Remember how a bunch of states sued the Obama Administration claiming that the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act violates the rights of employers to be assholes and refuse to cover contraception, because Jesus?
Contraception Clusterfuck
Cathy McMorris-Rodgers Thinks Democrats Are Scaring Women
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 100 Comments
This post is in: Contraception Clusterfuck, The War On Women, Vagina Outrage
Oh, fuck this:
This woman is out of her fucking skull. How DARE she? Democrats are scaring women to drum up votes? Is she serious? Let’s take a little walk down GOP Fuckery Lane, shall we?
- Republicans are trying to shove foreign objects into our vaginas.
- Republicans are comparing us to fucking farm animals.
- Republicans are trying to force us to carry DEAD FETUSES in our wombs because hey — pigs and cows do it!
- Republicans want to tax us if we choose to get an abortion.
- Republicans are forcing doctors to flat-out lie to us about abortions increasing the risk of breast cancer.
- Republicans tried (and nearly succeeded) in denying us access to any preventive health care whatsoever, if it offends somebody’s twisted theological sense of morality.
- Republicans are trying to force us to watch an abortion before having one.
- Republicans are trying to force us to get permission from the man (Father? Rapist? Who cares!) before getting an abortion.
- Republicans are trying to force us to tell employers whether we’re using the pill for birth control.
- Republicans think that a baby conceived by rape is a gift from God.
- Republicans think that we gals don’t need contraception — we should just hold an aspirin between our knees.
- Republicans think that “rape” is a figment of our imagination. Is it really rape or are you just being a cranky-pants?
- Republicans think we’re sluts for wanting insurance coverage for contraception — whether for birth control or otherwise — all the while demonstrating how utterly devoid of brain activity they are by suggesting that the doctor-recommended use for birth control is “a-pill-per-screw,” and that maybe we could pay for our ovarian cyst treatment if we’d just stop drinking so many fucking soy lattes.
Republicans want us to lie back and take it. They want us to just “close our eyes” while they shame us and guilt us and emotionally traumatize us and out us to the public for making a choice about our bodies that has absolutely fuck-all to do with them. And they’re doing this under the guise of “education” and “life-affirmation”; attaching quaint and pithy names to horrific bills which violate our rights as humans. Names like “Ultrasound Opportunity” or “Right to Know and See.” Don’t worry. It’s all about knowledge.
Knowledge is power, you see, and frankly ladies, you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. You think you’re incubating baby iguanas in your wombs while storks slingshot babies through open windows in the dead of night. No, no, silly one. This here probe will give you all the knowledge about the birds and the bees that you need, and conveniently, since you’re pregnant in the first place, you’ve already consented to be vaginally probed by our metal knowledge stick. Hooray!
Oh yeah — and let’s not forget that we’re getting fucking FIREBOMBED for daring to believe that a woman’s uterus is hers. Not her husband’s. Not her boyfriend’s. Not her father’s or uncle’s or brother’s. And certainly not some fucking politician who does not now nor has he ever owned a uterus, or the feckless Republican women who fall in line behind these misogynist assholes.
And you can fuck right off with that “oh, the firebomber was just a crazy homeless dude” crap. As Melissa MacEwan at Shakesville so eloquently put it:
Guess who else is “crazy”? Anyone who sees a pattern of anti-progressive violence—and, very specifically, misogynist and/or homophobic and/or racist violence—and has the unmitigated temerity to suggest that, hey, maybe this shit isn’t happening in a void.
All of this is to say the following–
Cathy McMorris-Rodgers? Jump up your own uterus, lady. You don’t speak for me. You don’t speak for thousands of women who don’t have the distinct privilege of standing on the Capitol steps spewing bullshit in order to protect the misogynist necks of the Republican men to whom you’ve sold your soul, your dignity, your humanity, your personal freedom, and, indeed your life; all the while knowing that should you or your daughter Grace require birth control or an abortion or any of the women’s health services that you and your ilk are viciously stripping from us, you will be able to get them. After all, as a member of Congress, you have some of the best health insurance in the country! And we all know that the rules which you seek to apply to millions of women — many of them poor women of color — don’t apply to the daughters of deluded state politicians from the Pacific Northwest. (Dontcha know.)
So, Cathy, you want to give up your reproductive rights? Or the reproductive rights of your daughter? Fine. Go right ahead.
But back the fuck up off of mine.
And the notion that Democrats are scaring women by shining a light on the horrific human rights injustices that you Republicans seek to impose on us is patently absurd. Democrats aren’t scaring women, Cathy. Republicans are scaring women.
Stop it.
*** Rant written from an unabashedly cisgendered perspective. I’m working on figuring out ways not to do that all the time.
[cross-posted at ABLC]Cathy McMorris-Rodgers Thinks Democrats Are Scaring WomenPost + Comments (100)
Arizona Law Would Allow Employers to Fire Women for Using Birth Control [updated]
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 130 Comments
This post is in: Contraception Clusterfuck, The War On Women, Vagina Outrage, Fucked-up-edness, I wish a motherfucker would!
Dude naw.
Some nutbag in Arizona — a woman, no less — authored a bill that would allow employers to interrogate their female employees about their sexual practices.
No seriously.
You might want to sit down for this one, actually.
Ready?
You see, if a female employee seeks a medical prescription for contraception, an employer will be permitted to ask that employee for proof that she doesn’t plan to use the contraception for slutty fuck-making. Using it for medical reasons is ok — that’s medicine.
So, if you’re one of those women who uses slutpills for non-slutty reasons, then you’re ok. You’ll get to keep your job. Enjoy your ovarian cancer or your acne or whatever, but make sure you put that red cover on your TPS reports or the boss’ll have your head.
But if you’re running around like some sort of whore-nympho, then you better keep that shit on the down-low, because if The Man finds out you might-could get fired:
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 6-2 Monday to endorse a controversial bill that would allow Arizona employers the right to deny health insurance coverage for contraceptives based on religious objections.
Arizona House Bill 2625, authored by Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would permit employers to ask their employees for proof of medical prescription if they seek contraceptives for non-reproductive purposes, such as hormone control or acne treatment.
“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.”
Lesko said this bill responds to a contraceptive mandate in the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law March 2010.
“My whole legislation is about our First Amendment rights and freedom of religion,” Lesko said. “All my bill does is that an employer can opt out of the mandate if they have any religious objections.”
Glendale resident Liza Love said the bill would impose on women’s rights to keep their medical records private.
Love spoke to the committee about her struggle with polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis, conditions requiring her to use birth control.
“I wouldn’t mind showing my employer my medical records,” Love said. “But there are 10 women behind me that would be ashamed to do so.”
(read the rest)
This bill has no chance of becoming law, but that’s not the point, is it?
We’re surrounded by fucking lunatics and I want off this planet.
UPDATE: I’m so full of vagina outrage that I’m not being as clear as I should be. Arizona is an “at-will-employment” state, which means that employers do not need a reason to fire and employee. Theoretically, if an employer finds out that an employee wants to use birth control for preventing pregnancies, that employer would be within his or her legal right to fire the employee for being a nympho-whore (while couching it in other terms).
(h/t Jezebel)
[cross-posted at ABLC]Is it Time to Expand the #StopRush Campaign to #CNN?
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 88 Comments
This post is in: Contraception Clusterfuck, The War On Women, Vagina Outrage, Assholes
For the past couple weeks, I’ve been highlighting the misogyny and outright disgusting behavior of a cabal of right-wingers, with Oink Limbaugh serving as the Misogynist-in-Chief. (See below for a full list of posts.)
Limbaugh’s sexist rant against Sandra Fluke caused a social media firestorm, and that firestorm has yielded results. More than 150 advertiser have fled from Limbaugh like rats fleeing a sinking ship, forcing Limbaugh’s show to air free PSAs and, in some cases, to air nothing at all. That’s right: radio silence during Limbaugh’s show. It’s never happened before.
The StopRush campaign has done so much damage to Limbaugh that his advertising network, Premiere Networks made the unprecedented and “unusual” move of suspending its ad buys for two weeks. The claimed reason is branding something-or-other and makes absolutely no sense; I suspect that the Limbaugh crew expects that in two weeks, liberals will have moved on to a new issue and forgotten all about Limbaugh.
Sorry, that’s not going to happen. Not this time. We’re not going to let that happen.
While we must keep up the pressure on Limbaugh’s local and national advertisers, and I think it might be time to take a look at the sort of hate speech that CNN — the purported “place for news” — supports by continuing to feature Breitbart’s hate-apprentice and Erik Erickson’s BFF, Dana Loesch.
Yesterday, Dana Loesch went the way of Michelle “Granite Countertops” Malkin and revealed information that Loesch dug up during her own countertops inspection of Sandra Fluke’s boyfriend. Apparently, Ms. Fluke’s boyfriend is the son of an “entrenched Democrat” (whatever the hell that means) and should pay for Ms. Fluke’s contraception.
I generally do not pay attention to anything Loesch does because she makes no valuable contribution to the political discourse. Nevertheless, upon the suggestion of commenter AJ on yesterday’s post, I did a little digging around the wasteland that is Big Journalism, turns out that Dana Loesch is more of a pernicious purveyor of falsehoods, mistruths, and lies than I thought. Here’s a taste of what she had to say about Ms. Fluke:
More have admonished Limbaugh’s description of Sandra Fluke than admonished a 30 year-old woman embarrassing herself before congress by testifying that she simply cannot stop getting it on and her inability to control her urges constitutes infringing upon everyone else for a bailout.
~snip~
I’ve not heard a single Republican politician stand up to the media narrative on this. Instead of projecting surrogate modesty towards Fluke, they project it towards Limbaugh, who is calling the truth for what it is. Fluke, a 30 year-old (presented as a 23 year-old college coed by the media) women’s activist/professional student, is likely not having monogamous sex with the same man approximately 2.74 times a day, every day, for three straight years (in order to satisfy the calculations about which she felt confident enough to present during a congressional testimony). If she is, kudos! But promiscuity is not the hallmark of a virtuous woman. Is it Limbaugh’s fault for pointing it out or Fluke’s fault for the behavior? It’s a rhetorical question and the answer proved Limbaugh’s entire point.
The real war on women is being perpetuated upon us by our own sex; women who seek to place us under the control of a pimp-daddy government by demanding it cover all our needs, in exchange for control, or force private entities to do so in its stead.
It gets worse.
On her radio show, CNN contributor Dana Loesch ridiculed college-aged women for wanting access to contraceptives, saying, “She’s doing it more than she’s studying in law school. Is that why our — is that why law sucks lately? Is that why we’re having such a problem in our courts?” Loesch went on to say: “They act like they’re nymphos. That’s what they act like.”
Really.
Why is this woman on CNN? CNN cannot possibly be cool with one of their “political analysts” calling every single college-aged woman who wants access to contraceptives a “slut.” There are a lot of CNN viewers who won’t be pleased when they find out that they, their daughters, sisters, aunts, and nieces are “sluts” according to a paid CNN contributor — and a woman, no less.
The sort of fact-free vitriol which Loesch spews like so much fecal sludge from a broken sewer pipe has no place in our political discourse, much less on a global network that touts itself as a “News Network.” News contains facts. Nothing about anything Loesch said about Ms. Fluke bears any resemblance to fact. Loesch and her ilk either didn’t bother to read Fluke’s testimony or are vicious liars (or both.)
Ms. Fluke’s testimony was not about her sex life. It wasn’t about not being able to afford contraception. Ms. Fluke relayed a story about a friend who required contraception as medical treatment for ovarian cysts, and in so doing stood up for the millions of women who use contraception or have used contraception, whether for medical reasons or otherwise.***
Loesch’s slanderous statements about Ms. Fluke should disqualify her from any sort of paid position on CNN. Loesch is lying. She is perpetuating hate against women. And if you ever hate yourself enough to read her Twitter stream, she is positively gleeful about it.
If Patricia Heaton was forced to apologize for her offensive remarks about Ms. Fluke, and Limbaugh was forced to non-apologize for his offensive remarks, it seems only fair that Loesch should be forced to issue what will surely be a non-apology on air.
Hate speech has consequences. Glenn Beck found that out the hard way. Rush Limbaugh is finding that out the hard way, too. And I suspect that other right-wing hatriots will sound find themselves airing radio silence or free PSAs because advertisers “want to avoid environments likely to stir negative sentiments.”
Premiere Networks is circulating a list of 98 advertisers who want to avoid “environments likely to stir negative sentiments.” The list includes carmakers (Ford, GM, Toyota), insurance companies (Allstate, Geico, Prudential, State Farm) and restaurants (McDonald’s, Subway)… [T]hose “environments” go beyond the Rush Limbaugh show. […]
They’ve specifically asked that you schedule their commercials in dayparts or programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity). Those are defined as environments likely to stir negative sentiment from a very small percentage of the listening public.”
So again I ask you, CNN — What the fuck?!
***Of course if a woman choose to use contraception as birth control, that is her right. Just as it is her right to have premarital sex or to be out there banging six days a week. What a woman does with her body is no choice but her own, and I’d appreciate it if the wingnuts would shut up about it already.
(mea culpa on the “There is no First Amendment right to be an asshole” sub-header.)
[via Think Progress; Media Matters; Radio Info]
RELATED POSTS:
- Stop Rush Wiki Project Tracker (by Shoq and dvnix)
- CNN’s Dana Loesch Suggests that Sandra Fluke’s Boyfriend Pay for Her Contraception
- Fox Nation Perpetuates Lies About Sandra Fluke [updated]
- #StopRush: Oink Limbaugh Scrubs Sexist Rant Against Sandra Fluke From Website (but I have screenshots!)
- I, Too, Will Accept Rush Limbaugh’s Apology
- Rush (the band) asks Rush (the human swine) to stop using their music (by eclectablog)
- Radio Stations Begin Dropping Rush Limbaugh
- Advertisers Pulling Out of Limbaugh
- Patricia Heaton is a Coward (w/ screenshots)
- Issa’s False Equivalence on Limbaugh’s Misogyny
- Oink Limbaugh’s Rant Against Sandra Fluke
- Georgetown Law Student Sandra Fluke Responds to Oink Limbaugh
- Oink Limbaugh Demands that Sandra Fluke Post Sex Tapes Online
- The Contraception/Slut Prophecy
Is it Time to Expand the #StopRush Campaign to #CNN?Post + Comments (88)
CNN’s Dana Loesch Suggests that Sandra Fluke’s Boyfriend Pay for Her Contraception
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 69 Comments
This post is in: Contraception Clusterfuck, The War On Women, Vagina Outrage, Assholes
Dana Loesch is brain-deficient.
Dana Loesch, who is valiantly trying (and failing) to carry Breitbart’s torch, has done some digging into Sandra Fluke’s personal life because of course she has.
Loesch, after discovering that Fluke’s boyfriend is the son of an “entrenched Democrat,” and that Fluke and her boyfriend are currently on vacation in California, concludes that Fluke’s boyfriend should be paying for Fluke’s contraception. After all, it’s unfathomable that Fluke can’t fund her own sluttiness when she has a “Democrat” boyfriend and enough money to make the harrowing journey from one coast to the other.
Yes, really. Dana Loesch is that stupid.
Why is Dana Loesch on CNN? Her idiocy is much better suited for Fox News. Why doesn’t CNN bid her adieu? For an organization that is supposed to be a news network [insert derisive snort], CNN is not doing itself any favors by continuing to allow such a mental incompetent and pathological liar to further pollute its brand (such as it is.)
From Digby:
Maybe Fluke’s boyfriend, the son of entrenched Democrat William Mutterperl, can pay for her contraception. His father donates heavily to Democrat candidates. The couple is currently enjoying spring break in California, which poses the question of how Fluke can afford a trip across the country when she can’t afford birth control pills.
I assume that CNN knows that Fluke wasn’t testifying about herself and they know that she wasn’t talking about her own sex life, her boyfriend or indeed, anything about her personal life. Rush Limbaugh and his band of misogynist media puppets all pretended like she did and spent days calling her a slut, saying that she had so much sex, “It’s amazing she can even walk” but the fact remains that she never said she could not afford birth control.
[Here is what Sandra Fluke said], in case CNN thinks its lovely “contributor” might have even the slightest bit of journalistic integrity:On a daily basis, I hear from yet another woman…who has suffered financial, emotional, and medical burdens because of this lack of contraceptive coverage….
Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. Forty percent of female students at Georgetown Law report struggling financially as a result of this policy.One told us of how embarrassed and powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter, learning for the first time that contraception wasn’t covered, and had to walk away because she couldn’t afford it. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception. Just last week, a married female student told me she had to stop using contraception because she couldn’t afford it any longer. Women employed in low wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice.
As Digby goes on to point out, Loesch, and Limbaugh, and every single idiot at Fox News is lying. They’re lying about Fluke’s testimony, they’re lying about the manner in which birth control will be covered under President Obama’s plan, and they’re lying about the so-called incursion on religious liberties. Nothing these lying freaks have said bears any resemblance to the truth. Indeed, they are lying so hard their noses have shot out from their faces and are currently circling the globe at warp speed:
Not that it matters. Even if Fluke had testified that she personally couldn’t afford birth control, it would still not be Dana Loesch’s business whether her boyfriend’s father has money not is it a license for her to question whether Fluke could afford a trip. (That particular gambit was perfected by another lovely right winger, Michele Malkin who stalked the Frost family and determined that they had no right to health care subsidies for their two sick kids because they had granite countertops in their kitchen.)
Dana, sweetie? Stick to peeing on corpses. That’s really all you’re good for.
And CNN? What the fuck?!
No seriously — what the fuck?!
[via Hullabaloo]
RELATED POSTS:
- Stop Rush Wiki Project Tracker (by Shoq and dvnix)
- Fox Nation Perpetuates Lies About Sandra Fluke [updated]
- #StopRush: Oink Limbaugh Scrubs Sexist Rant Against Sandra Fluke From Website (but I have screenshots!)
- I, Too, Will Accept Rush Limbaugh’s Apology
- Rush (the band) asks Rush (the human swine) to stop using their music (by eclectablog)
- Radio Stations Begin Dropping Rush Limbaugh
- Advertisers Pulling Out of Limbaugh
- Patricia Heaton is a Coward (w/ screenshots)
- Issa’s False Equivalence on Limbaugh’s Misogyny
- Oink Limbaugh’s Rant Against Sandra Fluke
- Georgetown Law Student Sandra Fluke Responds to Oink Limbaugh
- Oink Limbaugh Demands that Sandra Fluke Post Sex Tapes Online
- The Contraception/Slut Prophecy
Cheeky Ohio Democratic Senator and her Viagra Bill
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 42 Comments
This post is in: Contraception Clusterfuck, The War On Women, Vagina Outrage
I’m loving this new game of Bill/Counter-Bill that seems to be trending in legislatures nationwide, as Republicans introduce draconian Handmaids-Tale-esque laws and Democrats return fire with purposefully absurd bills. These bills are introduced, of course, to highlight the absurdity of the current legislative war that Republicans are waging against women.
We’ve seen a “no sperm is sacred” bill in Oklahoma ; a bill banning vasectomies in Georgia; and a rectal amendment bill in Virginia, among others.
Well, Ohio has thrown its whimsical hat into the ring with a bill that would regulate men’s access to erectile dysfunction drugs like Cialis and Viagra:
Before getting a prescription for Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drugs, men would have to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency, if state Sen. Nina Turner has her way.
The Cleveland Democrat introduced Senate Bill 307 this week.
A critic of efforts to restrict abortion and contraception for women, Turner says she is concerned about men’s reproductive health… Turner said if state policymakers want to legislate women’s health choices through measures such as House Bill 125, known as the ‘Heartbeat bill,’ they should also be able to legislate men’s reproductive health.
Marvelous. More of these please.
[via Think Progress]
[cross-posted at ABLC]Cheeky Ohio Democratic Senator and her Viagra BillPost + Comments (42)
Fox Nation Perpetuates Lies About Sandra Fluke
by Imani Gandy (ABL)| 81 Comments
This post is in: Contraception Clusterfuck, Republican Stupidity, The War On Women, Vagina Outrage, Assholes
Stupid and sexist: That’s the Fox way.
Here’s what Fluke actually said:
Leader [Nancy] Pelosi, members of Congress, good morning. And thank you for calling this hearing on women’s health and for allowing me to testify on behalf of the women who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage regulation.
My name is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third-year student at Georgetown Law School. I’m also a past-president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. And I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them so much for being here today.
(Applause)
We, as Georgetown LSRJ, are here today because we’re so grateful that this regulation implements the non-partisan medical advice of the Institute of Medicine.
I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its student health plan. And just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously-affiliated hospitals and institutions and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens.We are all grateful for the new regulation that will meet the critical health care needs of so many women.
Simultaneously, the recently announced adjustment addresses any potential conflict with the religious identity of Catholic or Jesuit institutions.
When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage.
And especially in the last week, I have heard more and more of their stories. On a daily basis, I hear yet from another woman from Georgetown or from another school or who works for a religiously-affiliated employer, and they tell me that they have suffered financially and emotionally and medically because of this lack of coverage.
And so, I’m here today to share their voices, and I want to thank you for allowing them – not me – to be heard.
Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. 40% of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggle financially as a result of this policy.
One told us about how embarrassed and just powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter and learned for the first time that contraception was not covered on her insurance and she had to turn and walk away because she couldn’t afford that prescription. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception.
Just last week, a married female student told me that she had to stop using contraception because she and her husband just couldn’t fit it into their budget anymore. Women employed in low-wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice.
And some might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways. Unfortunately, that’s just not true.
Women’s health clinic provide a vital medical service, but as the Guttmacher Institute has definitely documented, these clinics are unable to meet the crushing demand for these services. Clinics are closing, and women are being forced to go without the medical care they need.
How can Congress consider the [Rep. Jeff] Fortenberry (R-Neb.), [Sen. Marco] Rubio (R-Fla.) and [Sen. Roy] Blunt (R-Mo.) legislation to allow even more employers and institutions to refuse contraception coverage and then respond that the non-profit clinics should step up to take care of the resulting medical crisis, particularly when so many legislators are attempting to de-fund those very same clinics?
These denial of contraceptive coverage impact real people.
In the worst cases, women who need these medications for other medical conditions suffer very dire consequences.
A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome, and she has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown’s insurance because it’s not intended to prevent pregnancy.
Unfortunately, under many religious institutions and insurance plans, it wouldn’t be. There would be no exception for other medical needs. And under Sen. Blunt’s amendment, Sen. Rubio’s bill or Rep. Fortenberry’s bill there’s no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs.
When this exception does exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers rather than women and their doctors dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, women’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.
In 65% of the cases at our school, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescription and whether they were lying about their symptoms.For my friend and 20% of the women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verifications of her illness from her doctor, her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay. So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her.
After months paying over $100 out-of-pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore, and she had to stop taking it.
I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of the night in her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room. She’d been there all night in just terrible, excruciating pain. She wrote to me, ‘It was so painful I’d woke up thinking I’ve been shot.’
Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary as a result.
On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony, she was sitting in a doctor’s office, trying to cope with the consequences of this medical catastrophe.
Since last year’s surgery, she’s been experiencing night sweats and weight gain and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the removal of her ovary. She’s 32-years-old.
As she put it, ‘If my body indeed does enter early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children. I will have no choice at giving my mother her desperately desired grandbabies simply because the insurance policy that I paid for, totally unsubsidized by my school, wouldn’t cover my prescription for birth control when I needed it.’
Now, in addition to potentially facing the health complications that come with having menopause at such an early age – increased risk of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis – she may never be able to conceive a child.
Some may say that my friend’s tragic story is rare. It’s not. I wish it were
One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but that can’t be proven without surgery. So the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication – the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis.
Recently, another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it.
Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medications since last August.
I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.
Because this is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends: A woman’s reproductive health care isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority.
One woman told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered on the insurance and she assumed that that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handle all of women’s reproductive and sexual health care. So when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor, even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections, because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that – something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health.
As one other student put it: ‘This policy communicates to female students that our school doesn’t understand our needs.’
These are not feelings that male fellow student experience and they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder.
In the media lately, some conservative Catholic organizations have been asking what did we expect when we enroll in a Catholic school?
We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success.
We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of ‘cura personalis‘ – to care for the whole person – by meeting all of our medical needs.
We expected that when we told our universities of the problem this policy created for us as students, they would help us.
We expected that when 94% of students oppose the policy the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for – completely unsubsidized by the university.
We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that we should have gone to school elsewhere.
And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health. And we resent that in the 21st century, anyone think it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.
Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared today are Catholic women. So ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for the access to the health care we need.
The President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit colleges and the universities appreciate the modifications to the rule announced recently. Religious concerns are addressed and women get the health care they need. And I sincerely hope that that is something we can all agree upon.
Thank you very much.
Fox knows that its readers and listeners won’t take the time to read so many words, and that’s how they like it. It makes it easier for Fox to lie through its teeth.
Ridiculous.
[via Buzzfeed]
(h/t @StopRush)
Fox Nation Perpetuates Lies About Sandra FlukePost + Comments (81)
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