Apparently not the powers that be.
I'll try my hardest to keep this OP-ED rant in line, but I can't promise anything. And while I try to cite some sources that informed my opinion, I did not get them all.
Again, this is simply my opinion.
Topic de jour: Women's healthcare.
Okay, so as a woman, I get really tired of hearing how to be my gender is so special and valued, yet I continue to see hard societal evidence that indicates 'they' think the contrary.
I don't feel valued as a woman when I have to accept that:
1) I'll get paid less for doing the same work as a man...at every level (And even if it's 99cents to the dollar, it's still less...that's for those who like to say 'about equal')
2) The kind of work I'm most likely to take or get has poorer all around compensation than that of the work men traditionally do.
3) I'll have a '2nd shift' when I get home from work (if I'm married whether I have kids or not)
4) If I get married and later divorce, my standard of living will drop more than my husband's and may even go lower than it would have been if I never married at all.
5) If I have a baby and already work, that I am NOT entitled by law to any paid leave.
What's so special about these 'special' treatments? Nothing.
One of the few places I could rely on for 'special treatment' was specialized health care services that catered to my female body. After all, I'm an Earth-mother goddess, destined to birth (should I so choose....and I have).However, a flurry of reports this week leaves me thinking I can't expect this special treatment for much longer as things I've accepted as health care rights have been deemed unnecessary privileges, so they're being chipped away.
The Booby wars:
I'm too young to qualify for a mammogram, but I still do regular self exams, you know, just to be familiar with the girls. I have a history of breast cancer (as well as other cancers) in my family and know that can be a contributing factor to my own likelihood of developing the disease.
Apparently being Caucasian and middle class doesn't help either.
When I heard the reports (more ) this week, I was most troubled by some wording an official offered: self examination doesn't reduce the rate of mortality.
Okay. So I should stop?
Yet in the same breath the official admitted that a significant percentage of women who 'catch' the cancer at the earlier stages do so through self exam and bring the lumps to the attention of their doctors.
I understand about the mortality claim, but why is it so hard to align these two messages and say "Keep checking. To catch it earlier is better, BUT it's no guarantee of success in overcoming the cancer."
That seems easy enough.
More than anything, what I heard is: health care coverage doesn't want to pay for preventative maintenance. Sure, they'll take the gamble of paying out more for cases that go to invasive treatment, but why bother paying for preventative care when precaution doesn't actually appear to predict a positive outcome.
Might as well let ladies die from their diseased breasts when the time is thrust upon them rather than make them suffer through years of hope they might 'beat it' and, at the same time, waste gobs of insurance money on the dying when it could go to shareholders.
It's yucky.
The Annual Exam: (here and here)
Okay, COME ON people.
So long as you (and I mean men) can't produce offspring without women, at least give us an annual piece of mind that our reproductive body parts are in good working order. Sure, most of us ladies won't have issues, but it's still comforting to go and hear it ONCE a year.
What I'm not reading in the news coverage is what these new guidelines are saying about women and their sexual choices.
The recommendation that women don't get a first pap until 21 is ludicrous. Ever hear about establishing a healthy baseline???
And what percentage of women in the US are virgins till 21? I'll tell you, it isn't the majority.
So, trust 'abstinence only' programs and inconsistent education of women about the risks of unprotected intercourse (premarital or marital) to take care of the matter. Who's up for a little game of HPV Russian roulette?
I use this metaphor because it's men that spread this disease to women, and because men conveniently do NOT have cervices they never catch it. Plus, since men don't go in for any routine annual penial screenings during their busy young years, no one ever tests them as carriers (and they wouldn't anyway because, wow, it's too expensive). Why should they care right? No cervices, remember.
What further antagonizes me is the notion that women should only get screenings every other year in their 20's, and once they hit their 30's (and are presumably married or spinsters) they only need screenings every three years (so long as they had 3 years of clean billing).
Okay, get real. Women aren't quite as slutty past 30 as they may have been from 18-29, but that doesn't mean the men they choose to be with (even on a long term basis) are any less likely to give them one of the types of HPV that could develop into cancer.
Anyone following Law and Order's weaved in PSA about this matter, by the way? Cervical cancer can strike at any age. The HPV virus likes to stay dormant for as long or as little as it chooses. And being on the young side of womanhood does NOT preclude you from having it develop....especially if you're a smoker, have multiple partners or don't take care of yourself. And, let's be honest, young ladies run themselves ragged, I'm surprised stress alone doesn't turn into a random form of cancer in the 20's.
As someone who herself has dealt with the precursor to cervical cancer (cervical dysplasia) I can say that it's terrifying to hear you've had a bad pap. But on the other hand, you hope it was caught in good time for treatment. In my case it was. But I had had more than three years of clean paps before they found this bad one and, according to these new guidelines, I might have been in the middle of a two year waiting period and could have missed these early signs. Then what? I go in a year later to find I have full blown cancer?
The other thing worth mentioning is, once I found out I had HPV, a ridiculous number of women I knew confessed they'd dealt with it too. I was shocked. Seriously. Their age of discovery ranged from late teens right through the golden years. One woman, who'd been diagnosed at 60, only ever had one sexual partner.
Now with things like Gardisil on the market and the reduction of annual screenings, I wonder why this burden to protect their bodies must fall so heavily and unequally on women's shoulders? Why aren't there gobs of resources going towards educating men to keep it covered so as to protect their current and future partners? Apparently the threat of HIV or pregnancy isn't enough for men because women bear the brunt of the unprotected sex burden (married or not) more than men ever will.
Abortion:
Since I'm firestorming, I might as well throw this in too.
With healthcare reform looming, it appears the Democrats no longer have to worry about the the burden of protecting the rights a woman has over her own body.
People just don't care as much.
This topic generates an unbelievably heated debate that will probably never find a happy middle ground, sad to say.
When a woman climbs into bed with a lover, she's bringing in the church, the government and their community. God forbid she gets a little privacy.
She's told: don't have sex before marriage; don't use contraception (married or not); don't protect yourself from disease; if you think you have something, don't bother asking for screening if you don't have any history of the disease (what?); no one wants to pay for you to stop being pregnant if you're left out in the cold by the one who impregnated you AND we also won't help you raise your kid (but we are willing to later kill him/her by lethal injection if we think it's the right choice for your child).
All the messages being sent to women (not limited to the health care front) lead down one path: get married young, learn to deal with it and have babies. This is so 19th century.
For some women this is a fine choice (see I used the word CHOICE), but it shouldn't be a mandate.
Everything with a woman's body should be her choice, especially an informed one, and that means we need to get on the ball with equally educating our men to be accountable for their choices and the impacts they have not only on themselves but their partners.
Wrapping up:
As public policy is further polluted by the narrow agendas of insurance companies, religious organizations and other not-so-special interest groups, many of the rights women have fought for over the last century are slowly being stripped from them. Not legally, mind you, so much as through increasing ribbons of constraint in choices.
Just because I currently have the choice for an abortion, doesn't mean I'll take it. I was raised and educated to respect myself (which I missed to some extent since I did end up with HPV), and I went to great lengths to be certain I never got pregnant before I was ready. I'm glad I never had to face that decision as so many of my peers did, but I'm equally glad that if I had to face that decision whatever I chose would have been of my own determination.
I've been grateful for the access I've had to health care that caught my cervical dysplasia BEFORE it bloomed into cancer, but am saddened that other women like me might not be so fortunate in the near future.
I'm glad that I have practitioners that encourage me to be familiar with my body and report anything out of the ordinary, whether or not it increases my chance of surviving it. I like being proactive.
I do think there is something 'special' about living in a woman's body. It certainly can broaden the range of experience I choose to have in my lifetime, whether I choose the path of career woman, mother and wife, or all of the above. And while these all are my choices at the end of the day, my body (and the bodies of all women) are still necessary to ensure the continuation of the human species on this planet.
For that reason alone I think we deserve a little extra health care consideration from our societies, but not at the cost of precluding us from having a voice in those care decisions.
Peace
A Pink American
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