I've been debating about weighing in on this Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke thing, but now I just have to get my thoughts out there so I can stop fretting about them. This whole event is disturbing on so many levels. I have always been extremely sensitive to the fact that birth control pills are prescribed for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with birth control. When I was in college, I had many friends who were on them, not because they were having sex, but because they had uterine fibroids. Now that I have been diagnosed with endometriosis, I could take birth control pills to control the growth of the condition. But I've had a bad experience with them before, so I'm going to have a hysterectomy and ablation instead. But imagine if I was 20. Or wanted children. The calculus of these decisions is somewhat different then.
Which brings me to Sandra Fluke. She asked to testify to the GOP committee, and they would not allow it. So then she spoke to the Dem. committee. It took me one click on an Internet link to get to a transcript of her testimony. She spoke rationally and thoughtfully about her friend who was on the pill to control her uterine fibroids. When she could no longer afford it, she went off the pill, her fibroids have grown, and she is now a candidate for major surgery and is likely infertile.
So this is the person that Rush and any number of others have chosen to vilify. So fine, whatever, we all know he's a shock-jock who is just trying to get people riled up. It's his job. The thing that upsets me is that it's working. I have yet to find anyone in commentary who has bothered to click through and find out what she actually said. I suspect that if they did, they'd be on her side. Uterine fibroids and endometriosis are among the leading causes of infertility for women. So why would conservatives (who seem to feel a vested interest in the state of women's wombs), deny this medication to women with these conditions? It's illogical and inconsistent, and I don't understand it. (And of course, the reason a woman is on the pill should remain a confidential matter between her and her physician. Do they really want to open the Pandora's box of requiring that the owner of a company, or a pastor or a legislator needs to approve medical decisions? No, I thought not.)
The attitude of conservatives feels threatening and hostile to me. It informs my decision to have surgery rather than go on the pill for my own condition. If I can not be sure that that the drug option will be there for me tomorrow, I will not choose it. Many years ago, this fear also played into a decision to opt for a surgery that made me effectively infertile, because I was not certain that I would always have control over my own reproduction, especially here, in the most conservative state in the union. At the time, I thought I was probably being paranoid. As time goes by, and I watch what's happening on the right, which dominates what happens where I live, I become more and more certain that the only way that I can exercise my will and make my own decisions is to take drastic steps to be sure the decisions are irrevocable. I am not certain that I will be free tomorrow.
I am filled with fear for my sister, coming of age in this environment, when hatred and oppression of women is being so readily expressed and enacted into law in so many states across the country. I can not imagine how different her world is than mine was when I was her age. Many in the right make noise about Sharia law coming to the U.S. Take a look around at laws pertaining to women that are being passed in Georgia, Alabama, Utah, Arizona, and proposed in Federal Congress. Then take a deep think about the distance left to go before what we wear, read or do is as circumscribed as the medicines we are allowed to take.
