April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

equality

Back Up Your Birth Control Day

by

Today is Back Up Your Birth Control Day in America. This action is to draw attention to these facts among others;

– Most teenagers in the U.S. don’t have access to EC over-the-counter (but they do in areas of Alaska, California, Vermont, Hawaii, Washington, Maine, New Hampshire and New Mexico)

– Despite the over-the-counter status, low-income and immigrant women still have issues of access to emergency contraception

– More than 60% of voters say they do not know about EC or any product that has been proven effective in preventing pregnancy when used within days after unprotected sex

You can read Biting Beavers’ story of trying to get EC here

or this story

The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn’t want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.

I am a 42-year-old happily married mother of two elementary-schoolers. My husband and I both work, and like many couples, we’re starved for time together. One Thursday evening this past March, we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.

The next morning, after getting my kids off to school, I called my ob/gyn to get a prescription for Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that can prevent a pregnancy — but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. As we’re both in our forties, my husband and I had considered our family complete, and we weren’t planning to have another child, which is why, as a rule, we use contraception. I wanted to make sure that our momentary lapse didn’t result in a pregnancy.

The receptionist, however, informed me that my doctor did not prescribe Plan B. No reason given. Neither did my internist. The midwifery practice I had used could prescribe it, but not over the phone, and there were no more open appointments for the day. The weekend — and the end of the 72-hour window — was approaching.

Or read the empathy and understanding for a rape victim

To add insult to injury, here’s what Dr. Joe Kearns, former medical director of Good Samaritan Hospital in Lebanon, had to say:

“People drive to Reading to buy jeans. Even if that were the case, that you had to drive to Reading to get this [prescription], to me that does not rise to a compulsion that you have to pass laws that [doctors] have to do something.”

I am struggling to understand how a woman–who has just been raped!–would find a trip to Reading to get a prescription for emergency contraception (EC) similar to a road trip she might take with her girlfriends to buy a new pair of jeans.

Although legally women in Canada are allowed to buy EC OTC there are many instances of pharmacies not carrying it or pharmacists exercising “freedom of conscience”.

And our current fundamentalist friendly government who have already shown themselves ready to turn back the clock with cuts to SWC and removal of equality from the mandate, would be only too happy to partner with these same groups to deny women reproductive choice.

International Women’s Day

by

IWD

I struggled with what to write today. Which subject seemed to have the greatest importance.

In the end I felt there was no subject that had greater importance. They represented different cultures, different concerns, different areas (work, school, motherhood, reproductive rights) different focus (success stories and stories that show how much work is still required) and I realized that I couldn’t anymore choose a topic of greater importance than I could choose a woman of greater importance. [Read more…] about International Women’s Day

A Feminist’s Pledge:

by

I saw this fantastic article today. I think this is a pledge we can all support.

I will on reprint part of it go to the link to read it’s entirety.

  • We will not make laws that affect your medical care and rights to govern your own body. We will cover your prescriptions in health insurance and treat you with respect when you come to the pharmacy to fill your prescriptions. We will not turn you away or humiliate you.
  • We will include you in medical research to see if our biological differences result in different health outcomes, just like researchers found that males and females suffer differently in heart attacks.
  • We won’t consider you freakish for being single or childless. Your choices will be respected. We can’t all be married with 2.2 children, a house and a dog.
  • We will ask that you take more responsibility for reproductive choices. You will ask if our health insurance plans cover the pill, and be willing to get a vasectomy — so much easier and cheaper than a tubal ligation. You will also be willing to accompany us on an abortion, if needed. Just going to a family planning clinic can be dangerous.
  • We will not blame you for causing divorce, gaining profits from divorce, marrying for money, being a bad single parent, or smoking around children or pregnant women. We must find the roots of problems and work on potential solutions together.
  • We will not have scientists, educators or philosophers find reasons for your supposed inferiority. We will not abuse our public role to insult you like Socrates, Freud, John Belushi, Bobby Riggs, Lawrence Summers, et al have done. We will seek answers, not justifications.
  • We won’t spend a fortune on marketing that targets you and then turn around and call you materialistic. We won’t blame you for being consumers because you take on the majority of shopping responsibilities. And we won’t use insulting, derogatory ads that, in fact, target you as the buyer.
  • We will represent you and give you a voice in all forms of media — newspapers, radio and TV. We will include you in history and represent you fairly in textbooks and other written material. We won’t deny or belittle your contributions.

  • We will name our streets, parks, and town squares after both men and women. We will erect statues and monuments that represent both sexes fairly.

  • We will hire you in elected offices because we value your contribution and seek to represent all the diverse views of society, not because “we’re ready.”

Full article