My friend is pregnant again at 41, with her third child. This is unplanned.

Know why she's pregnant again? And no, I don't mean "do you know how babies are made?" I mean the reason the baby-making apparatus still works. Know why?

Because my friend is on WIC and uses medical coupons.

Now, you wouldn't see a natural correlation here. You'd imagine that a funding source for her children's nutrition might not have much to do with her hoo hoo, but read on.

My friend, when she was pregnant with her second child, asked for a tubal ligation. No more babies. No more WIC or DSHS expense for the taxpayer. No need to worry about birth control. A simple "while you're in there" kind of procedure, as my friend has had two C-sections.

The answer was no. No, you can't have a tubal because you didn't ask early enough in your pregnancy. Medicaid has a rule that, if you don't request before a certain time, you don't get a tubal, because they worry that the doctor is coercing a poor woman to be sterilized.

WTF?!

The woman was asking for a humane, personal procedure that would have eliminated not only 18 years more difficulty (she isn't employable in the "send your kids to college" sense), but the expense to the system of another child.

Now, if she had had any possibility of paying for the procedure herself, the timing wouldn't have been an issue. But WIC, DSHS, whoever, has their heads so far up their asses that they can't see the . . . I was going to say "the forest for the trees", but if their heads are up their asses, it ain't trees they're missing, honey.

I'm incensed. I'm shocked. I'm sad.