ash admits she was slightly disappointed not to see this letter on the opinion page of her local paper. Two days after she sent it in, she was also flummoxed that her characterization of the opposition to the proposal (“Puritanical”) was appropriated in the house’s own editorial commenting on the matter. Or did two separate sensibilities form the same conclusions? Here is the article on which ash reflects:
So let me get this straight. There’s this drug, see, which, injected into a girl on the verge of her reproductive era, precludes or greatly reduces the probability of contracting an insidious, often fatal disease. Yet availing this drug to all Illinois girls is not a “no-brainer” because the disease happens to be associated with, or is sometimes but not always transmitted through, sexual relations.
If that’s not a “no-brainer” it’s probably not a “slam-dunk” either. On the contrary, the argument against the school program consists of meting out just punishment for indefensible behavior, and note that the girl gets what she deserves – the disease if not pregnancy – as opposed to the boy, since it was the girl who by definition seduced the boy.
Such Puritanical retribution is reminiscent of the Birth Control pill, which I suppose some codgers still resent. Even though birth control existed before the pill’s advent, the predecessors were cruder, messier, and less effective. Regardless, even nice married women, much less single ones, were never supposed to engage in intercourse not culminating in children (with the exception, of course, of God’s intervention) when their ancestors weren’t afforded the luxury. Just because scientific advancement permits indulgence in hedonistic activities without consequence doesn’t mean it should.
Which evokes the embryonic stem cell dispute: just because an ultimately discarded frozen fertilized egg, incapable of development until injected into a womb, promises treatment of other life-threatening diseases doesn’t mean it should be destroyed in the process.
My, my, my. As if such logic weren’t sufficiently dissuasive, by all means let’s attack – in the most personal, intimate terms - the legislator who introduced the drug bill. And pay no attention to her intention to render subsequent female generations more fortunate than hers. That’s not altruistic but positively reckless and unconscionable.
I swear, this issue is enough to reconfigure that old adage from “her body, her choice” to “her body, her burden.”