Here is a $12 billion problem we really can actually go a long way towards eliminating.
There are 62 million American women of childbearing age, 43 million of whom are “at risk” for unintended pregnancy. Women manage their fertility for an average of 30 years. “At risk”—like an unplanned pregnancy is something that just happens to you, out of your control. NOT. These pregnancies have consequences for all of us. Someone needs to introduce the Purity Bear to the $12 billion dollars worth of consequences. And that’s a conservative estimate.
Most girls and women (some of whom are part of a couple…) don’t get pregnant if they don’t want to when they have access to safe, affordable birth control, including emergency contraception. There are no medical or scientific reasons why girls and women need prescriptions for methods relevant to their needs. Just religious, shame-based ones based on stereotypes, control and fear. We should be scheduling birth control biotechnologies the way we do vaccines and they should not require prescriptions. That or we should start requiring prescriptions for condoms. Exactly how long do you think that option would fly with the Pecker Patrol?
The most obvious and immediate issue is the fact that emergency contraception, Plan B, is not available without a prescription and should be. The longer term issue is why American women are ill-informed about and therefore not using long-acting forms of reversible contraception. Read full article.
