Should the ‘Morning After’ Pill Be Available to All Ages?
I don’t know if I’d call it “slut shamed”, but when my sister and I were in our teens, our mother made liberal use of blood-curdling threats to keep us from lousing up our lives with idiot sex. And no, I don’t mean “I’ll beat the crap out of you!” threats. Things like “If you ever get knocked up, I’m going to sell the house, take all the money, and just disappear and leave you on your own.” MUCH more terrifying, striking right at the roots of our need for security and safety. I visualized myself living in a cardboard box under an overpass – what would I eat? How would I keep warm? Where would I go to the bathroom? Children worry about these things. Once I grew up, I realized my mom would NEVER have really done something like that; it was just a scary story, but we believed her! But it did what it had to do: keep us safe during the dangerous years, before we were able to look after ourselves. If my mom went along with this soft-soap, “Oh, I’ll support you no matter what you do!” garbage, we could have easily ended up with screwed up lives.
