The Trump administration once again revealed its disdain for women Oct. 6.
The administration eliminated the Affordable Care Act’s provision that ensured women had access to birth control, even if her religious employers objected to contraception.
The new policy allows any employer or university to eliminate contraceptive coverage from their employees or students.
Organizations can now point to a religious justification or a vague “moral” reason, a standard that’s so ambiguous it most likely covers any motive one could imagine.
One would think by 2017 everyone would see access to birth control as basic health care because the vast majority of women use, have used or will use it at some point in their life. It’s ridiculous that people are still questioning whether a woman should have access to birth control.
Unfortunately, for American women, 71 percent of people making laws about women’s access to contraception are men who have never and will never take birth control. Therefore, they know next to nothing about it.
What these people have overlooked is the fact that birth control is about far more than pregnancy prevention.
Thirty-one percent of women and girls take the pill to ease menstrual pain, 28 percent use it to regulate the flow of their periods and 14 percent use the pill to control chronic acne, which studies show can impact your chances of landing a job.
Birth control is medicine used for many other things, too, like ovarian cysts, endometriosis, PMS, Primary Ovarian Insufficiency, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and more.
And this might come as a shock, but some women also use birth control, so they can have sex without getting pregnant which should be seen as a good thing for those women and their partners who aren’t ready to be parents. After all, contraceptive access has been proven, repeatedly, to reduce abortion rates.
Side note: If someone is using birth control for fun, consensual sex, more power to them.
The lawmakers who believe telling women to stop having sex is a real alternative to birth control need to be set straight.
Access to contraception has not increased teen sexual activity over 20 years. It’s cut teen pregnancies by 50 percent, though.
So one would think if the GOP wants to stop abortion, they’d look to make birth control even more accessible instead of cutting access and preaching abstinence, especially, since abstinence-only sex education districts tend to have the highest abortion rates.
Additionally, no one tells men to have less sex. Ever. In fact, these same lawmakers want to keep Viagra covered by insurance, meaning that in America, a man’s right to an erection is more protected than a woman’s right to birth control.
If a man’s fantasy for the ability to chase women around with a four-hour erection isn’t up for debate, a woman’s access to contraception shouldn’t be either.
Whatever the reason women have for using birth control, that’s between her and her doctor, not lawmakers and employers.
The only reason it’s still being debated is due to archaic moral beliefs that restrict women from having control over their own bodies. It’s time for the lawmakers to get over that and catch up with the 21st century.
It’s time women have control over their own bodies.
