Here is something I have rarely told anyone.
When I was eighteen years old, a senior in high school, I once had to visit Planned Parenthood to obtain the morning after pill. It was not yet available over the counter at the drugstore. In fact, I barely knew it existed. I don’t remember learning about it as an option in health class, though it may have been a minor part of our (biology-based) sex ed curriculum. I think my awareness of it had more to do with magazine ads. Certainly, no one I knew had ever talked about taking it.
Growing up, I was very much a “good girl.” I didn’t go to parties, I never drank, I got good grades and I hung out with my parents a lot. So perhaps you can imagine the kind of shame and overwhelming fear I had as the car rolled out of my small suburban town, toward the inner city of Syracuse - the closest Planned Parenthood location. I told my mother I was going to a movie. The whole ride, I could feel the lie sitting in my stomach like lead.
By the time I walked in the door, my face was drained of color. Eighteen years old, and I had never visited a doctor without my parents before. In the waiting room, a girl my age sat with her hands on her pregnant belly, looking tired and anxious. In a small private room, a woman asked me questions about my sexual history. I was mortified and guilty. At this point in my life, my relationship with sex was troubled to say the least. I thought of sex as something secret and embarrassing and often painful. I was racked with regret and extremely confused.
Do “good girls” have sex? I wasn’t sure. There had come a point in my teens when it was not quite so clear anymore what was good and what was bad. I was not particularly religious at this time, though I was vaguely involved in a Christian youth group, and sometimes taught Sunday School to children at a friend’s non-denominational church. I wasn’t sure where I stood with god. Though my parents were both fairly liberal, I wasn’t clear on what their expectations were. I considered myself a feminist, but I wasn’t really sure what that meant. I remember an abstinence campaign around this time - “be sexy, without having sex.” The ads were pink and black inside the pages of my CosmoGirl! magazine. There were t-shirts you could buy.
I would not be buying a t-shirt.
I went home feeling awful. I took the pill. I worried I had waited too long, that it wouldn’t work. I swore off sex. I imagined that I harbored a terrible secret - that I was the only girl in school who had done such a thing. I was very young and very sheltered and very relieved.
I am writing this now because I no longer feel ashamed about my visit to Planned Parenthood, or the actions that brought me there. If the resources and services at Planned Parenthood had not been available to me, it is possible that I would have become pregnant at eighteen. And, due to the conflicting moral opinions that were part of growing up in upper-middle class, Catholic-dominated suburbia, I might have kept the baby. I might not have gone to college. I might still be living in small town upstate New York, raising a five year old child with the first person I slept with, instead of here, pursuing my goals in the city of my dreams.
I still consider myself a feminist and I now know what that means. It means that I deserve a choice in all matters of my health, sexual and otherwise. It means that my choices should not be limited by the moral judgments of my government, where I grew up, or my financial position. It means that we are all “good girls,” regardless of our sexual past, present, or future, and we deserve the care that Planned Parenthood provides. ”The House of Representatives has just voted to bar Planned Parenthood health centers from all federal funding for birth control, cancer screenings, HIV testing, and other life-saving care.” Planned Parenthood is a vital health resource for millions of people. Please sign the open letter to congress here to fight this bill.
