Thursday, September 27, 2012

For the Broken Women

*This is a quick jot down so not very edited.  

Sandrah Fluke is coming to speak at Hollins, and the shit storm has already begun. There is a group that has formed to protest this event but it seems divided. The one who started it isn't even a Hollins student, and he is protesting Ms. Fluke and all she stands for. (And what he thinks that is I have no idea) The other half is protesting that Hollins doesn't have more Conservative/Republican speakers. 

Now For the half that want speakers that represent them, by all means go for it, but a protest when she speaks is not the way. Go prove that there is an interest in your speaker and go through the steps that are there to bring a speaker to campus. It's not that hard. Also Sandra is not a person who makes her living in the political field, and there for protesting her anyway is well...not very efective

For the other half, you know not what you do. Sandra dose not stand for women saying that the government should pay for their sex. When I hear her speak or when I read what she said, I smile because finally someone is standing for those like me.

“For my friend and 20% of the women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verifications of her illness from her doctor, her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wan
ted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay. So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her.
“After months paying over $100 out-of-pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore, and she had to stop taking it.
“I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of the night in her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room. She’d been there all night in just terrible, excruciating pain. She wrote to me, ‘It was so painful I’d woke up thinking I’ve been shot.’
“Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary as a result.
“On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony, she was sitting in a doctor’s office, trying to cope with the consequences of this medical catastrophe.
“Since last year’s surgery, she’s been experiencing night sweats and weight gain and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the removal of her ovary. She’s 32-years-old.
“As she put it, ‘If my body indeed does enter early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children. I will have no choice at giving my mother her desperately desired grandbabies simply because the insurance policy that I paid for, totally unsubsidized by my school, wouldn’t cover my prescription for birth control when I needed it.’
“Now, in addition to potentially facing the health complications that come with having menopause at such an early age – increased risk of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis – she may never be able to conceive a child.
“Some may say that my friend’s tragic story is rare. It’s not. I wish it were
“One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but that can’t be proven without surgery. So the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication – the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis.
“Recently, another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it.
“Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medications since last August.
“I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.
“Because this is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends: A woman’s reproductive health care isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority."

Women wanting birth control to be able to control the children they bear, and thus control their financial situation, ability to care for themselves, their health and their families, are somehow controversial and called sluts..




-Fluke
I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. 

I have been told by society that I am not a woman if I can't have children. That if I take the pill for any resin at all I am a sex crazed slut. I can't win.

Yet here is a woman. A non slut, unbroken woman standing up for those like me. 

When she comes I will shake her hand and thank her. She will never know how much her words mean to me. 

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