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I write the following in response to various sentiments I have heard and read in recent years, particularly the letters and editorials I have seen disapproving of a school’s decision to make birth control available to its students.
The letter of the law may bar the door to certain rights and privileges of adulthood, but the admittance to womanhood is marked by the unmistakable red of menstrual blood. Whether the woman, who we often call “a girl” in our society, is nine or 18 years old at the onset of menstruation, she now has a sexually mature body which ovulates and bleeds each month. Her next steps are pragmatic ones, born of this new situation.
First of all, she must deal with menstruation. She must ensure that she has an adequate supply of pads, tampons or alternative menstrual products. Regardless of whether she, her mother or another caregiver purchases these items, she personally changes a pad or inserts a tampon.
She must deal with the headaches, cramps and emotional sensitivity that can come before a period. Regardless of whether she chooses ibuprofen, tea, hot water bottles or any other method to alleviate her discomfort, it is she who identifies that discomfort and administers the remedy.
These last scenarios are of particular concern: She must deal with the shifting and sometimes powerful feelings of sexual desire that occur during ovulation for many women. She must make decisions about whether or not to have sex. She must deal with the reality that someone else may make the decision for her.
There are also some external factors that prevent her from making the choices that are rightfully hers. In this country, examples include institutionally enforced ignorance and a climate where sexual aggression towards young women is ignored, or even tacitly condoned by many members of society. For this woman, regardless of her age, regardless of the adequacy of her sexual education and regardless of whether the sexual contact she may engage is consensual or not, it is she who can become a mother.
Here in the United States, we prize the right of self-determination. For a woman who must, in all other things, be fully and intimately active in whatever the experience of her womanhood may bring her, to be denied ownership of her own sexuality is to do no less than to tear down this country’s identity as a democracy in which women take equal part. A woman, of voting age or not, who is prohibited from fully understanding her ability to reproduce by anything less than a comprehensive sexual education by both her parents and her school is being failed by our democracy.
A woman who is forced to have sex by someone who was not taught to respect her right to self-determination is being failed by our democracy. A woman who is prohibited from deciding how many children she will give her body, energy and devotion to for much of her life by being denied access to safe and effective birth control and – should that fail – the ability to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, is being failed by our democracy.
If women, as defined by the age of menstrual onset, are to be considered citizens of this country and not merely children, nor, unthinkably, as our collective reproductive property, we must allow them their rightful control over their sexuality and reproduction. Anything less is not in keeping with our understanding of women as individuals or our great pride in our nation’s identity as a democracy.
Krista Ricupero is a civil engineering major.
Bangor Daily News