Apparently the topic of women having safe, affordable access to birth control and other forms of health will just not die.
For a historical context of how insane it is that we are still having this conversation in 2012, see my former law professor Louise Trubek‘s New York Times op-ed yesterday, about her role in litigating this in 1957.
1957!
In 1983, two things happened to me that seem related. One I actively chose. The other one happened to me.
In health class, we had an assignment to write a research report. I don’t remember what the parameters of the assignment were,but I decided to write about different kinds of birth control. Mainly, I remember 2 things. The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective book, Changing Bodies, Changing Lives, was so chock full of good information that although it was the source for 90% of my information, the teacher gave me double credit for the work — 2 A’s for 1 report. And at the time, there was a “pill for men,” which was derived from cottonseed oil, being tested in China. (That was in Newsweek.)
Yes, I studied birth control options in my public school, and I kicked ass doing it.
Let me be perfectly clear: I was 13 years old. I had kissed one boy. That was the full extent of my sexual experience at the time, and for a good while after that. (Granted, we kissed a few times.)
The other thing was the thing that happened to me.
I suffered such severe menorrhagia that I began blacking out every time I stood up, or had to walk up stairs. No exaggeration. I would stand up, and my vision would go fuzzy and dark from the outside in; and, I usually had to clutch the handrail on the stairs, so that I wouldn’t collapse and fall down.
After 3 weeks, I was no longer able to hide what was going on from my mom, who took me to my first gynecological appointment. They gave me a massive dose of some kind of hormone to stop things, and told us that if I could not keep them down for 24 hours, I would have to be hospitalized.
14 hours later, at around 4 am, I threw up with the kind of drama that I can only describe as exorcisian. Mom rushed me to the hospital, where I got a blood transfusion, a lot of drugs, and finally the ability to stand without fainting.
And when I left the hospital, the doctor gave me a prescription for birth control pills. (And iron supplements.) The birth control pills were to make my body both menstruate, and STOP menstruating. On a regular, appropriate schedule.
I was no slut.
And the birth control pills I was on didn’t make me get sluttier, they didn’t make me have sex. But they did make my body work, they made me not need another blood transfusion, and they made me able to safely LIVE MY LIFE. You know, standing, sitting, walking up and down stairs — the basics. Concentrate on classes, conversations, not walking into traffic because I was no longer obsessing about whether or not I needed to rush to the bathroom, or in the alternative, die of embarassment — I’m not talking about anything too crazy.
I was lucky. My parents had good health insurance, and could afford my treatment and medications.
Everyone deserves the health care I had, although I really hope you don’t need it.
(Especially if you are a teenage girl.)
PS: I would have deserved that health care, and respect, even if I had been having sex. Even if I’d been having sex with every boy — and girl — I knew. I can tell you for damn sure, if I had gotten pregnant at 13, I would have had an abortion. I think we can all agree, 13 year olds should not become parents.
