Bree Adams – features editor. In the 1920s, Margaret Sanger and the American Birth Control League advocated the availability of birth control methods for women.
Fast-forward eight decades to me standing at the pharmacy counter scrutinizing the pharmacist with a grotesque look, right before I sneeze. My new insurance plan didn’t assist in any birth control expenses.
I’ve been on birth control since middle school, long before I tampered with the idea that anyone would even want to go near my Wild Waves/Enchanted Village. I take it to control chronic, debilitating migraines. Fortunately, studies have shown that having migraines dramatically decreases the chances of breast cancer; good news for the Doublemint Twins who, survey says, are often more fun to look at than my face.
Back to my sneeze-face. After acknowledging the humor in the new price for my particular brand of poison, $69, I tried to find a way out of it. But there wasn’t, not even if the birth control were taken for other medical reasons.
Half of insurance group plans don’t cover any prescription contraception, and only a third cover the Pill, according to medicinenet.com; compare this with almost all groups that cover the cost of Viagra.
This is socially irresponsible. It makes me want to have a baby, take it to the insurance company and leave it on the counter to show it its negligence. It is equivalent teenagers who think they don’t need to wrap it up and end up on an MTV documentary.
Thank the Lord for ABCL’s baby, Planned Parenthood. Pun intended.
You call ahead and promise not to bomb them, buzz in at the door, fill out some paperwork and get your fix. The biggest hassle was locating my birth certificate for the process.
Just don’t go on a Sunday, when the hypocrites are off work and protesting. They wave signs of baby pictures and spout Bible verses like obscenities. On a bad day, they make you want to flip them off and think of what their parents should’ve done instead back in the day. Watching them is like watching that French commercial where the kid throws a tantrum in a grocery store. Effective advertising for condoms.
Sex isn’t embarrassing to talk about, but it can be embarrassing to prepare for. I can be brash about sex: taking expired condoms from my roommate’s stash and blowing them up like balloons, loading up the decorative bowl with flavored condoms alongside the real fruit. But I’ll also be the first to admit that I hate buying them. For guys, it could be awkward, but I tend to believe the opposite. Guys can smirk at the cashier if they want to, especially buying a big box as if to say, “Yes, I’m using all these before the expiration date.”
For girls, the country’s Puritan foundations stand true: You set the box on the counter and you study the pattern of the ceiling tiles or the sale price of gum as if it was written by Nostradamus.
As a former grocery checker, I know I’m being judged by my purchases. That’s why I’m addicted to the self-checkout lanes. However, there’s a conundrum: Stores with self-checkout often have things such as condoms and pregnancy tests under locked glass, and those not locked up are in stores with no self-checkout. Others have you pinned between both a locked cabinet and a cashier.
This excessive care on the store’s part can cause carelessness on the part of the buyer. Staring at your reflection in the cashier’s eyes, or in the glass cabinet, can make you talk yourself out of it.
Why must complete strangers know our sex lives? It’s called birth control so that we the consumer can have control, not the other way around. If I were still an immature teenager, I would opt out of feeling like a dancing monkey with a fez and stay home. Hello MTV.
We live in a nation obsessed with sex, so much so that birth control is the one medication deemed important enough to stand separate with a vague, capitalized name like some golden city in an Amazonian jungle. The connotation of these words alone give them such profound cultural significance. This should not be taken lightly.
Do the right thing for you before you do it. It may seem like a hassle now, but momentary annoyances are far better than a kaleidoscope of future aggravations.
Enjoy yourselves, but please, do your part to keep our grocery stores at a pleasant volume.