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So a group of unhappy liberal women marched in Washington DC. We shouldn\u2019t be surprised; almost all liberal women are unhappy. Perhaps there\u2019s a correlation.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, I\u2019m fascinated to see them exercise their First Amendment rights (however objectionable the message).<\/p>\n
But I do have a question: if they can afford all those piercings, tattoos, body paintings, signs, and plane tickets, then why do they want us to pay for their birth control?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I was at one of the marches on Saturday. It wasn\u2019t at all unhappy. The mood was actually extremely upbeat and positive\u2014it was energizing! That was one of my biggest takeaways from the event\u2014the numbers, and the upbeat mood.<\/p>\n
But note that McDaniel\u2019s claim goes farther than this\u2014he claims that \u201calmost all liberal women are unhappy.\u201d This is a wider conservative talking point\u2014that liberal women (i.e. feminists) are unhappy, unfulfilled, and discontent. This idea is profoundly sexist, given its connection to the supposition that it is marriage and motherhood that fulfills women and make stem happy, and that childless\u00a0career women are by definition unhappy and unsatisfied, mask it as they may.<\/p>\n
The unfortunate thing about this conservative talking point is that as soon as you attempt to counter it, arguing that you or other liberal women really are happy, you start to look desperate and you play into their narrative\u2014that you\u2019re trying to hide your underlying unhappiness by denying it. It\u2019s one of those narratives that is set up in such a way that it can\u2019t be countermanded\u2014because the narrative itself assumes that liberal women will deny their unhappiness and claim they are happy. Given that the conservative image of a happy woman is a modest, demure woman surrounded by children\u00a0and planning the next church potluck, just happily living out our lives may not be\u00a0enough to put this lie to bed either.<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s move on to McDaniel\u2019s last point\u2014and one that I have seen conservatives continue to raise. If these women can afford to travel to D.C., McDaniel asks, why do they want taxpayers to pay for their birth control? Note the lie this claim is founded on\u2014that women want U.S. taxpayers to pay for their birth control.<\/p>\n
Guess what? They don\u2019t<\/em>.<\/p>\n
The birth control mandate covers private health insurance providers\u00a0and is not paid for by the government. The mandate requires private insurers to cover birth control, the cost of which is passed on in premiums to those who buy health insurance (which includes women). Private insurance covers viagra, too, but we don\u2019t talk about men with erectile dysfunction wanting \u201cus\u201d to pay for their boners. Now yes, under the ACA women in certain income brackets get subsidies offsetting the cost of their health insurance\u2014but this isn\u2019t about birth control, it\u2019s about health insurance.<\/p>\n
I am baffled as to how so many conservatives came to believe that the health insurance mandate was about government-funded birth control. This is especially baffling given that most\u00a0of these conservatives are also anti-abortion, and that such individuals\u00a0should want<\/em> government-funded birth control. When experiments in<\/a> government-funded birth control<\/a> have been tried (namely, offering poor women free long-lasting forms of birth control, which are far more expensive than methods like the pill or the condom, but also more effective), abortion rates have dropped.<\/p>\n
In other words, the concept of government-funded birth control ought to be championed by abortion opponents, rather than pilloried.<\/p>\n
One more thing\u2014there\u2019s a common idea in conservative circles that birth control is cheap. I\u2019ve seen some claim the pill costs only $4\/mo. This is false. For one thing, women have to have a prescription to get the pill, which means a visit to the doctor\u2014and speaking from my own experience, it\u2019s virtually impossible\u00a0to visit the doctor without running up a bill of over $200. For another thing, while there are generic versions of the pill that are inexpensive\u00a0(though not, to my knowledge, that<\/em> inexpensive), bodies are different and the same pill doesn\u2019t work for everyone. I have friends who have had to use versions of the pill that run $100\/mo., because the other versions didn\u2019t work for them.<\/p>\n
And finally, we\u2019re not just talking about the pill, here! I have an IUD. Getting it inserted would have cost me over $800 out of pocket if my insurance hadn\u2019t covered it. That is a lot of money for people on a budget.\u00a0Heck, that\u2019s a lot of money for anyone but the most wealthy among us. I have a friend who got an IUD before the ACA, and didn\u2019t\u00a0realize it wouldn\u2019t be covered. She spent months fighting an $800 bill, which she believed should<\/em> have been covered. This isn\u2019t peanuts, people.<\/p>\n
Okay, next thing<\/a>:<\/p>\n
In an interview with the\u00a0Texas Observer<\/em><\/a>, [Republican lawmaker Tony Tinderholt] explained that women need to know there are \u201crepercussions\u201d for their actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, it\u2019s real easy,\u201d Tinderholt said. \u201cRight now, they don\u2019t make it important to be personally responsible because they know that they have a backup of \u2018oh, I can just go get an abortion.\u2019 Now, we both know that consenting adults don\u2019t always think smartly sometimes. But consenting adults need to also consider the repercussions of the sexual relationship that they\u2019re gonna have, which is a child.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
See, I\u2019m not sure \u201creal easy\u201d is how I\u2019d describe getting an abortion. For one thing, getting an abortion\u00a0ing ing to run you $500. That is a lot of money. For another thing, you\u2019re going to have to figure out logistics, take time off work, travel to the clinic, etc. For a third thing, getting an abortion is no piece of cake\u2014it\u2019s a painful procedure. I don\u2019t see people lining up to get their teeth drilled, and the same thing applies here.<\/p>\n
Is it possible that the existence of safe, legal abortion makes women more willing to be sexually active than previously? Technically. While women have always had premarital sex, there are stats<\/a> that suggest that the age at which women engage in premarital sex has changed over time (interestingly, the age\u00a0is currently going up again). But all of this is complicated, and\u00a0women in previous eras may have been more concerned about the stigma associated with having a child out of wedlock (stigma that has decreased in recent decades) than anything else. Still, women in the past had premarital sex nonetheless, and in some areas of colonial New England as many as 38% of births<\/a> were conceived out of wedlock. This is on top of the fact that abortion\u00a0was an option in the past (it was more dangerous, but so was\u00a0childbirth).<\/p>\n
One more thing to note\u2014most pro-choice individuals consider the choice to abort an unintended pregnancy a form of taking responsibility. A woman who is unintentionally pregnant has to decide what to do next out of a range of options, all of which involve taking responsibility for her situation. She can carry to term and parent the child, she can carry to term and give the child up for adoption, or she can have an abortion. The problem, of course, is that Tinderholt appears to believe that an embryo is a child, so he sees only two responsible options\u2014parenting or adoption.<\/p>\n
When it comes down to it, Tinderholt wants couples to consider more seriously the possibility of pregnancy before having sex. He thinks that banning abortion will make them do this. But what is his goal, exactly? Does he hope couples will use more effective methods of birth control, or does he hope they will decide not to have sex if they\u2019re not ready to have a child? He doesn\u2019t say, but his website does state<\/a> that he\u2019s against the Medicaid expansion, which would give millions more low-income women access to affordable birth control.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re talking a lot today about how facts don\u2019t seem to matter in a Trump administration, but then facts haven\u2019t mattered to a wide swath of conservatives for a long time. There are tens of millions of Americans who are convinced, today, that liberal women want them to pay for their birth control (Sandra Fluke, anyone?) and that abortion offers women an easy way to have irresponsible sex without dealing with the consequences. And a lot of this is tied to concerns about women being \u201csluts,\u201d which\u00a0in turn goes back to patriarchal notions about gender, value, and sex.<\/p>\n