Ok, ladies. Listen up. Maybe you voted in the 2016 election. Maybe you didn’t bother. Maybe you voted Hillary. Or maybe you wrote in for Bernie or gave your support to Trump. I’m not here to criticize or chastise. I just want to remind you – especially if you’re a woman still of child-bearing age – about exactly what was at stake concerning your health and the American health-care system in this election. I hate to say it but it’s looking increasingly like a miracle just isn’t going to materialize out of the ether and save us from the electoral college doing the dirty work of anointing the most unqualified, uninformed, impulsive, and temperamentally and intellectually unsuited individual to the presidency in our lifetimes..

I don’t like to be negative. But. What looks like an almost certain effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act by Republicans is looming just over the horizon. And contrary to the spin from Fox News and conservative talking heads, repeal is really, truly not going to yield anything good. Quite the contrary. As women, repeal is going to affect us disproportionately in profound and destructive ways. (What’s new about that? This is the oldest story there is.)

If you didn’t realize before November 8 just what’s on the line, at least pay attention now. This is about how the election of Trump and a Republican-dominated Congress and the expectation of an increasingly right-leaning Supreme Court might affect you and your body and the most important of your life and work choices for perhaps the next few decades.

But don’t listen to me. Ignore, if you like, my particular brand of seething anger and unhinged anxiety. Do yourselves a favor now and take a few moments to watch and learn from this video put together by the National Women’s Law Center.

Narrator Gretchen Borchelt is going to gently remind you that before the Affordable Care Act

Being a woman was a pre-existing condition and insurance companies could either deny you coverage or require you to pay more for your coverage

92% of insurance plans used a process called gender rating that meant that collectively women paid $1 billion more than men for coverage

19 million women were uninsured

Just 12% of insurance policies covered maternity care (family values, anyone?)

Full coverage of women’s preventive services, such as cancer screenings, was not required

Full coverage of birth control – considered health preventive services under the ACA – was non-existent

Just think of this one statistic if you want to understand what’s on the line for your lifestyle and financial security:

In one year alone, since enactment of the Affordable Care Act, women (hey, millennials, are you listening?) have saved $1.4 billion on the cost of birth-control pills alone.

Like I said. Listen and watch. Then decide. Are you going to sit this fight out? Or are you going to get involved and do something to protect yourself?

The post A must-see video: What ACA repeal will mean for women’s health appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I’m way past the age when worrying about menstruation is a big part of life. But I’ll never be too old to be outraged by the way men have—for millennia—cursed, shunned, denigrated and mocked women regarding the female, monthly reproductive cycle. So, while Donald Trump’s attack on Megyn Kelly is despicable, it’s not that unexpected or uncommon.

And, though I have aged out of the tampon era, I still vividly recall the anxiety that my period sparked every month: Did I have a tampon in my purse, just in case? Would I have an unusually heavy flow that might leak out and stain my clothes? At the time, I didn’t understand that those fears were part of the societal shame attached to menstruation. But they were.

Years after I reached puberty and was already fully immersed in my monthly, shame-tinged routine, I learned about the Orthodox Jewish practice of “family purity,” which dictated that a married Orthodox couple could not have sexual relations during the woman’s menstrual period. Among religious Jews, that dictum was taken as a matter of course, and because it was so far removed from my way of life, I didn’t think much about its implications. Even later, I learned about the many other religions and societies that had similar practices—all of which characterized women, because they bled monthly, as “unclean.”

I heard the “riding the rag” jokes. I joined in with the other girls who used code terms, like “the curse,” and “my little red friend” rather than call menstruation by its real name. I worried, like others back in the day when we wore “sanitary belts” and pads, that someone might notice the extra bulge created by a Kotex pad and figure out my embarrassing personal secret—that I was having my period.

It was only in the consciousness-raising 1970s that it began to dawn on me that it was absurd to allow myself to feel embarrassed by the natural rhythm of my reproductive cycle. And since then, my outrage has only grown.

Today, I can’t help but wonder how so-called “pro-life” Republicans can claim to value the lives of fetuses, while mocking the reproductive cycle itself. How can you be “pro-life” but anti-uterus and vagina?

So, I take great pleasure when I read that, in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s disgusting remarks, women have been live-tweeting their periods to him using the hashtag #periodsarenotaninsult.

@realDonaldTrump — on the third day of my period AND still a functioning member of society! Who knew?!”

@realDonaldTrump Just finished menstruating. I still don’t like you. Guess it had nothing to do w/ my period,”

@realDonaldTrump I’m getting my period this week. I’ll make sure to keep you updated,

@realDonaldTrump Its called a vagina and you came out of one, thanks to her period! #periodsarenotaninsult oops!

And I find it very heartening to read that, as a protest against period shaming, Kiran Gandhi ran the London marathon without a tampon, allowing herself to finish the race with menstrual blood staining her running pants.

It’s also encouraging to see that Rupi Kaur managed to shame Instagram for deleting her photo depicting a situation that many women experience during their menstrual cycles—blood-stained pants. She reposted it on Facebook, and it went viral. I applaud Kaur’s effort to take these images, which she says, “are natural to women, but taboo to society, and make them normal again.”

Several teenaged girls I know have recently begun their periods. I wish that they could celebrate their entrance into womanhood—as girls in some societies do, with “moon ceremonies.” But I know that, instead, they are already feeling the embarrassment that our society still attaches to this critical—if, admittedly, inconvenient—aspect of being a woman. I can only hope that, during their reproductive years, American society will grow up a bit, too, and let women be women without shame.

The post Donald Trump: Just another vagina demagogue appeared first on Occasional Planet.