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| Ninety years ago, a woman named Margaret Sanger was arrested and sent to jail for telling women about diaphragms. According to Ellen Chesler's book "Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America," Sanger spent a month in jail, but the experience only strengthened her resolve to teach women how to use diaphragms. She even taught diaphragm use to the women she was with in jail.
All throughout history, people have wanted to be able to decide if and when to have a child. Contraceptives have been used in one form or another for thousands of years. Today, 98% of American women have used some form of birth control during their lifetime, according to a 2005 report by the Guttmacher Institute.
Yes, women have put on their shoes and come out of the kitchen. But the fight for birth control continues. Unfortunately, 40 years after the Supreme Court struck down a law banning birth control, there are still many traditionalist, conservative, and fundamentalist individuals and groups trying to block women's access to contraception.
Some of the most vocal opponents of abortion are also opponents of birth control measures and sex education programs that would prevent unintended pregnancies and reduce the need for abortions.
February 13-19 is National Contraceptive Awareness Week. Contraception is not only a woman's issue. It is not only an issue for people who are sexually active. Contraception is an important issue for anyone who wants every child in our country to be a wanted child. There are a variety of contraception issues and disputes that deserve national attention.
According to NARAL, women have been waiting 1826 days for the FDA to approve emergency contraception, or the "morning-after" pill, for over-the-counter purchase. In a decision the General Accounting Office (GAO) called "highly unusual," the FDA ignored the recommendations of two of its own advisory boards, and the opinions of outside experts - in declining to make EC available for over-the-counter purchase.
Joseph B. Stanford, who was appointed to the FDA committee by (who else?) George W. Bush, refuses to prescribe the birth control pill, saying it's "incompatible with Christian values."Apparently, the opinions of medical health professionals are not going to be as important in determining the reproductive freedom of American citizens as the religious convictions of a few powerful men.
Even if a woman receives a prescription from her doctor for emergency contraception, renegade pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill legal, valid prescriptions for birth control.
If states decide that a pharmacist can refuse to fill a prescription for birth control, what will stop pharmacists from refusing to fill any other prescription. Some religions forbid the use of anti-depressants, some religions forbid the use of antibiotics. Most followers of these religions do not become pharmacists. They don't become pharmacists because pharmacists must accept that they have an obligation to fill prescriptions, even those they might not approve of.
Access to birth control also depends on affordability for many women. While most insurers generally cover prescription drugs, not all insurers cover prescription contraceptives. Today, fewer than half of all states have laws ensuring that privateinsurance companies treat prescription birth control the same as other prescription drugs.
Some insurance providers cover Viagra – but not birth control. You have to wonder - are any women working for them?
But the government hasn't only denied women access to contraception, it has also been working to eliminate women's access to information about contraception. At the federal and state level, money is being given to "abstinence-only" education, which often gives young people misleading - or just plain false - information about sex, pregnancy, and diseases.
Opponents to comprehensive safer-sex education claim that talking about birth control encourages teenagers to have sex, obviously forgetting the fact that teenagers really don't need any encouragement.
Comprehensive sexual education does not encourage teenagers to have sex. It encourages teenagers to consider the risks associated with sex, and to take precautions if and when they decide to have intercourse. Taking away young people's access to such important information only puts them in danger.
It's time to demand that the parties interferring with women's healthcare be held accountable. Resources are available on the web that make it easier than ever for citizens to make their voices heard. If Margaret Sanger could spend a month in jail for this belief, you can spend five minutes standing up for choice. | | |
| Is it Graduation yet? (1/18/06)
Green Day had the right idea. Except, I’d like to be woken up when my senior year ends.
And I don’t think I’m the only one. My roommate has the following in her AIM profile: “Senioritis - we’d fight for a cure, if we weren’t so lazy...”
And lazy we are. An odd mix of euphoria and panic about finally getting into “the real world” seems to have convinced us, as it convinces soon-to-be-college-graduates every semester, that our classes are not worth our best efforts.
Sure, there are a few graduating seniors who are trying to maintain 4.0 averages, and a few who are desperately trying to raise their GPA by a quarter of a percentage before they graduate, but for the most part, we’ve moved on to bigger things.
Like beating the final castle in Super Mario Brothers.
I mean looking for a job... (which I promise I’ll start doing any day now)... creating a resume... (I keep getting distracted by Mine Sweeper)... and figuring out where we’re going to live when our leases expire during finals week... (either New York or Chicago... but I can’t figure out which).
Besides, as my friend Eric always said, “In sixty years, we’ll all be dead anyway. No one will care what your chemistry grade was.”
And it only took Eric one extra semester to finish college!
In our defense, we seniors have worked hard to get to this point. We bought textbooks every semester and sometimes, we even read from them.
We showed up for class, even when we’d been out late drinking the night before. We even sat in class when we were still drunk from the night before. That’s dedication.
Some of our professors respond to senioritis by working harder to inspire and motivate us, despite our resistance. And those professors deserve our credit and thanks.
Others respond by postponing deadlines, offering extra credit, and canceling our lowest three quiz scores. These are our favorite professors, but they are also the most dangerous.
Because the fact is, as the bar keeps getting lowered, we keep finding a way to limbo under it.
Some of our professors are responding to our laziness by giving us the grades we’ve earned. These are the professors we don’t like. We curse them and we resent them, when we should be thanking them.
We should thank the people who stand firm in their belief that a little effort is not too much to ask. Their demands, as unreasonable as they may seem right now, are based on the demands we will face in life.
We should applaud those educators who are not willing to bow to the lowest common denominator. There are too few educators with standards, and the evidence is everywhere. On our campus, and in the world at large, there are far too many ignorant and incompetent people. And it takes courage to stand up to someone and tell them to work harder.
Earning a college degree should signify that one has the ability to self-motivate and has met an established set of reasonable challenges.
But as more and more students flood into universities, the lowest common denominator just gets lower and lower. And soon, a college diploma represents little more than a very expensive piece of paper.
I’d like to convince the class of 2006 to reconsider our collective outlook. I’d like to encourage my peers to get all the education they can out of their final courses. Every course is an opportunity to learn something.
If you think the classes you’re taking aren’t going to challenge you, consider adding another course. If this is your last semester, you might enjoy taking a challenging elective. (Personally, I reccommend philosophy or politics.) If you’ve got a full courseload already, ask yourself if there’s an organization you’d like to help out with or a project you’ve been putting off.
Sure, it’ll be hard to keep yourself motivated - especially when the weather gets nice. But you have to ask yourself - when will you have another chance like this?
Some of us are going to be in debt up to our eyeballs paying for that opportunity, and unfortunately, some of us are going to have very little to show for it.
I’d like to impress upon the graduating class the value of what we are discarding, but it would be too hypocritical. Truth is, I know myself well enough to know that I’ll continue to coast where I can, and work only as hard as I absolutely have to. And I know that if I fail in the real world, I’ll have no one but myself (and Super Mario Brothers) to blame. | | |
| It's official! I'm a columnist! This is probably nothing to be proud of, I'm guessing that fewer people applied than there are open spots. It's still exciting, because it means that I can start pissing off and alienating anyone with nothing better to do than read the Vidette.
Speaking of the Vidette, Liz and I are here tonight working on our final supplement. We are so not trying anymore. Our apathy is practically oozing from our pores.
Bailiwick this weekend was fun and educational (I learned to "batch out"). God, I hope they start paying me. Today Erin gave me a ride back to Normal and I spent practically the whole ride coveting her MP3 player.
I also wrote some poems, some of which did not completely suck. | | |
| Yesterday and this afternoon I read Galileo (by Brecht) for Liz's class. An odd side effect is that I've had the song of the same name by the Indigo Girls stuck in my head for, like, 48 hours.
And the only part I can even remember is the chorus:
How long till my soul gets it right?
Has any human being ever reached that kind of light?
Except for the resting soul of Galileo -
king of night vision, king of insight.
Most of my classmates suggested that the play is about Science Vs. Religion. But I think it has more to do with the transition from the Age of Certainty into the Age of Doubt. The fact that Brecht makes Galileo a sort of flawed anti-hero... I think you're supposed to feel a little bit of how those monks must have felt. They clung to the idea that the Earth stood still, and we cling to the idea that great people are also good people, morally. And neither of us can help but feel, for lack of a better word, betrayed. | | |
| The laundry is starting to take over my room! It cannot be contained by the laundry basket any longer! It has spread from my room out into the hall. I returned from the shower to find two (non-matching) socks sitting outside my bedroom door.
"How did you get there?" I asked.
They, being socks, said nothing. | | |
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