinly veiled and ineffective. Further, our society wouldn’t have to pay for children’s ‘food, education, and healthcare’ if it weren’t for the Nazi welfare policies our government has implemented.
Mill’s argument is that altruism will result in the greatest happiness. But do you know what makes me happy? Freedom. Freedom to spend my money however I choose to spend it. It makes no sense for companies to pay for employee’s birth control. Rather, the company can pass that money on to its employees through higher wages, and the employees can then purchase the birth control themselves if they wish to do so. The benefit of this is that all of the people who don’t use birth control can use this extra money on what they choose.
Yet another issue is that of faith. Not only does this policy take away people’s financial freedom, but it inhibits their freedom of religion as well. For a person whose religion disapproves of birth control to be forced to pay for it is ludicrous as well as illegal. The common argument from those like Mill is that no one is forced to take birth control by paying for it in their insurance premium, but that is beside the point, as it is still forcing them to pay money to a company that provides birth control. Imagine being forced to shop at a store that goes against your values. In fact, it would be immoral for someone who doesn’t believe in contraceptives to pay towards birth control. There is no grey area in this, only right and wrong. If you believe that birth control is wrong, you would be breaking your own ethical code to pay for birth control, even if it isn’t for yourself.
Mill’s ‘greatest happiness’ principal directly conflicts with my objectivist ethics, which “holds that the actor must always be the beneficiary of his action and that man must act for his own rational self-interest.” Mill believes that we should all give up some (or even all!) of our self-interest if it will benefit those around you, but I disagree. This goes back to the cancer of our society known as altruism. If we all worked towards our own self-interest, as long as we didn’t directly harm anyone else, everyone would be happier.
I don’t condone violence outside of self-defense, but I do encourage everyone to beat Nazi arguments down through strong reasoning.
