https://twitter.com/ErickaAndersen/status/806273669345460225
Congressman — and physician — Tom Price, Trump’s pick for HHS secretary, is an outspoken critic of Obamacare. He also believes the government has no business footing the bill for birth control.
And that is just something the sisterhood shouldn’t tolerate:
Dear Rep. Tom Price, I got pregnant because I couldn't afford the pill. https://t.co/bwZhwb1oPb via @NARAL @RBraceySherman pic.twitter.com/vQGUH3MV7o
— Refinery29 News (@R29News) December 6, 2016
Dear @RepTomPrice,
I'm one of those women who couldn't afford birth control. ?? Here's my story at @Refinery29. https://t.co/LQx6NZThDD— Renee Bracey Sherman (@RBraceySherman) December 6, 2016
.@RepTomPrice to @thinkprogress: Bring me a woman who couldn't afford birthcontrol! There's not one.
Me to Price: ??https://t.co/LQx6NZThDD— Renee Bracey Sherman (@RBraceySherman) December 6, 2016
Well, that’s … wow. This, we’ve gotta hear.
Let’s let Renee Bracey Sherman, a “reproductive justice activist, abortion storyteller, and board member at NARAL Pro-Choice America,” share her story:
When I was 19 years old, I struggled to afford birth control and became pregnant because of it. At the time, I was working a retail job earning just above minimum wage while I attended college. Though I was still living at home, my parents taught me about personal responsibility, and I paid for most things on my own — gas in my car, meals, and my birth control co-pays. This was before the Affordable Care Act made birth control available without a co-pay. That meant I had to spend $120 every three months for generic levonorgestrel, better known as the brand name, Seasonale. At one point, I didn’t have the money to pick up another pack — the cost would have been most of my paycheck. So, I thought I’d wait until the next pay period and use the little money I had to get to work.
At the time, I didn’t realize that I could get pregnant if I missed a week or two of pills. In my high school sex-ed classes, the teacher preached about his kids and their purity vows and showed us slides of STDs, rather than giving us helpful information about sex and family planning. Like most teens, I turned to my friends to fill in the gaps, asking them the questions that I didn’t feel comfortable asking my parents, or looking for answers I didn’t get in class. One of the myths my friends told me was that if I’d been on birth control for a long time, it would build up in my system and I couldn’t get pregnant (definitely false, as I later learned). And, like many teens, I didn’t know how to negotiate consent or condom use in my relationship, which later turned abusive. Eventually, I became pregnant.
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Sherman also stresses that her “parents taught [her] about personal responsibility. Evidently, the lessons didn’t sink in.
It’s unfortunate and awful, of course, that Sherman was in an abusive relationship. But her ignorance about the consequences of sex isn’t Price’s fault. She didn’t get pregnant because she “struggled to afford birth control.” She got pregnant because she engaged in unprotected sex.
Birth control doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive if you’re willing to do your homework. Unfortunately, there’s no pill that can prevent ignorance or poor life choices.
https://twitter.com/Reason37/status/806211495428296704
u got pregnant because u had sex. unprotected at that. stop blaming anyone else.
— Jorge Valdes (@joval_sv) December 6, 2016
https://twitter.com/Raskolnikov222/status/806273679474749440
@ChloeBennet4 @NARAL @RBraceySherman If you "cant afford" birth control, don't have sex. Pregnancy is much more expensive.
— Harry Gato (@harrygato) December 6, 2016
Hilarious. You got pregnant because you had sex.
— Jeannine Johnson (@SweetJeanninee) December 6, 2016
No, you got pregnant because you had sex. Way to deny responsibility for your actions.
— Chris Stumpf (@cstumpf750) December 6, 2016
https://twitter.com/Jareddakid/status/806266655714189313
It wasn’t all bad news for Renee, though. At least she got to have an abortion!
I knew I wasn’t ready to become a parent. So I made an appointment at the abortion clinic, and maxed out my first credit card, which had a $500 limit that was supposed to only be used in emergencies. This was an emergency. I was relieved, and to this day, the decision to have an abortion is still one of the best I have ever made.
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