The Catholic university I went to gave me a diploma. But when I needed birth control — something just as important for my future — I was on my own. For me and for a lot of people who go to religious universities, this is a common experience. And after the recent Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Pennsylvania, my experience could become even more common. And that’s not good for anyone.
In July, the Supreme Court ruled that universities and employers can deny students and employees health insurance coverage that would allow them to get birth control. This means that if the people in charge of a university or company have a “moral” or religious objection to birth control, they can exclude it from the health insurance offered to students and employees.
I’m accident prone, so when I went away to college I got to know the campus health center staff really well. When it was hard for me to get back to my usual provider, it just made sense for me to ask the campus health center staff about birth control. They shrugged me off saying, “That’s not really our specialty.”
It should be. Birth control is essential health care — no matter what kind of school you go to or who your boss is. Nearly nine in 10 women will use it in their lifetimes. And birth control is so important for students — the ability to get the pill before age 21 is the most influential factor enabling women already in college to stay there. It’s how we build careers after college. And for many people, it’s the medicine they need to treat endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, and other ovarian conditions. It’s how many people manage painful or irregular periods. Birth control is a vital part of our lives.
Yet no other kind of health care is subject to the whims of your boss or your college administration. Sexual and reproductive health care — including birth control — has been the target of political attacks for generations. Policies like my university’s and the Trump administration’s are part of a long history going back to the Comstock laws — when the state dictated what was “moral” in people’s personal lives and made disseminating birth control a federal offense. We should not be bringing back ideologies from 1873.
At my university, it went beyond birth control. The health center there wouldn’t provide prescription birth control, STI tests, or even condoms. Not even when I was sexually assaulted and called the campus health center for help. No emergency contraception, no STI testing, nothing — when I needed it most. When I asked if they knew where the closest Planned Parenthood was, they told me to use my own resources to find out. Thankfully, I have access to the magic of the internet and the means to travel.
But not everyone has the resources to figure out how to get health care in this country. Health insurance is confusing too, especially when you’re a young person navigating it for the first time. I was lucky to find a Planned Parenthood health center near campus, which I continued to visit for sexual and reproductive health care throughout the rest of my time in college. I even got a Pap test there when my campus health center, of course, refused to provide it.
Getting birth control should be easy. Yet, the Supreme Court is letting the Trump administration’s rule affect not just students like me, but women, families, and LGBTQ+ people whose employers have their own moral or religious objections to people accessing this care.
I’m afraid for them. I’m afraid for students who need birth control to focus on their classes and prepare for their futures. I’m afraid for myself, a recent college graduate looking for a job. Will my future employer provide health insurance that covers birth control? I believe everyone should be able to get the health care they need — including birth control — and that we should be working to make it easier to access. I wish the Supreme Court agreed.
Mattise Wood recently graduated from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington with dual degrees in Biology, Women and Gender Studies, and Comprehensive Leadership.
In the summer of 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law. For the first time, disability was federally codified as a category of discrimination in all aspects of public life, including employment, transportation, education, housing, and health care. This landmark law not only established baseline protections for people with disabilities, but also laid the foundation for sexual and reproductive health and rights, including protections in the workplace for pregnant people, and people living with HIV.
Despite the importance of the ADA in advancing access to health care, people with disabilities are mostly absent in conversations about sexual and reproductive health, and this inattention often translates into subpar services from providers. This year, I’m honoring the legacy of the ADA by sharing my story as a woman with a disability navigating what is taken for granted by so many as a routine procedure: a Pap test.
Since I was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at the age of 9, my body has been looked at, poked, and pried by a myriad of health professionals. So, I was used to a certain level of awkwardness or discomfort as part of the health care experience. But, when I went for a common preventive sexual health exam — a Pap test — I was surprised and disappointed to feel like my disability was an inconvenience to my doctor.
When my appointment began, I immediately felt out of place. The nurses who brought me into the doctor’s office looked me up and down, giving me the sense that they did not know what to do with my chair or my body. (My muscular dystrophy requires that I use a motorized scooter to move around.) I’d hoped things would smooth over once the doctor arrived, but it soon became clear that I wasn’t going to be equitably treated. Rather than feeling confidence and trust, I was anxious and uncomfortable. I felt unsafe and shaky as I coached the nursing staff on how to guide my legs and help me onto the exam table.
At one point, I asked the doctor, “How often do disabled women come in for check-ups?” “We have some here and there,” she said. I felt like I was being told that patients with disabilities were not even an afterthought. Towards the end of the procedure, I asked the doctor to take a pause. She didn’t stop. As the doctor and nursing staff left the room with a completed exam, I took a moment for myself and cried before entering the office hallway.
After the procedure, I thought of my friends — other people with disabilities — and wondered how they, too, have likely been let down by our health care system, and might even be discouraged from accessing basic, but needed, preventive sexual health screenings as a result of a negative experience. While gender-based inequities in health care are finally being discussed more openly, gaps in care for people with disabilities, particularly women, remain hidden.
According to the National Council on Disability, women with disabilities are less likely to receive annual Pap tests and mammograms compared to women without disabilities, regardless of age. We are also more likely than women without disabilities to delay getting the medical care we need, and some of us have reported avoiding reproductive health appointments altogether because accessible services are so difficult to get.
I’m also mindful that, as a college-educated white woman living in a city setting, I have, despite my disability, access to resources that many others do not. Recognizing the intersection of disability with other forms of oppression is critical, especially because the rates of disability are significantly higher among Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native women. It’s important that equitable, disability-inclusive, and affordable health care is available for all people regardless of age, income, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity, and geography.
As a whole, society needs to view sexual and reproductive health care with the same level of importance as any other type of medical care for the disability community. We need to ensure all doctors and nurses have a basic understanding of treating patients with disabilities, particularly with sexual and reproductive health services. Disabled bodies are like all other human bodies — beautiful, imperfect, and deserving of quality care.
Since the ADA was passed 29 years ago, people with disabilities have been more welcomed into health care facilities through accommodations — like a ramp or elevator — that literally let us through the door. But 29 years later, I, and people like me, don’t feel truly comfortable making an appointment for basic health services like a Pap test — because access to a doctor’s office is not the same as full and equal treatment by a provider.
For true change to occur, we need to collectively humanize dehumanizing experiences. It’s normal to feel self-conscious, and at times shameful around these stigmatized topics; however, I hope more people with disabilities are empowered to share their experiences. Our words have power, and I knew once I shared my story, I wouldn’t stop.
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Kristin Duquette(@KristinDuquette)is a globally-recognized disability rights advocate, a five-time American Paralympic Record Holder, three-time Junior National Record Holder, and the former Captain of the U.S. Swim Team for the 2010 Greek Open . From December 2015 to March 2017, Kristin served inside the Obama Administration as the Confidential Assistant to the Chief of Staff for the National Endowment for the Arts and currently works for the federal government.
Cailin Crockett (@C_A_Crockett)is a policy expert on gender-based violence, and former advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Aging and disability in the US. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Community Living. Her work on women’s health, intimate partner and sexual violence policy spans roles in the Obama White House, the United Nations Development Program, and US Department of Justice.
The attacks on reproductive health care, they’re on women, they’re on immigrants, they’re on LGBTQ people, they’re on people of color, they’re on low-income people. They’re really on all of us. And that’s why we need to speak out, we need to fight back on these policies, and to understand, too, that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and the consequence is people’s lives.
Dr. Leana Wen, President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America
The Trump administration is blocking a young immigrant woman in detention from accessing an abortion. Identified as “Jane Doe” to protect her privacy, this young woman, who likely faced countless dangers and hardships in her journey across the border, is being held hostage by a government that refuses to accept her fundamental rights.
A federal appeals court in Washington, DC has temporarily halted a judge’s order requiring the federal government to allow Jane Doe to get an abortion.
Today, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and coalition partners are coming together outside the Department of Health and Human Services in opposition of this gross injustice to send the message that access to safe and legal abortion is a constitutional right for all — no matter who you are or where you’re from.
Women of color have refused to divide civil rights from reproductive rights. Rather, they have transformed the fight for both by creating an ever-expanding comprehensive reproductive justice agenda.
Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross and Elena Gutiérrez
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