Morality Causes, EC, and Broken Condoms

[catbert836]

Sickening. Just sickening.

From the Den of the Biting Beaver:

I'm stunned. I'm utterly, completely stunned. I'm shaky and anxious and shocked beyond belief. I live in rural Ohio and I have been denied EC.

Two months ago I stopped taking birth control. My body finally decided that it was fed up and the cycle of side-effects began again as they have every time I've taken hormonal contraception since I was a teenager. The Depo shot culminated in a trip to the ER due to heavy bleeding and fainting. So my doctor switched me to the yet another low-dose birth control pill which began fucking me up several months ago. So, approximately 2 months ago I stopped taking it.

I am also unable to be fitted for birth control methods that block your cervix seeing as how I have almost no cervix left after my operation last year. So for the last few months I have relied exclusively on condoms.

Friday night the condom broke. But I didn't panic, I thought to myself, with a huge sigh of relief, "Wow, thank goodness it's over the counter now!" and I fell asleep (since there are absolutely NO 24 hour pharmacies within 100 miles of me). Saturday morning I awoke and phoned the pharmacy. I asked them about EC and was told that they won't be stocking it until January 1st, until then it was still by prescription only.

I phoned my doctors office which informed me that the office was closed and that I had to call the local hospital and have her paged in order to reach her on the weekend. So I called her and had them page her. A little while later she called back and I answered the phone immediately. She sounded tired and really grumpy; I apologized for having to page her for a thing like this and then asked her if I could get a prescription for EC. She explained that I needed to go to the Emergency Room to get it.

My heart fell, the ER has a 100$ co-pay attached to it. "Well," I thought to myself, "that's still better than the price of a kid" so I called the Emergency Room to verify the information and to ask what their procedures were. When I called the hospital they transferred me to the ER. I asked the nurse what the procedure was for EC and what would be the best time to come down there (I didn't want to wind up behind 3 critical people and end up waiting for 12 hours). The nurse responded in a small, questioning voice, "EC?" and so I explained. "Yes, Emergency Contraception. Plan B. You know, right?"

"Well see," he begins, his voice dropping a little, "the problem is that you have to meet the doctor’s criteria before he'll dispense it to you."

"Criteria?" I question.

"Well," the nurse sounds decidedly nervous as though what he really wanted to do was hang up the phone completely, "Yes, his criteria. I mean...ummm...well, are you ok? Is there any, ummm....trauma?" he asks me.

My face changes expression and I hurry to explain, "No, no" I said, "No. I haven't been raped. This was consensual sex."

"Oh..." he trails off.

I wait expectantly.

"Well, ummm....*clears throat*...So you haven't been raped?" he asks again.

"No. I have not been raped. The condom broke". I state, becoming very frustrated at this point and wondering what the hell is going on.

"Ok, well ummm....Are you married?" he mumbles the words so low I can barely hear them.

"No." I state plainly. "I am not married. I've been in a relationship for several years and I have three children, I don't want a fourth." I respond tersely.

"Oh, I see." He says and then he hurries on, "Well, see. *I* understand. I want you to know that I understand what you're saying. But see, the problem is that we have 4 doctors here right now but only one of them ever writes EC prescriptions. But see, the thing is that he'll interview you and see if you meet his criteria. Now, I called the pharmacy but I also talked to him and well....*clears throat*....you can come down and try to get it. You know, if you meet his criteria he'll give you a prescription, I mean, there's really no harm in trying." the nurse trails off, his voice falters as I realize what I'm being told.

I opened the phone book again and called the Urgent Care in my county. Who knows, maybe they'll do it for me. "No," the nurse said, "We don't prescribe the abortion pill here".

"No, wait I'm not asking for the abortion pill. I'm asking for EC!" I say, "It's not the same thing."

"Well, we use the words interchangeably here. Sorry, we don't prescribe it". She all but races to get off the phone with me.

I have been asked about my sexual practices. Whether I'm 'monogamous' or 'in a relationship' if I'm married, if I have kids, how many kids I have, if I was raped or 'traumatized' but there wasn’t' ONE question about my health. Not one. The few places that said that they had a doctor who would occasionally write prescriptions for EC told me that I had to ask for that doctor specifically and then they proceeded to tell me that I would be 'interviewed' to see if I meet that doctors 'criteria' and then they proceeded to ask me all the above questions before telling me that I should 'try anyway' and I 'might be able to talk him into it'.

Read the whole story here: http://bitingbeaver.blogspot.com/2006/09/morality-clauses-ec-and-broken-condoms.html

[Howardx]

1. "I live in rural Ohio "

man! worse than i thought!

[mongo]

2. Sorry, but I just don't buy it

And after reading other lies at this site, this woman turns a good yarn, but EC is just not that hard to find.

First of all, a google search would have led her here:

http://ec.princeton.edu/ec-provider-by-areacode.asp

Or, if nothing was open on Sat, She could have gone here to get a script online:
http://www.getthepill.com/

Which, with a little more searching, she would have known she could have had called in to any Kroger pharmacy to be filled. This is Ohio -- no way she is more than 100 miles from a Kroger. It's hard to be 100 miles from a major city (Cincinatti, Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, Cleveland) when you live in Ohio. It's a pretty populated state.

I just think that a smart woman with her own flashy and popular blog would have figured out how to get EC if she really needed it. And I've read other pages on that site that I know are chock full of lies.

[novalib]

4. What Possible Reason???!!!!

What possible reason is there that someone would make up a story like this?

Women DO NOT LIE about such things!!!

[mongo]

5. A lot of people lie to futther their adgenda

Especially if you have a popular and well read blog....

Why did she wait until Monday to post and ask if the BC she had lying around would work? Why didn't she do a little googleing and find out it would?

"Rural" Ohio just isn't that rural -- it's not Wyoming.

Like you, I was taken aback and felt so sorry for this woman when I first read the story. But then I saw some other entries (by her SO?), and read the blantant lies there, that most people would believe, and then looked at this story from a rational standpoint rather than an emotional one.

Just too many questions, too many ways she could have solved her problem. But not being able to solve her problem makes a better story, no?

[Nobody]

3. I think the lesson we should all learn is

Once Plan B is available over the counter, everyone should buy a package and keep it handy. No more should we be at the mercy of someone else's small-mindedness.

If this ever ends up being you, tell them you ARE traumatized by the fear that you may be pregnant and you don't want/can't afford/will lose your job over/will get booted out of your house over/fear that you will die from giving birth to/(add your own trauma here)/ a baby.

Pregnancy is not a walk in the park to all women, especially those who don't want one.

As soon as the pharmacy opens, I'm going to stockpile Plan B and any time someone comes to me pregnant and not wanting to be, I will give them enough to prevent pregnancy from my stash.

The very idea that we should have to jump through hoops to exercise our rights as human beings is appalling.

Because I only want to post one at at time....

Whether the story is an actual happening, or whether it is merely illustrative fiction, the fact is that it could so very easily happen. I would be surprised if it's not commonplace in South Dakota.

It is entirely possible that if it isn't 100% verifiably accurate, it was a composite built from several unsuccessful attempts to obtain a legal medication. Not everyone has internet access. The blogger obviously does, but what about her nearest neighbor (who may be 2 miles away, especially in farm country)?

[RH Reality Check]

6. Its getting worse ...

Major conference held in Chicago last week entitled CONTRACEPTION IS NOT THE ANSWER and planned by the Pro-Life Action League had 250 people strategizing on how best to make contraception illegal. Fellow blogger Tyler LePard was there and is reporting on it at RH Reality Check.org.

These fundamentalists will not rest until they make us do what they believe, thus we cannot rest either. Please let people know that CONTRACEPTION is being threatened. They have had it on their agenda for a long time, its just now coming to the light of day.

[Nobody]

7. What a frightening thought and welcome to DU

There is a hell of a lot wrong with this picture. One, most people are sexual beings, they enjoy a roll in the hay with the partner of their choice. Some of those partners are opposite sex partners. Next, the world has well over 6 billion people and counting. Do we need a population explosion?

You can't argue logic with illogical people.

[noamnety]

8. Update

"I just wanted to post an update. The EC failed. For obvious reasons I don't feel much like posting right now. Therefore I'll be around in a little bit but right now I've got other things to tend to."

http://bitingbeaver.blogspot.com/2006/10/short-hiatus.html