Birth control has been a highly debated topic and an extremely stigmatized product for many decades now. Women who use it are sometimes seen as sexually promiscuous or unnatural. To me, birth control is something to be celebrated, for all the ways it helps those who use it. The stigma surrounding birth control is one that must go — though that seems like a harder feat than ever thanks to a Friday mandate sent out by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Trump’s stance as of late is to protect religious people’s rights by allowing them to not cover birth control in their employees’ health insurance. It is interesting how concerned Trump is with protecting religious rights, when he also tried to ban Muslims from entering the country. He seems to have a specific religion in mind when he talks of this “religious freedom.”
Trump has always wanted to ensure “religious freedom,” saying back in May, “we will not allow people of faith to be targeted, bullied or silenced anymore.” While it’s great that he’s sticking up for a group of people, it’s not so great that in doing so, he undermines an entire other group: women. With this new mandate, women whose employers decide to end coverage for birth control could end up having to pay high prices to get it.
Trump and his administration do not seem all too concerned with women’s health in this mandate. In fact, the document Trump released stating why he is no longer requiring birth control to be covered says birth control can “affect risky sexual behavior in a negative way.”
Basically, the administration is saying birth control allows women to be too sexual. I was unaware that female sexuality is something our government is supposed to be concerned about. I thought the only person who is supposed to be concerned with a woman’s sex life is that woman. Clearly, I had the wrong idea. Silly me.
What this mandate fails to grasp is that birth control has more uses than just preventing pregnancy. It can help with acne, excruciatingly painful menstruation, hormone production and much more. I have a friend who has to take birth control because her body does not produce enough hormones in order for her to menstruate. The birth control gives her those hormones so that her body can function the way it is supposed to.
Unfortunately, birth control may become harder to get for some women, and those who truly need birth control to function may be at risk.
This is the real question: why is the Trump administration so concerned with women preventing unwanted pregnancy? Even if that was all birth control did, it still should not be seen as a bad thing. Trump opposes abortions, yet is trying his hardest to make pregnancy prevention even more difficult.
If a woman gets pregnant because she is no longer able to afford birth control, but getting an abortion is also wrong according to some, but she also cannot afford to raise a child, what is she supposed to do?
She ends up raising a kid in poverty.
That’s the problem here. The GOP has all these morals about being promiscuous and getting abortions, but they don’t seem to care when a child is going to suffer their entire life because the mother could not afford to raise another human for 18 years. This demonstrates that they really aren’t concerned about the future child or the health of the woman, they are just misogynistic.
Many people are angry about this new development in the Trump administration, while others stand by the idea of protecting religious freedom. While I see both sides, I believe that we cannot allow something as important as birth control to be made more expensive in the name of “religious freedom.”
It is too critical to the health of many women, and those who believe birth control is a promiscuous sin really need to reevaluate the morals they are citing as most important to them. Instead, they should work on some new morals, like tolerance and respecting one another. Maybe then, women will have easier access to a healthier life, and we can stop seeing birth control as some terrible sex drug.
