Health Care will Reform Birth Control Choices Too

There has been a lot of talk about the Stupak Amendment which will effectively restrict women's access to abortions despite the fact that abortion is still legal in the United States of America. But there has been little discussion about the fact that not only does the health care bill in it's current form restrict abortion, it makes no mention of covering birth control or pelvic examinations. In fact, the current mood of the mostly male congress is that women should not expect "woman things" to be covered at all. Like health insurance companies before them, male Representatives and Senators harbor the belief that anything a woman might need medical assistance with between her navel and her knees is too costly and, worse, much too sexual.

True to their puritanical and nose in everyone's personal business ways, the Republicans, with hefty assistance from the religious right, have succeeded in foisting their life-begins-at-conception nonsense on the health care bill.  But the unintended collateral damage (and I am giving them the benefit of the doubt here) is that anything a woman might need from her annual pap test to her birth control prescription is now tainted with the aura of illicit sex. After all, a pelvic exam isn't necessary for the sexually inactive, and birth control is proof positive of the intent to enjoy pleasures of the flesh without any intention of procreation.

One would think that pro-lifer's would be all over the idea of preventing unintended pregnancy because it makes a moot point of abortion, but that's not the case at all because it has never been about saving babies as much as it's been about controlling women.

After ranting about the state the current health care bill's incarnation to my husband, he asked,

"Are you glad that you're living in Canada now?"

And the truth is that I am glad, but for my daughter's sake more than my own. Being past my childbearing years, things like birth control are not much of an issue. But my long history of endometriosis, and my fear that my daughter might one day suffer from the same thing, makes me wonder at the short-sighted view of the U.S. Congress. Not everything that has to do with women's health is related to sex. I took birth control for a decade because it curbed the painfully debilitating effects of my condition, and I know many women who were on some form of the pill for reasons that had nothing to do with preventing pregnancies. They suffered from PCOS and fibroids. They needed hormonal regulation in order to even have a period. They were DES babies for whom regular pelvic exams were crucial.

Birth control is a fact of life for nearly every woman during the three decades or so of her life where pregnancy is a possibility and I wonder at these men who seem to regard it as the luxury of harlots. Did their wives make use of birth control? Or is the size of their families just a happy providential accident? Perhaps every Representative and Senator should be made to account for his or her method of birth control - which is covered by the platinum health coverage they and their families receive. If the pill is good enough for them, shouldn't it be afforded to those who elected them and ultimately foot the bill for their cushy health insurance?

My birth control wasn't covered during the time I used it. Even though I had a medical diagnosis that allowed for coverage under the terms of my health insurance, it was negated by the fact that I was a twenty-something of childbearing years and this meant - to the insurance company - that I was sexually active. Slut until proven otherwise? Perhaps if I had been a nun, I wouldn't have been dismissed so lightly?

The extremists win if they are allowed to define the terms of health care that should be between patient and doctor only. The purpose of health insurance is not to further religious agendas that not everyone subscribes to.

This is an original 50 Something Moms post by Ann Bibby of anniegirl1138 and Care2.com.