(Original entry date: July 3, 2008)
After reading this article at Alternet , I had a sudden realization that I, (and indeed most women in Western Washington), have been supremely privileged because all through college, while I did not have health insurance, I always had access to birth control that I could afford, as well as access to an annual pelvic exam and STI testing because of Planned Parenthood and Washington State's Medicaid policies.
Before I got health insurance (in March) I was on the Take Charge! program, which is a Medicaid program accessible through Planned Parenthood that provides women with limited resources (like a college student who earns $800 a month) access to free birth control for a year, as well as an annual pelvic exam (complete with pap smear and STI screening), free condoms (especially important if you're allergic to latex and a box of condoms costs $12 -- that $2 each!), and free Emergency Contraception. In Western Washington, especially in Seattle, Planned Parenthood is so ubiquitous that there are ads for Take Charge! on the ceilings of Metro buses.
Ladies in Western Washington, we are SOOOO lucky. I can't even imagine what my life would have been like if I had either had to pay a ridiculous amount of money every month to get birth control without insurance, or how difficult it would have been for me to even get a pelvic exam without insurance -- or, even if I still had Medicaid how difficult it would have been to get a pelvic exam because a lot of private OB/GYN practices don't accept patience who are on Medicaid. It turns out that access to birth control is so vital to young women that most of us haven't got any idea what our lives would be like if we didn't use it.
But over the last few years, anti-choice activists have begun an assault on contraception as well. Not just pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for Emergency Contraception, or who will ask a woman's marital status before filling a prescription for birth control pills -- which is none of their business; and NO they don't have a right to only fill prescriptions that fit in with their morals, because your rights end where my body begins. But this "The Pill Kills!" campaign started by anti-choice, anti-women, anti-contraception activists who see women has having a singular role: incubator for a male child.
Now that I have a good health insurance plan (one that covers my BC, EC, and HPV vaccine) and live in a state where it is illegal for a pharmacist to refuse to fill my prescription, (thank you Governor Gregoire and the Washington State Assembly), I have a choice to make: do I just consider myself and say "well, I'm taken care of, that's all that matters"? Or do I volunteer for NARAL and donate money to Planned Parenthood? Do I tell all the women I know who can't afford birth control for whatever reason that they have an option that can make birth control just a pharmacy away? Yes.
Whatever barriers are in place, where ever in the country, to complete access for women to birth control, those are barriers in front of me. Those are barriers in front of my sisters. Those are barriers between servitude and equality. These issues aren't issues of pharmacists rights or EMT rights, these are issues of Civil Rights. No one has rights over what happens in your body except you. As a feminist, I will fight to ensure that this concept is not only expressed in the laws that govern our country (and indeed, all countries) but that no one seeks to challenge the very principle that I am the sovereign over my body and well-being and that sovereignty shall not be questioned.
YOU are the sovereign over your body.
Not your parents. Not your significant other. Not the Pope. Not George W. Bush. Not cat-callers, hecklers, rapists. Not pharmacists or doctors. Not lawyers, law makers, or judges.
YOU and YOU alone have the final say. And the mere fact that I have to say that (to women only, because it's granted that men are the arbiters of their own destiny and health) means that feminism still has a lot of work yet to do. Won't you join me?
Affectionately,
Rachel
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I’m Oback Arama and I’m running for president of this great country. I believe that every living and breathing person save just a few has the right to choose and that’s why I’m pro-choice. I’m a strong believer in the right to life of those who can vote and send money to my campaign. I have the audacity of hope that individuals like you and noble organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL will reach deep down into their pockets and bank accounts and write a check to me because of my stance on the lives of the voting public. That’s the kind of pro-life position I can believe in.
I’ve stood up to those repressive regressives who would attempt to protect products of conception after only eight or nine months of pregnancy. While a member of the Illinois Senate, I was a strong voice of reason in the defeat of an immoral bill that would have protected products of conception accidently born living and breathing from being terminated by heroic abortionists in our state. Why should these blobs of tissue have the right to live just because they are living and breathing outside of the womb. After much counseling from their health professional abortionists and abortion mill counselors, these mothers made the moral decision to terminate and why should a breathing, living blob of tissue with a beating heart stand in the way of that decision. I stood up when it was hard, when it was risky and when it wasn’t popular. And because I stood up, a few more stood up; and then a few thousand stood up; and then a few million stood up and standing up with clear purpose and courage we made it safe for abortionists and mothers to terminate the breathing and the heart beat of products of conception accidently born alive in my great state of Illinois, the Land of Lincoln.
If you believe as I do that every living and breathing child should be either a wanted child or it should be snuffed out, if one so chooses, then I have the audacity of hope that I can count on your vote and all of the change in your pocket and bank account for my campaign. Together we can continue to terminate unwanted breathing non-voting blobs of tissue.
That’s change and hope that I can believe in and change that works for me.
I'm Oback Arama.
"YOU are the sovereign over your body.
Not your parents. Not your significant other. Not the Pope. Not George W. Bush. Not cat-callers, hecklers, rapists. Not pharmacists or doctors. Not lawyers, law makers, or judges."
What an awesome quote. I am putting it in my facebook. Also I wish we had the TakeCharge! program here in Texas.
Sparkles: you should look into whether there is a Planned Parenthood in your area and ask about the Take Charge! program. There should be some kind of Medicaid specifically for women's health that you can get either through Planned Parenthood or the state.