In our last issue, we announced our call for businesses to become a #BusinessForBC by pledging to ensure birth control coverage for their employees, and to support policies that protect sexual and reproductive health care access.
ICYMI: the Supreme Court ruled that your employer or university — based on their personal objections — can decide if your health insurance covers your birth control.
Meet Mattise: she's a recent grad who faced barriers to accessing birth control and reproductive health care while attending a religious university.
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At my university, it went beyond birth control. The health center there wouldn't provide prescription birth control, STI tests, or even condoms. Not even when I was sexually assaulted and called the campus health center for help. No emergency contraception, no STI testing, nothing — when I needed it most. When I asked if they knew where the closest Planned Parenthood was, they told me to use my own resources to find out. Thankfully, I have access to the magic of the internet, and the means to travel.
But not everyone has the resources to figure out how to get health care in this country. Health insurance is confusing too, especially when you're a young person, navigating it for the first time. I was lucky to find a Planned Parenthood health center near campus, which I continued to visit for sexual and reproductive health care throughout the rest of my time in college. I even got a Pap test there when my campus health center, of course, refused to provide it.
Getting birth control should be easy. Yet, the Supreme Court is letting the Trump administration's rule affect not just students like me, but women, families, and LGBTQ+ people whose employers have their own moral or religious objections to people accessing this care.”
