People Are Still Having Sex
Have you noticed, that people are still having sex?
All the denouncement, had absolutely no effect.
Parents and counselors, constantly scorn them.
But people are still having sex and nothing seems to stop them.
— LaTour (“People Are Still Having Sex”, 1991)
Perhaps one of the quirkier dance songs of the past few decades was “People Are Still Having Sex”, released in 1991 by the musician LaTour. Despite isolated criticism, the song was undeniably popular — making it to number one on both the U.S. and Canadian dance charts, and hitting number 15 in the U.K. It also climbed to number 35 on the Billboard Top 100 that year and was played on a loop at raves all over the world. In 2024 it was named by DJ Mag as “one of the 40 essential tracks from 40 years of house music”.
Providing a personal confession that will come as a shock to all who know me, I admit have never actually attended a rave. And despite having been somewhat of an adult since its 1980s origins in Chicago and managing to still be alive in this time of its increasing popularity — but without any house music street cred whatsoever (a fact my children, ranging in age from 37 to 16 would enthusiastically corroborate) — I actually remember and like (gasp) this song.
Its lyrics were a declaration that despite the AIDS epidemic was raging at the time of its release and was the leading cause of death for individuals between the ages of 25–44 in that era — people were in fact… still having sex. And here’s an interesting fact — people are still having sex in 2026 as well.
Okay, so maybe that’s not necessarily a revelation… so why start this essay by pointing it out? I do so because the current administration in Washington D.C. is beginning efforts to constrict access to pharmaceutical and other approaches that decrease the rate of pregnancy when people unabashedly continue — as they have for all time — to still have sex. And similar to a literal host of other policy decisions, statements and actions regarding medicine and biomedical research foisted upon contemporary (and regrettably future) American society by this ideologically motivated group (NIH cuts, scientific board firings, vaccination denial, appointment of grossly unqualified individuals to government healthcare and biomedical posts, weird dietary recommendations, etc., etc.) this is an incredibly… famously… bad idea.
Why would they do this? For one, HHS Secretary Kennedy has suggested pharmaceutical contraception is overutilized and contributes to the “overmedicalization” of America with excessive adverse effects. And Project 2025 is a template for much of this effort, not surprisingly including things such as lobbying for restricting access to abortive medications like mifepristone. However, it also calls for the defunding of Planned Parenthood, replacing traditional sex education with abstinence-only curriculum, dismantling insurance coverage for contraception and reinstating the “gag rule” in Title X (a federal grant program in the Public Health Service Act that promotes providing confidential and affordable family planning and related preventive health services, especially to the poor and uninsured) — and in doing so limiting the ability of doctors to offer advice about contraception and related care.
In addition to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s miscontrued, at best ideas about American medicine and Project 2025’s (dystopian or utopian depending on your perspective) vision for America, a couple of other entities deserve credit. These included the religious right, which has enjoyed unusual access to and frequently lays hands upon the current occupant of the oval office — perhaps in a defendable effort to somehow cure him of his own documented coital impulses — and the Native Natalism movement.
Conservative religion has obviously long worked to temper the urge of Homo sapiens to engage in procreative practice sessions as well as to limit the use of contraception to both make that activity less consequential and in the process more likely that women will submit to their husbands and avoid engaging in controversial activities such as acquiring an education or pursuing a career outside of childbearing, childrearing and domestic goddess-ry. And finally, Nativist Natalism has its own dog in the contraception fight as a strange mashup of racist ideas about what type of babies need to be born (white ones of European descent) and its desire to save our nation and the world from an imminent economic depopulation disaster by facilitating those births.
So the current administration, in cahoots with those who want to Make America Healthy Again with less vaccination and fewer pharmaceuticals (especially evidently, acetaminophen) and more beef tallow, conservative political and religious organizations and champions of white baby-making want to put the brakes on access to and promotion of contraception. What’s the big deal?
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Here are a few reasons why this is an incredibly and famously bad idea.
We Don’t Take Care of the Children We Currently Produce
Currently, in the richest country in the history of civilization more than 11 million American children live below the poverty line, about 14 million live in a food insecure household and more than 20 million lack adequate access to healthcare — at times with life-long consequences. In addition, by all objective recent measures our children fall further and further behind with each passing year in global comparisons of education success and achievement among developed countries.
Teen and Adolescent Pregnancies are Fraught with Difficult Challenges and Consequences
Limits and impediments to accessing contraception disproportionately affect the young and will unavoidably increase pregnancies in adolescents and teens — with predictably challenging medical and social consequences.
Pregnancies between the ages of 10–19 carry much higher risks for complications such as pre-eclampsia, hypertension of pregnancy, premature rupture of amniotic membranes, premature and the delivery of low-birth weight babies — with attendant threats to the lives of both young mothers and their children. However, while the medical risks are high, the social ones are even higher. Over 50% of teen mothers drop out of high school and 80% become dependent on welfare. Later in life they face steeper climbs out of poverty, are more likely to be abused by a partner and have higher rates of clinical depression. And unfortunately these social challenges are often perpetuated generationally as their children are more likely to suffer developmental delays, academic challenges, behavioral disorders and finally — to become teen parents themselves.
Undesired Pregnancy Is A Grossly Underappreciated Primary Driver of U.S. Healthcare Costs
Every dollar spent on contraception saves approximately three dollars in downstream medical costs — a great deal related directly to avoiding the consequences of undesired pregnancy. In addition to the social costs outlined above, which are perhaps less easily quantified but large from the consideration of human potential, the economics here are distressingly clear.
Public healthcare coverage (Medicaid) covers the cost of about 70% of the 1.5 million annual births in the U.S. that result from undesired pregnancy — more than $20 billion is covered by Medicaid on maternal complications due to a lack of prenatal care, complicated deliveries and a disproportionate percentage of sick babies compared to other contexts.
Like every single medication we use — contraceptives are not completely free from adverse effects or complications. Much like the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like Ibuprofen (about 30 billion doses taken in the U.S. annually — and seemingly a few hundred thousand by me each year as I age), minor ones are common (headaches, mood swings, spotting, nausea), but more serious ones are objectively rare.
The discovery and generalized use of contraception has changed forever the consequences of sexual relations between human beings. You can look at it — a development considered by most in medicine and many in sociology as one of mankind’s most important innovations in the modern era — in one of two ways.
You could view at it as a great usurper of the “natural order of things” — one that allowed women to leave the home and as a result disrupt the flow of “normal” family life. You could also consider it a scientific development that made “immoral” sexual relations less consequential and that threatens humanity with impoverishment and extinction from declining (white European) birth rates.
Alternatively, you could consider it an advance that stabilized economies in the developed world and gave hope to those who wish to be more developed by allowing half of the human brainpower and productivity available to be liberated from full time “domestic” responsibilities. Likewise you could believe it has positively impacted the health and welfare of children as well as the ability of that same half of humanity to have aegis over their own biology — changing ancient imperative to modern day choice.
While I do not begrudge anyone their own beliefs, I’m full body yes on the latter — in large part because I know no matter what projects we work on, laws we pass or prayers we utter.. people are still having sex.
