Boyd emergency contraception bill passed – thank you!

A bill that champion Rep. Betty Boyd, D-Lakewood, has tried to get through House four (!) times, was finally passed on Monday and will allow pharmacists (those who don’t carry some inherent objection to doing their job, that is) to prescribe so called morning after pills, without a doctor’s approval. In what the Denver Post describes as “an unprecedented shift of power from doctors”, sanity finally prevailed over patriarchy.

To illustrate what Boyd has been up against (and if it wasn’t for the relentless insistence of women like her, where would we be?) I will quote Rep. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs: “This is going to be used quite frequently by sexually active women --- If we allow it to be used with impunity, without strong doctoral oversight, I think we’re going to see an increase in sexually transmitted diseases”.

God help me. This is just the kind of comment that makes it really hard for me to stay calm and refrain from juvenile food-throwing. Would Mr Schultheis perhaps like to come to my house for a glass of wine and a little chat on women’s sexuality?

OK, just to recap, in case you haven’t spent the last few years thinking about women and sex. (What are you – the Gruffalo?!)

Medical science has come up with a solution to the problem of discovering too late that your contraception of choice didn’t work as intended. (Or that you indeed forgot to use contraception in the first place – a mistake that automatically qualifies you, too, for a little chat at my house.) This solution is called the morning after pill, and if you don’t know what that is, you have been living on a different planet for the last ten years and I’m not even going to bother.

So what do we do with this ground-breaking discovery? Well, we could make it available to women who request it. We could let these women use their own judgement to assess whether it would be morally appropriate to prevent an unwanted pregnancy (yes – prevent, which is what we are talking about here, not terminate like some people suggest). Women can even vote nowadays, you know!

Trouble is, if we do that, aren’t we going to get a whole load of floosies going around jumping into bed with anything that moves and contracting all manner of diseases? Well, of course we are! We all know that women have no brains, and don’t give a sh*t whether they contract STD – all that matters to women is that they don’t get some kid around their neck that might prevent them from pursuing their immoral lifestyle. So if we put at their disposal – WITHOUT DOCTORAL OVERSIGHT – a tool to prevent unwanted pregnancy, what is there to stop them?

And the men? Whaddyamean? This doesn’t have anything to do with men! (Well, unless they are dressed in white coats and able to exercise oversight.) Men? They just stick it in wherever they can, how do you expect them to think about stuff like babies or syphilis? Forget it – here we are at the most rotten core of patriarchy: women’s sexuality. Even in 2006, the mere mention of it is enough to make some people shudder. How could we possibly let women take control of their own sexuality? God knows what might happen!

And maybe it is to God that Mr Schulteis should turn, because I would like to know what this doctoral oversight that he is hoping for is supposed to entail, exactly. Will you bear with me for a moment, Sir, while we go back to basics?

Boy meets girl. Boy wants to have sex with girl. Girl says yes. Girl wakes up next morning with big headache and growing anxiety. Girl realises pregnancy may occur and wishes to use morning after pill. Now what?

Well, in my world, she goes to Walgreens to buy it (and any pharmacist who refuses to sell it will be history, serving latte at Starbucks). In Mr Schulteis’ world she goes to the doctor for some “oversight”. In STD terms, the difference is what, exactly? She either contracted something from that guy or she didn’t, right? No amount of doctoral oversight is going to change an event that already happened.

Or perhaps what Mr Schulteis is saying is that if we reverse back to when the irresponsible little good-for-nothing wanted to get this little tramp into bed, she would have had the following conversation with herself:

- Mmm, yeah, he’s pretty fly, but what are we going to do about protection? I don’t want to get pregnant or nothin’. But hang on a minute… There’s that pill, right? So if I mess up tonight I can just go get something to make sure I don’t get pregnant? Right on, let’s GO!!

Sorry, Mr Schulteis, but perhaps it’s time for that chat now? The door is open, come right in.