Sign Your Name
March 30, 2009
Recently, President Obama signed the appropriations bill that will once more restore birth control prices on college campuses and in clinics everywhere to reasonable prices. Hooray!
It is a big win for pro-choicers. The price of birth control pills on college campuses and in clinics had skyrocketed due to a previous law, which lumped oral contraception in with narcotics and other serious prescription meds which were not to be sold in bulk anymore. That means they had to be bought individually; prices soared. The price raise was particularly heinous because it largely affected the economically challenged college students and women without private health insurance to cover their medications. It forced those who could not afford to pay more to either scrounge up 9x as much money per pack to pay for the pills, or go without and take the risks. It unfairly robbed them of their choices.
Now, birth control pills will be able to be bought in bulk again, and prices can come down. Women will be able to afford their options again, and choose to avoid pregnancy as they did before, but without breaking the bank or going out of their way to get it elsewhere.
How did this happen? Was it luck?
No.
This wonderful change – or rather, this totally necessary correction to a ridiculous political move against women and their choices – came about because of the voice of the feminists, the pro-choicers, the Americans who believe in reproductive rights. We had our say in the election, and put more pro-choicers in Congress and the Senate. Then we elected President Obama, a declared feminist. Then we petitioned these people we had chosen to represent us in order to make ourselves heard. We worked hard. We spoke loudly. We signed our names over and over to postcards and letters and emails and petitions and lists and showed up at rallies and made phone calls to tell them what we need: our rights.
We activists do this so often that we forget why. We forget that it isn’t just a formality, just what we ought to do to call ourselves feminists and activists. We’re doing this to actually change the country. We want our country to protect us, as individuals, and our rights as women, as daughters, as mothers, as students, as children, as wives, as human beings. Your country will protect you if you make them learn who you are and what you need.
They will listen. Get out there. Make a difference. Sign your name.
