So What If We Have Sex?

(Read my response, below the quoted section, in italics.)

Via Think Progress

This week, the Obama administration announced that all health insurers will be required to cover birth control and other women’s health services without charging co-pays. This historic move has sent the burgeoning right-wing campaign against birth control into an apoplectic fit.

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Fox’s anti-birth control “expert,” Family PAC Federal Vice President Sandy Rios, however, found her own reasons to lambast the policy as “ridiculous.”

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– “Why in the world would you encourage your daughters, and your granddaughters, and whoever else comes behind you to have unrestricted, unlimited sex anytime, anywhere and that, somehow if you prevent pregnancy, that somehow you’ve helped them. I would submit to you that uncontrolled sexual behavior is what is harming our girls, not our lack of birth control — which by the way they don’t seem interested in taking anyway. Having a baby is not the worst thing. I think having multiple sex partners without any kind of restraint or responsibility is much more damning, why would you support that?”


Dear Ms. Rios,
Three of my four children are grown, my youngest daughter is in her teens. I am no child and I have not started menopause. Has it ever crossed your mind that perhaps I and millions of other adult women might want to have unrestricted, unlimited sex anytime, anywhere... many of us with our own husbands?

Why would I want to encourage my daughters NOT to have and enjoy unlimited, anytime, anywhere sex with their spouses?

And what, exactly, is so damaging about women enjoying sex - whether it's with one person to whom they are married or a series of people to whom they aren't, so long as that's what they want, enjoy and prefer? It is certainly no skin off your nose and who are you, exactly, that what YOU think about it is any more or less important than what any other individual person on this planet thinks? If you think it's wrong, if it's not what you want, enjoy and prefer - don't do it.

I am curious whether you grew up isolated from other females through your late teens and early 20s. I suspect this because unless you were so isolated, you know full well what free form of birth control a lot of promiscuous young girls (not to mention cheating girlfriends and wives) use and recommend to their female pals. It's this piece of sage advice, that's been handed down through generations of women and is still alive and well to this day: "You can't get pregnant if you're already pregnant." So much for your theory that cutting off access to birth control will prevent any girl or woman from sleeping around... it frees some women up to do exactly that and it's been doing that for centuries!

I am sorry for you that you don't or can't or won't enjoy sex, Ms. Rios. (I'm assuming you don't since you seem to think only young girls enjoy it AND because you are not home caring for your 20 some odd children whilst recovering from the birth of your newborn and celebrating the news that you're expecting yet another.) I know frigidity is your preferred birth control method, but I still feel sorry for you because I am fortunate to know what you are missing. Oh. So. Fortunate.

When sex is good, it's awesome! I mean, seriously, mind blowingly, OH MY GAWD, Earth shaking awesome! And yes, I tell my daughters and my son that it is. But, I also explain to them all the things that make the difference between awesome sex and just copulating or procreating.

I will give you credit, though. You're very right, having a baby isn't the worst thing. I'll even add that it can be the best thing, when it's something you want. It was certainly the best thing ever, for me, with each of my four children. But, Ms. Rios, lots of things, many of them quite horrific, aren't the worst thing. (ftr, death is the worst thing.) Example: Having both your legs amputated is not the worst thing - but I'm guessing if you suddenly found yourself legless you wouldn't be jumping for joy. (*ahem* so to speak.)

If you don't like prescribed birth control, fine. Don't use it. Your life, your choice. I respect that. Please, afford me the same respect: leave me to my life and my choices.

That said, want to know what I don't like? Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. I don't like war. Guess what, though - my tax dollars fund it, anyway and I guarantee you that defunding war would save us a helluva lot more of the tax payers' money.