If You're Going to Fight about Uteruses, Maybe Find Someone Who HAS One?

The Internet has been abuzz today with discussion and photographic evidence from the hearings about birth control...which seem not to involve any women. This seems rather counter-intuitive (and in fact counter-productive) to me. It also made me want to share some of my perspective on the topic.

I began a birth control protocol (daily pill) at 19. I was not (SO, SO, sadly NOT) sexually active at the time. What a lot of people, including a majority of men, including, I'm fairly certain, most of the men involved in today's hearings, do not realize, is that the same hormones that prevent you from getting pregnant also treat a host of other illnesses and issues. For me, it was an extremely painful affliction the details of which I won't go into here. After years of debilitating pain a couple of days per month, my doctor finally recommended and prescribed a birth control pill. And it helped. A LOT. It kept me from having to swallow quite such massive doses of Naproxen (the ingredient in Aleve, which back in the olden days was only available by prescription). It helped a variety of things.

Did I ever make use of my birth control pill as birth control? Sure, if I'm being completely honest, I did. Most of the time, I didn't rely solely on the pill, because the pill does not protect against STD's. And I mean, being on birth control certainly did not make me feel like I had license to be promiscuous. What it did was help me be in less pain, and have one more safety measure in place on those occasions when I chose to have sex. Which I did on occasion because I was an adult woman capable of making such decisions for myself.

When I lived in Georgia, my insurance didn't cover birth control, so I had to stop taking it (because I made very little money and birth control was less essential than my asthma and thyroid medications). And guess what happened? The pain came back, in spades. Guess what else happened? I still had sex (sorry, Mom, but I did). For me, and for a lot of women with similar medical reasons for taking birth control, the link between birth control and sex is not as straight-lined as that panel of privileged old men would believe.

Furthermore, even if it were, I really don't get what business it is of theirs. As I've said before, I do understand the argument against abortion. But there is a significant difference, to me, between being against abortion and thinking you get to have a say about what I do in my own sex life. This is such a gigantic step backwards I can barely even wrap my head around it.

I'm not sure how coherent this post even is because I'm rushing to get it done, as I have to go now and care for my two children, who, thanks in part to birth control, were born when I was good and ready to have them. And aren't they lucky to be raised by a mom who actively wanted them and jumped for joy with each positive pregnancy test?