Girls like sex. Quit generating "health" excuses for why we use birth control | Jessica Valenti

Females like to have intercourse. Some women who like to have sex will not want to get pregnant, so they use birth control. I recognize that these are not notably revelatory statements, but for some exceptionally irritating explanation, the punditocracy is still dwelling on the fairly mundane details that intercourse transpires and contraception is typically a portion of it.

Conservatives won’t admit their deep-seated worry of non-reproductive sex, so Washington media’s machine is propping it up for them. But if this is our mid-summer debate, effectively, let us at least try to uncover a explanation for the stupidity, shall we?

When Sandra Fluke gave her now infamous testimony ahead of the US Residence of Representatives about insurance coverage coverage for contraception, the bulk of her opening statement targeted on a friend who required to take birth control to deal with polycystic ovarian syndrome. In the wake of final week’s supreme court decision on Hobby Lobby, Elle magazine ran a piece on “10 Health care Causes Why a Lady May Be Prescribed Birth Management”. And then the National Journal published a extensively shared article declaring that what “everyone is missing” in the ongoing Pastime Lobby debate is all the ladies who need to consider birth manage for medical factors. “Even if these women never have sex as soon as in their lives, they need to have to be on birth management,” wrote reporter Lucia Graves. She continued:

These girls depend on the pill to regulate their hormones and do every little thing from ease discomfort to minimize the threat of cancer. These medical advantages have absolutely nothing to do with intercourse or the prevention of pregnancy.

I agree with Graves that the website link between contraception and women’s overall health should not be ignored – and it truly is important that the national conversation, post-Pastime Lobby, is seeking beyond the court’s shameful ruling on behalf of sex-fearing “freedom-seekers”.

But it’s awfully depressing that, in the summer of 2014, when 99% of American girls use birth handle, we can not just come out and say that most ladies use birth control for sex. And that we like said sex – a lot.

I can guarantee you this, too: focusing on the non-orgasmic causes females use contraception will not magically modify conservatives’ minds about the problem. No matter how a lot of content articles come out imploring the public to consider about the quite actual overall health problems girls have, conservative organizations have had their minds in the gutter for many years, and they like it there.

The organizations that supported Pastime Lobby with amicus briefs, for instance, tell a pretty clear story about what conservatives care about – and it ain’t health:

• The Independent Women’s Forum filed a brief arguing that girls previously have plentiful entry to contraception via Planned Parenthood (which, ironically sufficient, IWF thinks must be defunded) – and that is just the most current in the group’s lengthy line of arguments that intercourse is by some means ruining ladies.


• The Catholic Healthcare Association wrote a brief arguing (inaccurately) that contraception triggers abortion, but a 2011 memo from the organization sheds far more light, stating that “widespread use of contraceptives contributes to sexual promiscuity”. (As Bill Maher once joked, “It’s like saying if you give a kid a tetanus shot she’ll want to jab rusty nails in her feet.”)


• The Eagle Forum and the Beverly LaHaye Institute also wrote briefs in help of Hobby Lobby they have also derided contraception and women possessing sex.
  
  

And when female reporters covered the Pastime Lobby decision, it was not a coincidence that the majority of us had been currently being called sluts and whores across social media and elsewhere. To conservatives, contraception is not about wellness – it really is about intercourse, their worry of intercourse, and a panic above ladies possessing intercourse that does not lead to infants. The much more we disregard that reality – or concentrate on on the “legitimate” reasons ladies use birth control – the more women give ammunition, and give up the moral ground, to the proper.

Liberals concede the same ground when we make pro-selection arguments making use of the most severe examples – rape, incest and overall health. Yes, women require abortions for those motives – but they also want them when they’re merely not ready to be parents. And which is Ok.

It’s also Okay – superb, even! – that women use birth management to have intercourse and not get pregnant. Even a lot more fantastic: it operates. The advent of contraception is arguably the most essential liberatory discovery for women of all time. We’re allowed to use it. And not just for our intervals – but to have scorching, sweaty, fantastic, exciting, non-procreative sex. That doesn’t make us “sluts” it can make us human.

Girls like sex. Quit generating "health" excuses for why we use birth control | Jessica Valenti