by Jessica Hille
You
can’t watch TV without seeing a commercial for a pill of some kind. Some help
you sleep. Some help you stay awake. Some make you stop sneezing. Some make you
enjoy sitting in a bathtub in your back yard (apparently). Pills for men and
women, like decongestants, and pills specifically for men, like the
famous/infamous Little Blue Pill, are generally accepted without much
controversy in our well-medicated society. Pills specifically for women,
however, spark intense debate and inspire strict government regulation.
Consider
the provisions in the Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare”) that require health
insurers to cover all FDA-approved contraception, making it available in many
cases without a copay. This long overdue
policy should be a no-brainer. Instead,
it’s being challenged in dozens
of lawsuits across the country. The fact that access to contraception has been
shown again
and again
to improve maternal and infant health and lower
teen birth rates seems irrelevant to those who continue
to view women primarily as wives and mothers. (Note: There is NOTHING wrong
with being a wife and/or a mother. The problem comes in the requirement.)
Then
there are the ongoing battles over providing over-the-counter access to Plan B. In 2011, the Obama administration announced
that the Department of Health and Human Services would overrule the FDA’s
recommendation to allow over-the-counter sales for Plan B without age
restrictions. The Administration’s
perplexing stance received the criticism
it deserved. In April 2013, a federal judge ordered
the FDA to make Plan B available over the counter without age restrictions,
saying the restrictions are “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable.” The Obama administration dropped their appeal of the decision just this week.
In
Louisiana, the state legislature just passed a bill
to ban what anti-choice extremists are calling “telemed” abortions, where doctors
prescribe drugs used for medication abortions by video call. The restriction
will make it much harder
for women who live far from the state’s three cities with
abortion clinics.
And
now there’s the so-called “female
Viagra,” a drug being developed to stimulate a woman’s sex
drive. All these pills for women, dealing with sex and its consequences, evoke
tremendous responses both in support and opposition. Some believe that
contraception, particularly when combined with libido enhancers for women, will
lead to promiscuity, lack of romance, and the end of civilization as we know
it. If the robots and the zombies don’t get us first, sex-crazed,
babyless women certainly will.
Here’s
a simple idea: Women deserve to be able
to access safe, effective medications that are integral to their health and
their ability to control when and if to have a baby. Women, like men, also
deserve fulfilling sex lives they can enjoy for a lifetime without being
labeled unnatural nymphomaniacs. For health care and justice, we need a refill.
Jessica Hille just finished her internship with Legal Voice. She's just finished up her LLM inLaw and Policy at the University
of Washington-Seattle. She is moving to Bloomington, Indiana to start a PhD in
Gender Studies this fall and hopes to use her legal and advocacy background to
promote gender equality and reproductive justice theory and policies.
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