I am not a slut

“What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex — what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute.” — Rush Limbaugh

Hi.

We don’t know a lot about each other.

But I want you to know one thing about me – I am not a slut.

I am a woman. I am a woman as God created me, born from a woman, with the ability to have children of my own one day.

But I am not a slut.

I am a woman with a flawed body, as so many of us are. Ten percent of women suffer from endometriosis, a condition where the lining of one’s uterus grows on the outside of her uterine wall or on other organs. I was born this way. It does not make me a slut.

The treatment is prescription birth control, which does not cure,because there is no cure, but it allows women with this condition to have a life. To leave the couch. To love.

We can wax philosphically about how fertility is a natural process, not a disease to be medicated a way. But digestion is a natural process as well, and millions of people suffer from heartburn. Our bodies are not perfect. They are fearfully and wonderfully made, but they can trouble us and they can hurt us.

But that does not make us sluts.

I am a married woman who loves my husband. I am a woman who wants to have children. I am a woman who does not believe in “consequence free sex,” who does not see the birth control pill as a license to sleep around. I am bound by the vows I have freely taken to my husband and my God; I am not bound to fidelity by the fertile status of my uterus.

If my insurer did not cover birth control, for instance, if I had gone to a Catholic school, I would have spent $1200 while in graduate school just for the ability to attend classes not in pain, to cook my husband dinner occasionally, to attend church, to see friends and to volunteer.

That’s $1200 that covered the cost of two classes instead.

Or that allowed me to research my thesis full time this summer.

Or that allowed my husband to take a lesser paying job to fight for the rights of prisoners and the accused.

Twelve hundred dollars that we could put to supporting local farmers instead of large corporations who rely on underpaid workers.

Twelve hundred dollars that covered the cost of flights home for weddings and Christmases.

Twelve hundred dollars that went to my other medications as well.

I think it was money well spent. It was money, however, that did not turn me into a slut.

But many people think otherwise. They think that medicating the body that God has given me so that I can use it to its fullest potential makes me a slut.

A slut.

A prostitute.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter where you stand on this divide. If you take birth control or if you don’t.  If you think it is moral or immoral. If you think government should cover all of health care or none of it. It doesn’t matter, because a reproductive disorder does not make a woman a slut.

Call your representative.  Tell him or her to stand up for women. To not bar women from the discussion on what happens to their organs. To raise the level of discussion to one that respects all Americans, all people. To stop calling your sister, your daughter, your mother, your neice, your friend a slut.