There aren’t many groups that recent news in the United Sates hasn’t upset, and women are no exception.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled that so-called “crisis pregnancy centres” in California are not required to provide abortion information to patients. These often-unlicensed clinics usually pretend to be offering abortions or at least information on how to terminate a pregnancy, but when unsuspecting pregnant women visit, they are lied to, bullied and otherwise coerced into continuing their unwanted pregnancies. Sometimes they are given false information about the risks of abortion, the prevention of STDs, or the status of their pregnancy. Other times, they make it impossible to schedule the abortion that can allegedly be obtained from their clinic until it is too late for the women to terminate, or make the allegedly-available termination inaccessible to low-income women or those without reliable transport by requiring them to return again and again for assessments before signing off on the procedure. The law the Supreme Court struck down had required clinics to state if they were unlicensed, and had required clinics to make patients aware of options available from the state, including abortions.
Now comes the news that Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy will be retiring at the end of the month. Despite being a Reagan-appointed conservative justice, Kennedy was known as a swing-voter who was often a moderate voice in the Supreme Court thanks to key votes in cases regarding issues like marriage equality and reproductive rights. With his departure, Trump has an opportunity to nominate a far more conservative replacement, and naturally we can expect it to be the most awful choice possible. Women across the country are concerned, with good reason, that soon Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that struck down most restrictions on abortion, will be overturned or at least functionally dead.
After Trump’s election, many women feared that a combination of misogyny and pro-life zeal in office would form an attack on reproductive rights and make it more difficult for us to get not only abortions but also contraceptives. One of the major elements of Obama’s healthcare reform was to mandate that most forms of female birth control be covered by health insurance. Many feared (fear) that Trump will attempt to put and end to this, in line with the thinking of so many conservatives that the only purpose of birth control is to allow women to be promiscuous, ignoring the many who use it for health reasons and also the fact that there’s just nothing wrong with having sex. “Get an IUD,” became a common refrain, encouraging women to look into long-term contraception that wouldn’t be disrupted by the administration’s actions.
‘Get an IUD’ is more relevant advice than ever, and as someone who did just that almost a year ago, I thought I’d share a bit about my experience for anyone else who might be considering it.
Continue reading “My IUD story & why I love LARCs” →
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