I would just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone
that “birth control pills” is the name of the class of drug that
includes all female hormone pills, regardless of the reason
that they are prescribed, reasons that range from acne treatment to
life-saving menstrual stabilization to menopause symptom relief to
relief from the pain of endometriosis and migraines to prevention of
bodily harm from ovarian cysts— in addition to the use implied by the
name.
Anyone who wishes to deny health coverage of the most commonly prescribed medication for women on the grounds that a third party’s religion is opposed to controlling birth is pretending that the health problems that are treated with this class of drug simply do not exist or more accurately, that these health problems simply do not matter.
As someone whose life was literally saved by birth control pills after being refused treatment for a life-threatening condition by an anti-birth-control activist on the grounds that he would not examine my measurable symptoms because I am a “lying slut” who should be reported to my father as such, I’m honestly fed up with the deliberate lies about women and our health issues that are used to justify attacking us and our access to health care.
Your freedom of religion does not give you the right to deny health care for someone else’s medical condition, nor does it circumvent the right to medical privacy of other people. Some of the drugs in question do not prevent pregnancy. Some of them are not given to women capable of becoming pregnant. All of them are different drugs with different side-effects and actions, and with vastly different pricing. That $9 prescription at Walmart that you keep talking about is one of hundreds of medications in question, most used to treat symptoms that that drug is not.
And no one is trying to deny men access to vasectomies or to the entire class of male hormone pills on the grounds that the religion of third parties is opposed to controlling pregnancy.
So if you believe that denying women access to health care that is not denied to men is reasonable grounds to threaten the ability of hundreds of thousands of people to pay rent, of thousands of business to be paid, and for our government to stop working, you are wrong. And if you believe that I should have died for lack of health care while insured because your religion is opposed to a different use of the drug that saved me— just like my gynecologist was— you are an asshole and you should be ashamed of yourself.
This is not and has never been about controlling the ability to get pregnant; this is and has always been about discrimination.
Anyone who wishes to deny health coverage of the most commonly prescribed medication for women on the grounds that a third party’s religion is opposed to controlling birth is pretending that the health problems that are treated with this class of drug simply do not exist or more accurately, that these health problems simply do not matter.
As someone whose life was literally saved by birth control pills after being refused treatment for a life-threatening condition by an anti-birth-control activist on the grounds that he would not examine my measurable symptoms because I am a “lying slut” who should be reported to my father as such, I’m honestly fed up with the deliberate lies about women and our health issues that are used to justify attacking us and our access to health care.
Your freedom of religion does not give you the right to deny health care for someone else’s medical condition, nor does it circumvent the right to medical privacy of other people. Some of the drugs in question do not prevent pregnancy. Some of them are not given to women capable of becoming pregnant. All of them are different drugs with different side-effects and actions, and with vastly different pricing. That $9 prescription at Walmart that you keep talking about is one of hundreds of medications in question, most used to treat symptoms that that drug is not.
And no one is trying to deny men access to vasectomies or to the entire class of male hormone pills on the grounds that the religion of third parties is opposed to controlling pregnancy.
So if you believe that denying women access to health care that is not denied to men is reasonable grounds to threaten the ability of hundreds of thousands of people to pay rent, of thousands of business to be paid, and for our government to stop working, you are wrong. And if you believe that I should have died for lack of health care while insured because your religion is opposed to a different use of the drug that saved me— just like my gynecologist was— you are an asshole and you should be ashamed of yourself.
This is not and has never been about controlling the ability to get pregnant; this is and has always been about discrimination.
