Birth Control is a Minor Issue?

Since birth control issues were raised in the context of the requirements for health insurance companies to provide insurance, we've heard pundits say that women will vote for what really counts, the economy. They are not interested in such trivial issues. Here's the problem. Our issues (jobs included) are always seen, through sexist eyes, as trivial. Therefore, birth control is trivial. But I have news for you - There is nothing small or trivial about birth control. Without birth control, women do not have the ability to control what they can do in their lives, when they can do it, or even start to leverage how much they want to earn doing it. Period.

Birth control affects our ability to complete high school, college, graduate school, and to find work. How many teenagers can't finish high school because of child care? How many women can't finish college because of young children? We know that having a B.A. allows one to earn over a hundred thousand dollars over a lifetime over one who only has a high school diploma. How many women can't study what they want to because of children? How many women are challenged in their work everyday from child care? We love our children. We would not have our lives any other way - but we do want to control over what we're doing in our lives and when we're doing it, and the inability to access low cost birth control directly impacts this because we can't control when we're having kids. Young children take a lot of resource and deciding when you take on raising young kids matters! So before we continue to insult women while we're at war, politicians and pundits need to take note. Birth control is no minor issue. It impacts our economic possibilities. Of course, if men took responsibility for where their stuff ended up, this might be less troublesome. But until then, hands off of our birth control! Just sayin'.