Neither dispense nor stand in the way of. If those in government have some religious-based (or other) moral objection to implementation and use of birth control, up to and including "morning after" pills, they can either sit on their objections or get out of government and protest like any other civilian.
(Looking hard at Santorum as I say that...)
You're saying that anyone with a moral objection to birth control should recuse themselves from government positions? How do you arrive at that position? Why the issue of birth control? What other issues does this apply to, where people with certain moral views about that issue should not exercise their right to hold office? And what is it about birth control that makes it acceptable for them to agitate for their point of view as a citizen, but not while in office?
How do you think your position squares with the Constitution's prohibition on religious testing for government offices?
The reason for that perceived inconsistency is that birth control is only necessary if one chooses to be sexually active.* It's much easier to make the argument that government should not subsidize an elective, but if you say that some poor person should do without diabetes meds, suddenly far fewer people agree with you.
Given the very real physical and psychological health benefits of (healthy consensual) sexual activity, I would not actually regard it as quite so "elective" myself. YMM, perhaps, V. Why should we NOT make sex safer, more free of hazard and expense, given the capacity to do so? That's what humans do - we find ways to do new things, and new ways to do those things better. There's nothing wrong with having sex, at least consensually - why should we not make a healthy, natural activity better and more accessible?
Huh? My only point was to say that people don't die from a lack of birth control, so there's less support for government subsidizing of it. (As has been noted, some birth control meds have other uses, but we're talking about birth control prescribed as birth control.)
Or do rich people simply deserve to be able to have more sex than poor people? Neither my wife nor I want more kids than the two she already had - should we just not have sex, when humanity KNOWS how to deal with that particular issue?
Wow, what a leftist argument to make. Birth control is like most other things you buy with money - we deserve as much as we can legally get. I didn't say you shouldn't use birth control. We're just talking about who pays for it.
Lotta attitudes remain mired in the dark ages, so to speak.
No, they don't remain mired in the dark ages. You can't honestly believe that men, in general, are more eager than women are (in general) to have children. Right? You realize that all the positioning of abortion and contraception as feminist issues is a con job, right?