A piece I wrote for the Medea Project’s Performance at the Planned Parenthood Fundraiser
If I could whisper tenderly to your womb,
and ask her to reveal her deepest secrets,
what would she share?
Would she speak of the synthetic hormones, elevated prostegeron and estrogen levels that make her insides churn? Would she share her grandmother’s memories of DES that left the next generation unable to have children of their own? Would she ask if you remembered Delilah, your mother’s friend, born with the truncated arms because of the oral contraceptives the doctored had advocated so many years ago?
Would she ask, “Do you think it’s really that different now?”
Pharmaceutical companies prophesying that little purple pills falling from the sky will save the day?
Is this what sexual liberation looks like? Is this what reproductive rights have come to mean?
If so, I want a new Revolution.
If I could whisper tenderly to your womb,
and ask her to reveal her deepest secrets,
what would she share?
Would she speak of the synthetic hormones, elevated prostegeron and estrogen levels that make her insides churn? Would she share her grandmother’s memories of DES that left the next generation unable to have children of their own? Would she ask if you remembered Delilah, your mother’s friend, born with the truncated arms because of the oral contraceptives the doctored had advocated so many years ago?
Would she ask, “Do you think it’s really that different now?”
Pharmaceutical companies prophesying that little purple pills falling from the sky will save the day?
Is this what sexual liberation looks like? Is this what reproductive rights have come to mean?
If so, I want a new Revolution.
And yes, I think women should have a choice.
But television commercials blasting advertisements of pills miraculously making PMS, acne, babies go away, Cosmo flashing colorful tag lines of “Let Freedom Ring” and doctors dispensing pills for this aliment and that, like it was candy, is not what choice means to me.
Does the next generation of mothers even know what natural forms of birth control look like?
When are our girls ever taught that the beautiful complexity of the female body gives clear signals of fertility and wellness without the words, “it’s unreliable, unsafe, can’t be trusted…” used in the same sentence?
To me, this is the true, if even unconsciously waged, war on women–The dispensing, the advocating, the prophesying that our own innate wisdom can’t be trusted
That we are ‘unsafe,’ ‘not fully functioning’ ‘lacking freedom,’ unless we chose to drug ourselves
Instead of learning to tune in.
May our daughters know freedom
And may they know it, regardless of what the government decides.
But television commercials blasting advertisements of pills miraculously making PMS, acne, babies go away, Cosmo flashing colorful tag lines of “Let Freedom Ring” and doctors dispensing pills for this aliment and that, like it was candy, is not what choice means to me.
Does the next generation of mothers even know what natural forms of birth control look like?
When are our girls ever taught that the beautiful complexity of the female body gives clear signals of fertility and wellness without the words, “it’s unreliable, unsafe, can’t be trusted…” used in the same sentence?
To me, this is the true, if even unconsciously waged, war on women–The dispensing, the advocating, the prophesying that our own innate wisdom can’t be trusted
That we are ‘unsafe,’ ‘not fully functioning’ ‘lacking freedom,’ unless we chose to drug ourselves
Instead of learning to tune in.
May our daughters know freedom
And may they know it, regardless of what the government decides.
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