Two Nations, One Pill, One Big Difference

Although I often worry that, with the advent of anti-abortion protests outside UK clinics and unprecedented attempts to undermine UK abortion law, the UK is headed in the same worrying anti-choice direction as its cousin across the Atlantic, I can usually comfort myself that British sanity will always prevail. That certainly seems true when you look at this article in the Telegraph, where we learn that the GMC have emphasised that it is unacceptable for doctors to refuse to prescribe contraception (regular or emergency) on 'moral grounds'. Contrast that with the latest slew of anti-contraception moves in the US, a country in which you can claim Viagra on your health insurance, but not the birth control pill.

To anyone with an iota of sense, allowing the erosion of women's bodily freedom in the name of 'religious freedom' is not just sanctioning misogyny, it's also downright illogical. It's confusing 'freedom from' with 'freedom to'. Yes, we all should be able to live free of censorship, oppression, hatred and abuse. That doesn't mean we are free to impose our beliefs on others. In arguing that they are the ones being oppressed by being asked to sanction something they disagree with, religious people are merely masking their own attempts to oppress women. They are also asking that their belief that contraception is wrong be privileged because it is 'supported' by the teachings of an old white man living in a palace in Italy and that beliefs that contraception is an eminently sensible choice be assigned second-class status. I've said it before on this blog and I'll say it again - why on earth should convictions based upon fairy tales be awarded any special status or exemption from the law of the land? You are not special, different or deserving of specific protection just because you believe in an old man in the sky. You certainly deserve as much protection from harm, harassment or oppression as any one else, but NO MORE THAN THAT.

If we were to substitute any other belief for the one that Catholic bishops and Missouri legislators wish to impose upon women, we'd soon see how ridiculous this demand for 'religious conscience clauses' really is. For example, consider Christian Science, whose followers believe that illness is an illusion, and can be overcome with prayer and meditation. Many Christian Scientists therefore do not use any medicines or accept medical treatments (and I can vouch for this as my great-grandmother was a Christian Scientist, and when still able to communicate during the end of her life, repeatedly refused any medical assistance). So, imagine a Christian Scientist doctor. Or even just a Christian Scientist pharmacist. Standing there, saying to patients, "I'm sorry, I cannot prescribe you this migraine medicine. I believe your migraine is an illusion and that prayer will overcome it. Therefore it would be against my conscience to give you this medicine." Sounds pretty ridiculous, right? But it's no different from what American citizens are being asked to accept - the imposition of religious dogma on people who are taking intelligent, preventive steps to look after their bodies. 

Funnily enough, you never hear any stories of Christian Scientists doctors or pharmacists - perhaps because the religion's followers simply do not choose to work in a field they know they have ethical issues with. Just as I don't work as a boxing referee, glamour photographer or cosmetic surgeon; but I respect that in a free society, those industries all have a right to exist without my intervention on 'moral grounds'. Thankfully, the British GMC has recognised that too - it is not a doctor's place to dictate or withold treatment due to personal beliefs. Their only guiding principles must be medical ones, otherwise we are all at risk of our bodies becoming pawns for proselytising. It's a terrible thought that there are so many legislators and Bishops in the US who are happy to sanction exactly that.

I’m going to be living in the US for the next 3 months, and I think it will be a real eye-opener. I’ve followed the American feminist news for several years, through the excellent mediums of the magazines Ms. and Bitch, and more recently via the fertile grounds of feminist blogging and Twitter. But now I’m actually here on US soil, the reality of the war on women seems just that little bit more real. Only yesterday the right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh caused outrage by labelling a young woman defending her right to birth control paid for by her health insurance provider, a ‘slut’ – because, as his logic went, she wants to be ‘paid for having sex’.

To a Brit, this kind of thing is just gobsmacking. For starters, women’s right to free contraception on the NHS goes without saying in the UK, and any attempt to undermine this would be met with such a stink that a politician insane enough to suggest it would be laughed out of parliament. Furthermore, any British public figure who likened women who use contraception to prostitutes could kiss their career goodbye as they would instantly be labelled a crank, an extremist and unworthy of public airspace. It just wouldn’t happen. Sure, we have our share of buffoons in Britain – who can forget Kenneth Clarke proposing that there’s a difference between rape and ‘serious rape’, or the delightful Eamonn Homes telling a rape victim attacked in a car “Well, I hope you take taxis now”? But we can take comfort in knowing that there’ll be a predictable shitstorm – Twitter exploding in apoplexy, the idiocy of the man in question hotly debated on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine who – and then a quiet climbdown from the offending party. In the US, however, the stakes seem a lot higher. Rush Limbaugh may be an attention-seeking jackass who deliberately antagonises feminists and liberals for a living, but his doesn’t seem to be an isolated voice. There is a real anti-contraception faction in the US, and they are the reason that Sandra Fluke was testifying in the first place.

Not content with the erosion of abortion rights (see Virginia’s recent ultrasound bill), anti-choicers are now focusing their attention on restricting access to the contraceptive pill. (It's telling that some anti-choicers don't even see a difference between the two; one female Republican on TV this evening referred to the pill as an 'abortion causing drug' - someone please give the lady a basic science lesson) Seems they want it both ways – they don’t want women aborting babies, but nor do they want women using anything to prevent those babies being conceived in the first place. The total lack of logic here cannot be interpreted as anything other than a wish to see women entirely at the mercy of their biology – ‘barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink’. It’s certainly not about protecting babies – it’s just about ensuring that enough of them, wanted or not, are spewed into this world to keep women in natal chains.

Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Sandra Fluke betrays a belief that women should only be having sex for the purposes of procreation, and that to demand the freedom to a sex life unburdened by the threat of pregnancy is unreasonable and audacious. He is saying women should be punished for wanting to be sexual for any other reason than making babies, and he has already passed his own sentence – that of being called of a whore.

One can only wonder what kind of mire the debate would enter if male hormonal contraception is considered too – I somehow doubt right-wingers would be quite so enthusiastic in challenging men’s right not to create a baby every time they have sex. To be anti-contraception is to be anti-woman, it’s that simple. And it’s probably worth adding that in a world which needs no more unwanted children, and can barely handle all those it already contains, to be anti-contraception is also to be wilfully stupid.

Oh, go on then

To discuss matters menstrual or gynaelogical on a feminist blog may sometimes feel like playing into the hands of those who believe that feminism is just an excuse to a) bitch and moan about men and b) go on ad nauseam (literally) about all the revolting things the female body does. Obviously the latter notion rests on the kind of schoolboy repression that leads men to run from the room like their backsides are on fire when an Always advert comes on, because as us feminists know, natural female bodily processes are something both sexes should be familiar with and take in their stride. Still, I've largely held off from going on about the trials and tribulations of having Wimmins Bits, partly because one doesn't want to be too predictable and partly because there's always so much else in the news to go on about. Still, as the news is just too depressing at times, let's look inward, no pun intended.

What got me thinking about what a minefield the female body can be was an article about how the IUD has fallen out of favour with US patients, and unjustifiably so. The author highlighted all the benefits of this method of contraception, and pointed out how other countries such as France and China, utilise it much more widely. Many readers on feministing.com, where the link was posted, shared their success stories too. One commenter pointed out that it's easier to list your horror stories with contraception than to say what went well, as if to pre-empt the various women who would inevitably come out of the closet to say "Noooo the IUD was a bag of shite in my experience". I would probably be one of those women, had I kept my appointment to go get an IUD fitted about 3 years ago. Instead, the speech that the doctor at the family planning clinic gave me about the possible risks scared me so badly that I didn't bother going. She said that the IUD could fall out during periods, could somehow get outside of the uterus and end up floating in the pelvic cavity (!), would really hurt to be put in, and could result in heavier periods. The latter would be enough to put me off, since I already suffer from excruciating periods with heavy flow and insanely bad mood swings, but a list like that pretty much sent me running back to the contraceptive pill. So yes, maybe there is something to be said about medical practitioners not recommending the IUD highly enough. I'll never know - I'm still too scared to try, to be honest.

However, the comment about not enough people posting their contraception success stories begged, in my mind, the bloody obvious question, what if you don't have any success stories? What if every method of contraception you've tried has been flawed, some so badly that it stopped you from living your life? Let's start, for example, with a list of the different contraceptive pills I've tried:

Cilest

Microgynon

Mercilon

Cerazette

Loestrin

Ovysmen

Cerazette

and at least one other whose name escapes me. Hey, it's been a long nine years of experimentation. My biggest beef with the pill is the (medically unnecessary) pill-free week in which your body goes into withdrawal, and my body's reaction to withdrawal is to become suicidally depressed. Not just 'blue', not just 'moody', or any of the other cute euphemisms with which PMS is often widely trivialised - I actually want to shoot myself, and possibly take a few people down with me. Few doctors have taken this seriously, obviously dismissing this as just part and parcel of the pill which us ungrateful bitches should feel lucky to be blessed with, but the ones that do advise me to simply miss the pill-free week and take my pills continously. This is what I'm currently doing at the moment; however after a couple of months, the body rebels and bleeds anyway, and I'm back to square one. There are pills designed for continuous use but they aren't available in the UK - I have been asking about their arrival since 2006 and every year get told they're coming 'next year'. In the meantime, the 5/6 periods I do have a year remain painful, violent, and nightmarish. So, room for improvement? I'd say so.

In between my various jaunts with the pill, I've tried other methods, largely because of my desperation to avoid the hormone lottery. I used the diaphragm for a while, but in addition to the complete lack of spontaneity it entails (the trip to the communal bathroom wrapped in a towel carrying spermicide and my trusty receptacle was not easy to do subtly in my boyfriend's halls of residence), I could never get one that seemed to fit comfortably. For all my wiggling, experimenting, and even a return to the doctor to check it was the right size and I'd put it in correctly, I could still feel it during sex. Having your boyfriend accidently 'twang' your diaphragm when it's sitting against your cervix is the kind of unpleasant surprise that brings tears to your eyes, let me tell you.

After that came the implant, which I was told could cause 'irregular bleeding'. However, I was assured that this settles down after a while, and most women end up having no periods at all. Woo hoo, let's go I thought. I had the implant put in in August. By March next year, I was still bleeding continuously throughout the month. Why, I wondered to myself, do they call it 'irregular', when it'd be more appropriate to call it TOO FUCKIN' REGULAR BLEEDING?! All the doctors could suggest was to put me back on the pill ON TOP of the implant to regulate my cycle. So much for being able to abandon the pill. We tried it for two months, came back off the pill, and it was bleeding city straight away. After a year of this ridiculousness, I had the implant removed.

Well, there are always condoms, aren't there? Yeah...there are, and yes they have their uses, but I'm someone who only wants to sleep with their regular partner, and likes our encounters to be as intimate as possible. Kids, I'm not preaching abandoning the rubber fellas, because god knows with our promiscuous, badly educated population they're needed more than ever. But I'm in a long term relationship where both partners have had STD screening, and I want sex to be skin on skin - no latex, no chafing, no icky love-glove. So it pisses me off that I've had such a hard time finding a way of controlling my own fertility that hasn't made me bleed continously, hurt me, or want to kill myself. And my response to the commenter on Feministing would be, I'll provide a success story when I finally have one to tell. For now it's just a case of sitting and waiting for when the medical establishment feels like offering me an alternative, and dealing with the ruined underwear and suicidal impulses when they continue to come.