Lady Parts

Perhaps it’s a failing on my part, but I really cannot wrap my brain around why contraception is, again, a controversy in the US. It’s seems so outdated and redonkulously old-fashioned. Like, it should be, we all gasp in horrified amusement at how illogical it was that someone besides the lady and maybe her partner had any say in anything that happens between them in the biblical sense. I mean, gahd, women have been not wanting to get pregnant since pregnancy has existed! There are loads of old (and largely ineffective—such as aspirin between the knees, even though Rush Limbaugh says he’ll foot the bill for la femmes for the women of Georgetown ) methods that women have been trying: herbs, rituals, etc. Personally, I can’t even really understand how people can be so ardently anti-abortion and anti-contraception as well, because if women had reliable contraception, the demand for abortion would decrease because the need, real or perceived, would also decrease. Kristof and so and so note their amazing book, Half the Sky, that it would benefit so much of the world, not just the often cloistered and self-congratulatory US of A, but entire peoples in less developed regions of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East if contraception was made more readily available.

Many are trying to paint the legislation that would require employers to provide health insurance that includes contraception as one against liberty and freedom of religion. Which I can understand… sorta, except that it totally isn’t. I recognize that some churches might be against such a requirement. But the proposed legislation wouldn’t require churches to provide it for their church “staff”, who in theory already have chosen the way of Cathol, or whomever, have made a personal decision to not utilize it. It does, however, require affiliated organization, such as charities and hospitals to. But shouldn’t adherence to a faith be a personal decision, regardless of employer? The bill doesn’t require women to take the offered birth control; that would be a limitation of freedom. However, if they were really worried about freedom, they’d more worried about personal freedom than business or institutional. I can assure you that right now, the driving force behind the decaying of the freedoms I hold dear is not the government, though they are the happy and willing executioner. It’s businesses: Churches, the MPAA, the RIAA, Facebook, every job that requires a drug test or a credit check… that’s the evil face a freedom-gobbler, not providing the means necessary for American women to  decide for themselves whether or not they want to become pregnant—or leaving that up to some supposedly well-intentioned, self-appointed daddy-like institution. Indeed, I would say that this bill—as so few have done lately—has advanced freedom because it allows for (hopefully informed) choices for people to make.

Another example of the above is the pharmacies refuses to sell emergency birth control to their patrons. There was a liberty-trumping uproar when people pointedly questioned the legality of the pharmacists refusal, citing freedom and etc. for business, and religion, but, the place is a fraking pharmacy. A pharmacy! One commenter stated that s/he didn’t care if individuals within that pharmacy’s community had to drive 100 miles to get to the next one (even if they didn’t have access to transportation) the pharmacist had the right to not sell things he found morally objectionable. This would be all well and could if it wasn’t a pharmacy, whose not even legal-, but civilly responsible for doling out the medication that people need as per their doctor and selves. If a pharmacist has such moral objections to providing medication, then they probably should have become a banker or something. It isn’t their place to become the town’s conscience. That’s just silly! I have many moral objections to psych meds, in that I think they are over prescribed and taken, but I would never disallow someone who is in charge of themselves from taking something they deem necessary. That’s between them and their doctor… but primarily with them.

Of course, there is the supposed moral ground about baby murder. Every sperm is sacred, or something. I am depressingly not surprised at the misinformation out there. One person commented to me that the emergency contraception “kills BABIES” (not the case) and another said that s/he saw no reason for it. Meaning there is no reason for emergency contraception. My god. What about rape? Or maybe s/he would be right if regular contraception was more universally accessible. Or maybe, s/he should get out of the fantasy-land where consenting partners only have sex to make babies and address the reality of things: mistakes happen. And sometimes their semi-planned mistakes, and calling women sluts, and whores, like Rush Limbaugh did, in an effort to invalidate their contribution to society is, obviously infuriating, but also mind-bogglingly stupid. Women can’t have sex by themselves—or at least not the kind that leads to pregnancy. Are we seriously harkening back to the days when women are blamed  and men off scot-free, all the while being the only deciding voices? While simultaneously, as a culture, mocking the similar justifications for forced hijabs, abayas, and women not allowed in public spaces in other countries? Disgusting.

The last portion of the anti-contraception talk is the money. They don’t want to pay for contraception because, what is it? Why? Because it’s not something they agree with? Oh a get it, kinda like that one war. And that other one. And the one before that… Oh, and that indefinite detention center that’s still open. And all the other things that tax dollars go to that I don’t agree with—hell, even corn subsides!

Begrudgingly, I recognize the “well, ‘Other Side’ does the same” things doesn’t really qualify as a complete argument. However, the topic is one that is so obvious to me that I have a hard time putting what I want to say into words, so I’ll just over simplify and say: contraception costs a lot less than diapers.