Ginsburg: NO Friend of Women

This will be brief -- I promise. There has been far too much written on this already, some of it very good. It is the inaccurate, intolerant, unsubstantiated garbage to which I will not draw attention.

The Supreme Court, as we all know has Backed Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties in their objection to distribute their money into an account supported by the Affordable Care Act, which would provide for certain forms of contraception for their employees.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has written a 35-page dissent regarding this judgment.

"Ginsburg argued, the government has shown that providing no-cost birth control to women is 'a compelling interest in public health and women's well being.'"

"Providing no-cost birth control." Not, working to eliminate the "hook-up" culture that is pervasive within American society. Not, teaching young women that using your bodies as leverage enslaves them. Not, working to support conservative groups which currently seem to be the only holdouts even preaching abstinence and monogamy. Not, working to find out exactly what all these options in contraception are doing to prevent unwanted pregnancies and casual sex in the first place. (I grew up believing sex makes babies. I had no clue where to get birth control. Would never, if my life depended on it, have asked my mother for it. I still grew up to be a wild child, and I still lost my virginity at 18. Now, the national average is seventeen, and almost any fifteen year old can get condoms from the school nurse. I don't have to be a scientist to know the answer is "Contraception availability has done nothing to reduce unwanted pregnancies and the incidents of casual sex.") So, where, is the compelling interest?

"You can't argue against abortion and argue against free birth control," you say. I can argue that you do the same thing I and millions of other women have done through the years, and pay for it yourself. I can argue that you stop having unprotected sex if you don't want children. I can argue that asking my employer to establish a Condom Credit (maybe a Rainy Day Fund) is just as ludicrous as what you are proposing. Why shouldn't men be provided with free birth control after all?

"To recapitulate, the mandated contraception coverage enables women to avoid the health problems unintended pregnancies may visit on them and their children," Ginsburg wrote.

Justice Ginsburg, you are obviously an intelligent, independent, successful woman. Why on earth would you A) invite the Federal government or an employer into your uterus or the uterus of any other woman, B) limit women by implying we need free contraception or anything else in order to make right decisions, and C) coddle and lull the women of America into thinking they are less than you; that they, unlike you, are unable to succeed, unable to achieve, unable to provide for themselves and their families, and unable even to afford contraception? (Which, by the way, Hobby Lobby and others are still providing; it's only certain forms from which they are absolved, based on their religious stand.) Justice Ginsburg, I, a citizen of the United States, a woman who has worked from the age of fifteen, a woman who provides much more than that for which you give me credit -- without a college education or even a picture-perfect trust-funded upbringing, abhor your condescension and are revolted by your patronization. I work hard; I have worked hard; I will continue to work hard, as many other women do each day, without your help or your indulgences. And somehow, we will manage our reproductive health all by ourselves.