Crawl Inside (A Poem)

[TW for abortion, misogyny, forced pregnancy, STIs, domestic violence, graphic bloody violence, death, pregnancy symptoms, stomach illness]

January 28, 2012

Crawl Inside

If you want to crawl inside my uterus, Mr. Rich White Republican

Then I want you to see everything

Not just the parts that are supposedly meant to nurture another human life

Not just the parts that you want to control and turn into a fetus factory

Not just the fantastical, sparkly wonderland that you seem to think pregnancy is

(Which is funny coming from someone who has never been, or will ever be, pregnant)

I want you to see me shaking, locked in my bathroom

Pregnancy test in hand, praying for that negative

Crying with relief when it comes

I want you to see my womb

Ravaged by a silent sickness that went unchecked for months

I want you to see the fifteen-year-old girl shaking in silence

Staring at the little plus that will change her life forever

Knowing that her father is going to beat her, possibly to death this time

I want you to see the thirty-year-old woman doubled over the toilet

Heaving up the only meal she was able to even attempt eating that day

Writhing in nauseated agony and cursing God, despite how much she wants that child

I want you to see the mother of six whose birth control failed

Who finds herself pregnant again and desperate

Who finds herself in a back-alley abortion clinic because every other reputable clinic has shut down

Who finds herself in the morgue because the “doctor” pulled out her intestines along with the fetus, and her blood went septic, killing her slowly and painfully

Crawl inside my uterus, Mr. Rich White Republican

See that all of these women who are screaming, groaning, pushing, laboring

We are not screaming in the agony of contractions

We are not groaning through the pain of birth

We are not pushing out anything from between our legs

We are not laboring to bring forth new life

We are laboring to bring forth our own

Making Sense of it All

[TW for 9/11]

You don’t even have to say the date anymore, I don’t think. You can introduce a story with the words “That mid-September morning” and people will automatically know what story you’re about to tell. The where you were, what you were doing, why you were there, how much you had seen or not seen, how much you had heard or not heard. I was in middle school. Seventh grade. Twelve years old. In social studies class. I hadn’t heard much of anything save for a really loud plane, and I remember watching it fly past the window of my early morning classroom and thinking, “Gee, that plane looks kinda low.” I try not to think about that part of the day. This is actually probably the first time I’ve ever even mentioned it. Everything had already happened by the time they had told us that something was even remotely wrong.

I had had a dream the night before that I was standing with a bunch of people around this giant Olympic-sized swimming pool and that ninjas came out of the sky and pushed us all in. I woke up just as I was hitting the water. I had no clue what that dream could have possibly meant. I still sometimes am not sure that it was a forewarning of what was to come, my main argument for this being “Why the hell ninjas?” But like I said, I was twelve. I didn’t know what Al Qaeda was, much less how to spell it. I guess ninjas was the only way for my brain to interpret the signals it was getting. Even without the dream, which I probably forgot about by the time I got to school, something just felt different. I never realized what it was until now, ten years after the fact: it was just so quiet. For no reason at all. While walking across the street to get to my school, the heaviness of that previously undetectable silence weighed on my pre-adolescent head like setting cement. I suppose the best way to compare it would be to say that it was like the calm before the storm, although the storm was, as of yet, nowhere in sight.

When our social studies teacher left the room to talk to the assistant principal, I was absolutely convinced that he was getting fired. The AP had never had a problem talking to our teachers in front of us before, so we knew it was something bad. When our teacher walked back in, he told us that he wasn’t supposed to tell us what was going on, but he gave us the news anyway. He said that we deserved to know the truth despite the fact that we were young, and while it was traumatizing as fuck, I appreciated the man’s honesty. My first thought was of my dad; I was pretty sure he was working in the World Trade Center that day, so I was beyond panicked. Turns out, he wasn’t there at all. He was, however, only a few blocks away at 1 Wall. He was supposed to send his apprentice out to get something but forgot to do so. That apprentice would have been walking between the towers just as it all started falling to hell. Lucky break for that guy.

Kids started getting pulled out of school in droves. My brother and I were some of the last people to leave. I was convinced that my mother was going to be the one who picked us up from school or that we were going to be stuck there overnight because nobody was going to be able to get us. My mother is a Physician’s Assistant and, like I thought she might be, was mandated to the hospital. Years later, when I grew older, she told me that the worst she had felt all day was when she was waiting at the hospital for the rush of injured and nobody showed up. She knew exactly why. My dad was actually the one to pick us up; he had walked all the way from downtown Manhattan, cleaning up police officers’ faces as he went by ripping off bits of his t-shirt and using them to wash their faces with the water he had in his water bottle, and hitched a ride on a bread truck while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on foot. I had never been so happy to see my dad in my life, and even though he was covered in that horrible gray dust, I immediately ran over and gave him a huge hug. A big puff of ash and dust bounced off of him as I did so. It wasn’t for another few years that I realized that it wasn’t just the Twin Towers covering him; it was the people who had been pulverized by the Towers, too.

My life is very different from what it was ten years ago, and yet in those ten years I never thought to sit down and try to make sense of it all. I never thought to sit down and write about what I was feeling and thinking about the whole thing. I spent ten years of my life living in a very different world, and yet I never thought to map it out for myself. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t have been so lost for so long. Why didn’t I do this when it had happened 24 hours ago instead of ten years ago? Maybe it’s because when I was twelve years old, I didn’t know the right words. Maybe I figured if I didn’t write about it, I wouldn’t have to contend with the fact that I had been affected by it. Or maybe it’s because it took me ten years to really process what the hell was going on.

Looking back, I have to wonder what it is about this whole ordeal that has me so upset. Obviously I’m sad about the people who were lost in the tragedy, that’s a given. But I was lucky in that I only knew one person who was in lower Manhattan that day, and he was lucky enough to make it out alive. I felt that I really had no personal connections to the tragedy other than that and the fact that I happened to live here. I didn’t even live in Manhattan; I lived across the water. It almost seemed illogical for me to get so upset about something that I basically had no personal ties to in the first place. But just a few days ago, on the anniversary itself, I realized that the fact that I live here IS a personal tie. It’s not nearly as heartbreaking as losing a loved one, of course, but for twelve years, my entire life, I had lived in this city. I had breathed its air, drank its water, walked on its earth and felt the fire of its spirit. When I was a child, my parents used to wake me up early so that I could join them driving my dad into lower Manhattan for his job, and every single time, I would crane my neck and stare up the entire height of the Twin Towers. Every time I took the bus home from school, I made sure to look out the window and catch a glimpse of the Towers rising above the hills of Victory Boulevard. Every time I took the ferry, I marveled at this seemingly impenetrable, indestructible monument dedicated to us, the New Yorkers who gave this city life. This city is the blood that runs through my veins. So it’s no wonder that when the Towers lay broken and bleeding on the ground, I bled with them.

The Freedom Tower is being built swiftly, yet more proof of just how resilient we are as New Yorkers. For those of us who love New York and its previous skyline, watching a new building take the place of the Towers is very bittersweet. The empty, gaping hole in the skyline was heartbreaking, but seeing the replacement is almost worse. It’s a reminder that we’re slowly but surely healing, yes, but it’s also a reminder of what’s missing. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at that Tower without feeling a twinge of grief for what had to be destroyed in order for it to exist.

Perhaps someday.

And Now For Something Completely Different: A Rant About Humanity (or the Lack Thereof)

Dear stockholders, stock speculators, news channels, etc.,

As most of you, if not all of you, are probably aware, Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple. As most of you, if not all of you, are also probably aware, he has had a SLEW of health problems which are the most likely reason for his stepping down from Apple. Based on his medical history, which includes pancreatic cancer and an extensive medical leave (since January), it's pretty safe to say that he's probably very, very sick. You've referenced this yourselves in your broadcasts and whatnot. To speculate how the company will survive without him I can almost understand; he's basically the cornerstone of the entire corporation. He was there from its conception up until he physically could not handle the job anymore, and he said so himself that this was exactly how it was going to be. However, to speculate about how much money he is costing the company by resigning (and, in a few places, insinuating how much money he might cost the company once he passes) is inappropriate. It's beyond tasteless. Especially considering the reasons he's had to step down.

Seriously, let him spend whatever time he has left in peace and quiet, and let him get cold before you start speculating about how much money he's costing Apple.

No love,
Me.

The Goddess and What She Has to Do With Feminism

[TW for misogyny, patriarchy, erasure of identity]

As many people are well aware of, I am an out and proud Pagan as well as a feminist. These two paths, while seemingly unrelated on first glance, actually have quite a bit to do with one another. When I was first starting out on the Pagan path, part of what drew me to it was the fact that there was a Divine Feminine as well as a Divine Masculine (which in the mainstream religions is all that there is). I wasn't yet consciously a feminist, but even as a child, the idea of being represented by an omniscient, omnipresent, all-controlling male deity didn't sit well with me. I often found myself asking myself (and anyone around me who would listen) why it was that if we were all supposedly created in God's image, then how could it be possible that there was only a male deity? There would have to be a female deity as well, because clearly women exist! As I learned more and more about Paganism, I became intimately acquainted with the triple goddess, this ultimate representation of all things feminine, and all seemed right with the world.

And then I became a feminist.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Paganism and/or the triple Goddess concept, the basic gist of it is that there is one female deity with three different forms: Maiden, Mother and Crone (think of this as the Pagan version of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit). The Maiden personifies youth, purity, innocence, etc., the Mother personifies fertility, sexuality, the cycle of creation, etc., and the Crone personifies wisdom, endings and death. The triple Goddess in all her forms is also represented as being nurturing, caring, passive: all qualities that are traditionally identified as feminine. When I first started out on the Pagan path, I had no qualms about or issues with the triple Goddess, but as I got more involved with feminism, I realized just how restrictive this concept of the Goddess can be, especially considering that most Wiccans and Pagans look to the Goddess as a representation of all women.

The fact that the Goddess is given the traditionally feminine qualities that supposedly "belong" to all women helps perpetuate the stereotype that this is how all women are "supposed" to be; I mean, if the Divine Feminine is just that, feminine, then shouldn't all women emulate that femininity? Shouldn't all women seek to be nurturing, passive, dainty, etc.? It is also pretty observable that most, if not all, artistic portrayals of the Goddess are devoted to conventionally beautiful women; even the Crone aspect of the Goddess is often simply the Mother archetype with silver hair and maybe some crow's feet around her eyes. I have yet to see an artistic portrayal of the Goddess that features a woman who might not be considered conventionally beautiful; a Mother with a pear-shaped figure rather than an hourglass, a Crone with sagging arms and cellulite and varicose veins on her legs, a Maiden with what amounts to an explosion of acne covering her face. According to the popular Pagan song, "We all come from the Goddess," and yet from what I've seen of the portrayals of her, apparently only conventionally beautiful women come from the Goddess; the rest of us are fucked.

Ultimately, the triple Goddess concept restricts a woman's life cycle to three roles; innocent youth, fertile adult and old woman. Obviously, most of us will fit into these three roles at one point or another in our lives, but women are so much more than just youth, fertility and age rolled into one body. We are artists, dancers, students, teachers, academics, lovers, thinkers, creators, doers, actors, therapists, warriors, champions, destroyers, healers, deconstructers, lushes, partiers. We are all of that and more, and we simply cannot fit every single woman, every single aspect of our womanhood, into only three roles. Many people have tried, of course; for example, any act of creativity, of personal fulfillment, is often neatly filed under the Mother category. Any goddess of fertility or creativity is filed under the Mother category and left there. The logic is that motherhood doesn't necessarily mean giving birth to a child and raising it (e.g. you could "mother" a pet or someone else's children) and that fertility doesn't just apply to the creation of new life; it also applies to the creation of everything else.

I agree with this, to a point. While I agree with the sentiment that nurturing and fertility should not be restricted to the act of procreation, I also don't feel that these other acts of creation should simply be filed under the role of Mother and forgotten. In my opinion, it oversimplifies the varying goddesses of the different pantheons, as well as each and every act of creation and fulfillment, and forces women to embrace the role of Mother, regardless of whether or not she agrees with that role. It also erases transgendered women in that physical fertility, while often argued as not being the be all and end all of the Mother aspect, is often touted as the ultimate sign of embodying that aspect of the Goddess. Evidence comes in the form of the fact that, despite many people's insistence that fertility is not cemented to procreation when it comes to the Goddess, I have never seen a depiction of the Mother archetype where she was anything other than heavily pregnant. I have never seen a version of the Mother archetype in which she was taking care of animals, painting a picture, writing a thesis, etc. In other words, the archetype of the pregnant Mother overshadows and erases the copious other roles that women fill each and every day, and for the women who do not feel comfortable identifying with the Mother aspect, they are forced to either identify with the Maiden aspect or the Crone aspect, which many women also do not identify with. For example, at this point in my life, I would technically fall under the Mother aspect of the triple Goddess, but that is not a role I identify with. I would identify more with a Goddess of academia...perhaps Athena? Or a Goddess of kicking ass...Sekhmet or Artemis, maybe? Try filing Kali the Destroyer under one of those three aspects and see what happens!

Once upon a time, I belonged to a Pagan forum where I was told by a fellow Pagan woman that I would never truly know the love of the Goddess because I had not had children of my own nor planned on having any. She then went on to say that I would die alone and unhappy, so I really didn't put much stock into the rest of what she had said either, but she did help to demonstrate how some Pagan women, many of whom come to Paganism as a middle-finger to the patriarchy and who would normally never adhere to the patriarchal demand that all women must become mothers, will readily follow and perpetuate that exact same stereotype as long as it's packaged neatly in a female/Goddess figure. It's much easier to recognize sexist tropes when they come from a recognizable source, but when that same stereotype enters into your belief system, one that you believe is an affront to the horribly sexist system you left behind, it's much harder to identify.

Honestly, in my opinion, the concept of the triple Goddess is vastly outdated. Obviously not every Pagan will agree with me on this, and I don't expect them to, nor do I demand that they do; the beauty of Paganism is that you have the freedom to believe whatever fulfills your spiritual needs. It is simply my personal belief that there are just too many differences between women (and men) for there to be one deity (even one with three aspects) to cover them all. Does this mean I look down upon mothers? Not in the least. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for a woman who wanted me desperately. Does this mean I look down upon the triple Goddess? Not in the least. Just because my understanding of the triple Goddess goes one way doesn't mean I hold a grudge against her. Does this mean I look down upon women who will continue to honor the triple Goddess in their Pagan practice? Not in the least. Just because my personal understanding of the triple Goddess goes one way doesn't mean that every woman on the planet is going to understand her in the same way, nor would I expect them to do so. Every woman's experience on this planet is going to be different, ergo their understandings of divinity and Paganism in general are going to be different as well. I simply believe that we should honor all forms of the Goddess, the warrior Goddesses and the academic Goddesses and the artistic Goddesses, etc., on equal footing with the mother Goddesses.

My personal vision of the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine is that they are created from the collective unconscious of every single woman and man (cisgender and transgender) on the planet. In my vision, the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine do not encompass women and men, respectively; they encompass whoever feels drawn to them. In other words, an effeminate man who identifies more with the Divine Feminine is just as much a part of the Divine Feminine as any woman could be, and a masculine woman who identifies more with the Divine Masculine is just as much a part of the Divine Masculine as any man could be. A genderqueer person with no specific gender identity is welcome in both the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine without question, while a person who identifies with both genders is accepted just as readily. In my mind, the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine are comparable to those ripples of oil that you sometimes see in puddles. With every drop of rain that hits those puddles, with every footfall, that oil swirls and changes; so, too, do the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine, and with each person that makes hir way into existence, they change ever-so-slightly in order to meet the needs of the people seeking them out.

Welcome to Rape Culture

[TW for rape culture, rape apologia, victim-blaming, patriarchy]

It's absolutely amazing [read: terrifying] to me how hard people will fight to keep the rape culture running. How vehemently people will argue that the rape culture doesn't exist. How passionately people will argue that okay, maybe the rape culture does exist, but aren't we taking this just a little too far? How difficult it is for people to realize why rape prevention programs that place the burden of preventing the crime on the victim instead of the criminal help perpetuate the rape culture. How hard people will argue that yeah, we should teach men not to rape, but we don't live in a perfect world, so we should also teach women how not to be raped, and not realize how that idea also helps perpetuate the rape culture.  

The rape culture has everything to do with the patriarchy and with women being given second class status to men. Men are never told what to wear, where to go and at what times of day it would be appropriate for them to be there, how much to drink (if at all), who to go home with, how many people it's acceptable or not acceptable for them to sleep with, etc. This burden is always placed on women. When you tell a woman she's not allowed to wear certain clothing, that she's not allowed to go out to certain places at certain times, that she's not allowed to drink a lot (or at all), who she's allowed to go home with and how many people she's allowed to sleep with, etc., not only do you implicitly blame her for any crimes that might be committed against her, you take away her agency. You take away her right to make decisions about her own life. This is directly related to the patriarchal idea that women are meant to be controlled, that we cannot (and should not) be allowed to have our own autonomous lives. We are instead meant to live in total fear and submission, and this is where the whole "here's how not to get raped" thing connects to the problem. 

The problem with teaching women how to avoid getting raped is that if they do get raped, the implication is that they didn't listen to the people telling them how not to get raped and that is blaming the victim, no matter how you slice it. There are people who argue that even when teaching men not to rape that some people are going to fall through the cracks, so women should be taught how not to be raped, as well. People are going to fall through the cracks, yes, that is an unfortunate fact of life, but rapists are the only ones who should have to be told anything concerning the prevention of rape. A woman should be able to walk down the street in the shittiest fucking neighborhood fucking NAKED and DRUNK OUT OF HER MIND and expect not to be raped. She should be able to go to the police and expect that they won't put her on trial for her own assault. She should be able to do, dress, talk, act however she pleases and expect not to be raped. Telling women "this is how you avoid getting raped" in this society, a society that condones, normalizes and, dare I say it, encourages rape, is equivalent to saying "if you don't follow these rules, then you deserve what you get." 

No, we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world where if a woman is raped, she is guilty until proven innocent and the rapist innocent until proven guilty. We live in a world where her rapist will often never go to trial because either the victim knows how her case will be treated by a court of law and doesn't bother to report the rape because she knows how it will end up, or her rapist is acquitted. We live in a world where rape victims are put on trial by the very people who are supposed to be helping them, where questions that amount to "What did you do to make this happen to you" are ok to ask the victim. No matter how much women do to "prevent rape," it is never enough. If you dressed modestly, you were out too late. If you went home early, you were dressed like a slut. If you were home early and dressed modestly, then you drank too much (or at all). If you were sober and home early and dressed modestly, then you simply gave off all the wrong signals and didn't say "no" loudly enough.

So really, all the ways we're supposed to keep ourselves "safe," in the end, don't really matter at all. It's just a list of things that help rape apologists blame the victims instead of the criminals, and as a result, the victims wind up defending themselves while the rapists walk free.

And that, my friends, is the rape culture in a nutshell.

Learning my Lesson the Hard Way

[TW for STIs, slut-shaming, internalized societal shaming, emotional disturbance]

One of the things that I have fought so hard to end is the stigma surrounding STIs. It seems to be a commonly held idea that anyone who gets an STI somehow deserves it, that they're getting their comeuppance for daring to open their legs, that they're "obviously sluts" and that they're disgustingly gross people. (It's important to note that most of the people who are given this stigma are women.) It also seems to be a commonly held idea that it will never happen to you, that it's just one of those things that happens to someone else (usually those who "deserve it"). None of these things are true. How do I know this?

I was told by my gynecologist last Friday that I tested positive for chlamydia.

I never in a million years thought that  this would ever happen to me. I was always very careful, but for some reason, even though I knew it wasn't true, somewhere in the back of my mind I believed that if you were strictly monogamous that it was nigh impossible for you to contract an STI. I somehow forgot that previous partners of your current partner might have had (or still have) something that they passed on to your partner, who could in turn pass it on to you. Chlamydia is one of the sneakier STIs because most people who get it are asymptomatic, so aside from getting tested at the very beginning of our relationship, there was no way for us to know. Our mistake came in the form of us not getting tested; even if you are monogamous and you think that you're both clean, the only way you can know for sure is if you both get tested.

When my gynecologist gave me the news, despite everything I had learned, despite my vehemence in abolishing the stigma surrounding STIs and the people who contract them, I felt like I was the most disgusting person on the planet and that I was contaminating everything and everyone that I touched.  I cried for the rest of the afternoon of my diagnosis and it took quite a few days for that feeling to go away, although I admit that it's still creeping at the back of my mind. It's just so mind boggling to me just how effective societal programming is; it sneaks up on you without you ever realizing it and then once something like this happens to you, even though you've worked for a long, long time to prevent this from happening to other people, you realize just how little you've actually accomplished with yourself.

Despite the fact that I was emotionally distraught, I knew that I had to take charge of my health and immediately took the appropriate measures to do so, both for myself and my boyfriend, who also had to be treated as soon as possible. Thanks to the fact that I'm lucky enough to have insurance, I was able to get the antibiotics the same day. However, my boyfriend is uninsured and so he wasn't able to do the same. We also wanted to get tested for every other STI just to be safe, so I was going to bring him to Planned Parenthood with me this morning, but he works from 8 am-3:30 pm in Manhattan (we live in Staten Island), and Planned Parenthood is only on Staten Island on Mondays from 9 am-4 pm, so there was no way it was going to happen.

We spent all of last Friday, the entire weekend and all of this morning calling every place we could think of who might have been able to help us. We tried to get appointments at the Planned Parenthood in Brooklyn or Manhattan, but they had no appointments until August 10th, and obviously he couldn't wait that long, so we tried to get an appointment at the medical clinic attached to the hospital my mother works at. They refused to help him because he was over 21, so they referred him to another clinic on Staten Island, but they warned him when they referred him that that particular clinic never picks up their phone. True to form, they didn't pick up their phone, so we tried to call the Department of Health, and they didn't pick up either. By the time I reached the mobile unit, I was in near tears from frustration and near panic.

After I was taken in, I was given my HIV test and then the woman who tested me asked me some questions. I told her about what had happened with our diagnoses, the fact that my boyfriend is uninsured and the trouble we were having in finding a doctor who'd be willing to help us, and without batting an eyelash or saying a word, she opened a cabinet and handed me a bottle of azithromycin. I stared at the bottle agape and asked her if she could do that, and she replied that, by law, she would have had to give me the antibiotics anyway, and she told me to take them home to my boyfriend so that he could be treated. I literally burst into tears because I was just SO relieved. If we couldn't find a doctor who would help us, he would have been stuck with the infection until at least August 10th, and I was so worried that that was exactly what was going to happen.

Anyone who argues that Planned Parenthood is an "unnecessary" or "evil" organization obviously did not have the experience that I had. Whether they're your first choice for medical care or if you literally have nowhere else to turn, Planned Parenthood will always step up to the plate. The bottom line is, Planned Parenthood helped us when no one else would, and they literally saved our lives.

Birth Control Saved My Academic Career, My Relationships and My Health

[TW for menstrual issues and abortion]

When I first got my period at the age of 12, I was super excited. I was one of the last of my friends to get it and I felt like I was finally a "real woman." (I would, of course, learn later on that one's biological processes do not a "real woman" make, but that's another post for another time!) That excitement soon turned to fear, pain and frustration as month after month, year after year, I dealt with cramps that felt like a vise grip around my abdomen and an extremely heavy flow that lasted for a good five days, with my entire flow lasting about ten days total that eventually culminated in moderate anemia. I finally started taking birth control pills when I was 18 years old in order to control the cramps and the flow, and because of those pills, I was able to get my anemia under control. I truly feel that those pills saved my health, if not my life.

I was also able to get through college without getting pregnant. Yes, that's right folks, not only was I using birth control for medical reasons, but this feminist was also using birth control for exactly what it's supposed to do: prevent pregnancy. I began a relationship with someone not too long after I had started taking the pills, right at the very beginning of college, and it's thanks to those pills that I was able to graduate Magna Cum Laude with a 3.8 GPA and multiple honors in the four years it was supposed to take me to graduate. Thanks to those pills, I was able to focus on my education instead of on whether or not I was pregnant. Thanks to those pills, I didn't have to, and won't have to, miss classes and/or work once a month due to unbearable, blindingly painful cramps, and I will be able to maintain a healthy, stress-free sexual relationship with my current boyfriend and attend graduate school without having to worry about having an abortion or raising a child at the same time. Thanks to those pills, if I ultimately decide never to have children, I won't have to have them anyway.

I'm privileged enough to be able to pay only ten dollars per packet of pills every month, thanks to my insurance, but even that ten dollars adds up. If the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) includes prescription birth control as a preventative health care service that will be covered in full, i.e. without a co-pay or any other out of pocket costs, that's already $120 extra in my pocket every year. If I had had free birth control during college, I would have saved $480 over those four years. For women who are unemployed or underemployed, free birth control can make the difference between forgoing eating in order to afford their pills, thereby preventing an unwanted pregnancy which would put further financial strain on them in one way or another, and being able to eat properly all month. By preventing pregnancy, these women won't have to worry about starving themselves in order to afford the abortion or the costs of raising the resulting child along with any other children they may already have. And with abortion becoming less and less readily available to women, it's imperative to make preventing pregnancy easier and more affordable. As a matter of fact, by making the prevention of pregnancy more affordable for women, it will reduce the need for abortion, as well as make it easier for women with menstrual-related problems to obtain relief. Women do not need to suffer every month just on the basis of being women, and every woman should have the right to prevent pregnancy for as long as she desires.

This is exactly why the HHS needs to include prescription birth control as a preventative health care service that should be covered in its entirety by health insurance plans. If Viagra, the pill that helps provide the erections that help produce children, can be fully covered by health insurance, then prescription birth control, which prevents unwanted pregnancies, helps relieve all sorts of menstrual-related illnesses, shrinks ovarian cysts, etc., should be covered as well. Prescription birth control is one of the most ultimate preventative health care services for women, regardless of whether or not that reason is reproductively or medically related. HHS needs to do right by women and fully cover birth control.

This post is part of the National Women's Law Center and Planned Parenthood's Birth Control Blog Carnival. You can read the rest of the amazing posts at the link!