Don’t be surprised if, when going to your student health center this year, you find yourself digging deeper and deeper into your pockets to refill your oral contraceptive prescription.  As the Associated Press reports, a change in a Medicaid rebate law (amended in a defecit reduction bill) has ended the incentive for drug companies to offer discounted pills to colleges.  What does this mean for the average student?  A prespcription that is twice, if not thrice as expensive.  The cost increase even affects generic brands.

The AP article mentions students and health workers at schools like Indiana University and Kansas State, which a number of working class students who are often supporting themselves, or even their children, while studying.  According to Hugh Jessup, executive director of the health center at IU, “It’s a tremendous problem for our students because not every student has a platinum card…Some of our students have two jobs, have children.  To increase this by 100 percent or more overnight, which is what happened, is a huge shock to them and to their system.”

Obviously, this does not bode well for reducing unplanned pregnancies at college campuses.  Also, as oral contraceptives can be used at times as emergency contraception, the ramifications for victims of sexual assault are also serious.  But, I guess it’s what I’ve come to expect from the government’s continued attacks and erosion of Medicaid…

In India, men outnumber women by 8%.  In most western countries, women outnumber men by 3%.

What could cause this discrepancy?  A number of factors, but according to most experts in India, one of the causes of the 882 females for every 1,000 males in India is anti-female selective reproductive procedures.  This can include anything from termination of a female foetus due to an ultrasound, to female infanticide.  The Guardian recently published an excellent article on the subject, delving into issues of patriarchy, the culture of marriage, and resulting trafficking due to the shortage of women in many parts of India.  I could write an entire post on the article itself, but that’s not what this is about.

 The article compelled me to once again mentally hash out my pro-choice views.  I’m fiercely pro-choice and feminist, I wholeheartedly support Gloria Steinem’s famous words, “In my heart, I think a woman has two choices.  Either she’s a feminist or a masochist.”  But mass termination of female foetuses is decidely anti-feminist—and more than that, reeks of eugenics.  Yet, I am fiercely pro-choice.

I am PRO-CHOICE, and ANTI-SELECTION.  This means that although I will fight to guarantee a woman the right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason, I do not fundamentally believe that as a soceity, abortion should be an excuse for eugenic-related selection--for example, an aversion to having a female child, or because the child will be born with certain mental or physical disabilities.