Happy Friday, friends. It’s been a while since I wrote a feminist killjoy post, but lucky you, today is the day.

It’s relatively old news that the Trump administration wants to remove the requirement currently in place for employers’ health insurance to cover birth control (perhaps more accurately called hormone treatment by the way, I’ll explain why) for women. However, the issue has popped up a couple of times in social media for me today so I’m all wound up about it again. 

Firstly, it’s pure misogyny that a basic health issue for women isn’t considered “necessary”. That birth control, pregnancy, abortion, and anything else having to do with uteruses, ovaries, and all our other lady parts are looked at as “optional”. Like maybe we can just let all that stuff take care of itself, I guess? Taking care of these particular parts of our body is a luxury that we’re not owed? Or something?

 

via GIPHY

This is such an enormous and glaring problem that anyone who wants to argue it with me should really be flayed alive. I’m not even going to entertain that, folks. Not for a hot second.

I would also like to strenuously object to the idea that women only take the pill, get injections, and get IUDs or hormonal implants to avoid pregnancy. There are a lot of other medical reasons for all of these things. But I know that’s confusing for the old white men running the Titanic aground right now.

However, here’s the part that really grinds my gears: Just because the government isn’t forcing an employer or insurance company to cover something, doesn’t mean they should stop covering it. 

Why on earth, for the love of everything sacred and good and lovely in this world, does everything in this country need to come down to the almighty dollar? I mean, I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people! And surprise, that goes for the human beings who run insurance companies and every other corporation in this great nation as well. Here are things I do daily that nobody is forcing me to do:

  • Hold the door for the person behind me
  • Take up as little space as possible on the train
  • Chew with my mouth closed
  • Say thank you
  • Refrain from tearing the heart out of the chest of a man who calls me “sweetie” and eating it in front of his family
  • Am kind to my friends
  • Pick up dog shit and throw it in the trash when I walk a dog
  • Refrain from pushing people out of my way when they take too long to board an escalator

You don’t actually have to be forced by the government to do a thing in order to do it. I know this is an incredibly strange concept because even though I know it’s garbage, I automatically think “Oh, they won’t do such-and-such because it will cost more money, of course not.” But let’s try a little bit GD harder, folks, FFS.

I have an IUD, I got it a little over 2 years ago. It cost me nothing. It will last for 5-10 years. You bet your ass that if the next uterus-related thing I need to do is not covered by my insurance I’m not just going to shrug and shell out the money, I’m going to ask why the hell not? And I won’t stop asking until the President or CEO of the insurance company is sitting across from me in his/her office explaining to me why they don’t think that organ is part of my body, or why they think my body is less important than a man’s body.

This absolute ridiculousness needs to stop. I won’t accept it anymore. Don’t you accept it either.

Filed under: capitalism, insurance, misogyny