'Dear Rep. Tom Price': NARAL board member had sex, got pregnant

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.

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.

So that’s nice.