Shame on you

I am truly baffled by women that take time and energy to speak out against a contraception mandate and the woman that was brave enough to speak in favor of it.

A contraception mandate helps to empower women to make their own choices rather than interfering with their rights.  Lacking adequate contraception coverage, sometimes a woman’s choice is made for her.

When I was 20 years old, I was living with my then boyfriend (now husband of 11 years) with no immediate plans for marriage or children.  My insurance covered birth control, and I took it.  I didn’t know myself well enough back then to know that a daily pill was not going to cut it for me; I just couldn’t remember to take it.  My intentions were good, but, due to my absentminded forgetfulness (and maybe a little nudge from God, because who knows, really?), I found myself pregnant at age 20. 

We’ve always told him that he was a happy surprise, not an accident.  The truth is, though, that he was the result of either divine intervention or his mother’s inability to remember to pop a pill combined with his father’s extreme dislike of other prophylactics. 

After he was born, I decided I wasn’t going to have another baby right away.  I certainly wasn’t going to rely on pills again, though.  As a young newlywed, I wasn’t going to practice abstinence, either.  So, there had to be a better solution.  I decided on an IUD, but my insurance didn’t cover it.  It was $600 for the device.  Pills were about $30 per month or $360 per year.  The IUD was $600 but was good for 5 years, so it was about $50 per year.  It didn’t make sense that they wouldn’t cover it.  It was cheaper than pills!  It was more effective, statistically, than pills or condoms!  And certainly it was much cheaper than what the insurance company would pay out in health care costs for another birth resulting in a failed attempt at birth control. 

If I couldn’t pony up the $600, though, I would have to rely on less successful methods of birth control.  Reproductive freedom doesn’t exist if your choices are being controlled, or even influenced by, your health insurance company.

Luckily, we found a way to make it work.  Sadly, not everyone can scrape together the necessary funds, and what may seem like nothing to one family can be too big of a burden to bear for another.
 

I wanted contraceptive coverage that fit my needs to be covered by my health insurance company.  Based on Rush Limbaugh’s logic, that made me a slut.  Right?  I wanted to be paid to have sex with my husband.  Does this truly make sense to anyone??

The second part that makes no sense to me is that by all accounts this Fluke woman was testifying to the importance of private plans covering contraception, not taxpayers.  But… enter the conservative spin-doctors; they know you’ll get more upset about this issue if it’s about taxpayer money, so off they go with rants about tax money paying for sex, about having rights to the videos of that sex because they’re funding it…

How disgusting. 

Ladies… seriously? 

You put the red the Kool-Aid down for a moment, and yes, I’ll put the blue Kool-Aid down, and lets forget about conservatives and liberals.  Lets take a moment to be women that have our own best interests at heart. 

Be a college student with PCOS that needs birth control pills to help with your condition…

Be a young mother that has a right to be intimate with your husband without making a baby every time…

Be a cancer survivor that understands the importance of reproductive freedom on a larger scale; after all, you had to make the hardest choice of all.  When an unexpected post-cancer pregnancy threatened to take you away from your young children, you exercised your right to choose, and you chose life.   Yours.  Thank God for that, and thank God there are people out there standing up for that right, even as others wrap themselves in the flag, hold up the Bible, and denounce women that exercise their right to choose.

 

Be Sandra Fluke…  a law student and women's rights activist who, for five years, worked for a nonprofit that helps victims of domestic violence, a woman who co-founded an organization that successfully advocated for legislation that helps unmarried victims of domestic violence get protection from their abusers, a woman who has been a member of numerous New York City and State coalitions that successfully advocated for policy improvements impacting victims of domestic violence, a woman who continues to work on issues that involve domestic violence and also human trafficking.

All I’m saying is… Stand up with women and say this is not okay.  I don’t care who you vote for or what your religion is.  Calling a woman that is standing up for women everywhere a slut is not okay.  Defending the misogynistic asshats that perpetuate the subjugation of women by denigrating us with these vile messages of hate is not okay. 

Shame on you.