Awwwww yeah. Also, hell yeah.
Despite the rending of garments, filing of lawsuits, protests and demonstrations and even threats of violence, something amazing happened this week:
Beginning today, up to 47 million women may be eligible to get free access to preventive health care services as that provision of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act goes into effect.
Ladies, we have health care. We have basic, preventive, life-saving, life-changing health care:
- Well-woman visits
- Gestational diabetes screening
- HPV DNA testing
- STI counseling
- HIV screening and counseling
- Contraception and contraceptive counseling
- Breastfeeding support, supplies, and counseling
- Interpersonal and domestic violence screening and counseling
It's not everything. It's not perfect. It doesn't help every single American woman who currently doesn't have affordable access to health care. But those of us who are fortunate enough to have health insurance are now guaranteed access to and coverage of these very basic, very good-for-us-ladies care, including, yup, those sweet, sweet slut pills (aka, contraception) that we all like, most of us use at some point in our lives, and can (as the video above from the Guttmacher Institute explains) make all the difference in the world for us to control our own bodies, our own reproduction, and our own lives. It's better for us, and it's better for our families. In fact, it's better for everyone.
As our vice president would say, it's a big fucking deal.
Such a big deal, according to Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Of course), it's like 9/11 and Pearl Harbor:
"I know in your mind you can think of times when America was attacked. One is December 7th, that's Pearl Harbor day. The other is September 11th, and that's the day of the terrorist attack," Kelly said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. "I want you to remember August the 1st, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom. That is a day that will live in infamy, along with those other dates."Yeah, yeah, yeah. Freedom died on Aug. 1 because women with health insurance now get diabetes screening. Oh, the humanity!
The status quo, the standard Republicans fought so hard to preserve, was the absurd notion that women don't need women's health care. During the fight over health care reform, for example, Sen. Jon "Not Intended To Be A Factual Statement" Kyl famously said that since he didn't need maternity care, he saw no reason to require insurance companies to provide it for anyone. Sen. Debbie Stabenow brilliantly responded, "I think your mom probably did."
And now it is the official position of the Health and Human Services Department of these United States of America that just because Jon Kyl doesn't personally need it doesn't mean it's not important. And that is a factual statement.
It's been a long, hard fight for us, with Rush Limbaugh insisting that any woman who uses, or even cares about, contraception is a slut, and the ever-obeisant Republican Party nodding along. We know that breast cancer screening is also, apparently, a sluts-only thing, since forced-birthers have been running around screaming that abortion causes breast cancer (no, assholes, for the millionth time, it doesn't), ergo, we don't really need to provide or fund breast cancer screening, because if you get breast cancer, you're probably a baby-killing slut and you deserve it. Republicans have nodded along with that one too. Only sluts need health care; non-sluts maintain perfect health through the magical power of Bible study or something.
Yeah. Well. Rep. Mike Kelly can suck it. And Sen. Jon Kyl can suck it. And Rush Limbaugh can suck it. And those whining, crying Catholic bishops can most definitely suck it. Because this week, critical provisions of Obamacare that are for us, for our lady parts needs, went into effect. And millions of American women are better off now than they were a week ago. And if that's upsetting to men who think vaginas are icky and women's health care is pretty much exactly like a terrorist attack and the end of freedom and democracy, and it makes them sooooooooo sad because Jesus Thomas Jefferson 9/11?
Well, that's just the cherry on top, isn't it?
This week's good, bad and ugly below the fold.
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