It’s only been a month. As voters, we are twiddling our thumbs to see if another ridiculous bill catered to limiting a woman’s control of her body will pass through the House and Senate.
With the help of the Refusal Clause, the dream of birth control for all women with health insurance — with no co-pay — could be further away than we had hoped. This clause, passed in order to exempt certain members of religious groups from offering “free” birth control, has been marked by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops or the Catholic Health Association as insufficient.
These bills are just a big “screw you” to women who don’t want to have babies before they feel ready. The fact that no other aspects of birth control are being looked into is not only beyond stupid, but also irresponsible.
Endocrine disruptors found in contraceptives are often detrimental to entire ecosystems. Instead of demanding our pharmaceutical companies create something a little more functional, we’re busy trying to get rid of the product entirely.
If the product were Viagra, there would be a plethora of outrage from men who feel that, although nature has told them that they can no longer hold an erection, the ability to defy the odds with a magical blue pill far outweighs anything else.
The fact women are continuously seen as reproduction machines is outrageous, but what’s more outrageous are the risks we have to take if we don’t want to have babies.
Birth control includes some pretty unpleasant side effects.
Using birth control increases the odds of depression, heart attack, blood clots, weight gain, sore breasts and nausea, according to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services on Women’s Health.
New studies from neurologists say the progestin in it may even impact our thinking, but what’s worse is we’re not the only ones suffering from the absurdity that is the pharmaceutical industry.
Rather than telling the pharmaceutical industry to create a better product, we’re stuck taking the same awful pills. We’re not the only ones suffering from it.
The simple excretion of these hormones from our bodies into the sewage systems and eventually waterways isn’t enough to eliminate the endocrine disruptors and, thus, causes extensive damage to the marine ecosystem.
In their study “Environmental Impact of Contraceptive Use,” authors John E. Ehiri and Martin Birley, both doctors at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, wrote the effects on aquatic life are significant:
“One of the most worrying examples of the effects of such pollutants on aquatic life in the UK was the identification around the coast, of a condition known as ‘imposex’ in dog whelks, in which females acquire male characteristics that physically prevent them (the females) from laying