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Reproductive Health

by Tracee Sioux on September 12th, 2007

Do you know I was in my 30s before I understood my own reproductive system?

It took us about a year-and-a-half to two years to conceive Mr. Zack. It was then that I really learned about ovulation and the complexities of vaginal mucus and it’s many, many nuanced and meaningful consistencies. 

I recall thinking What do you mean I lost 15% of my fertility in the last 3 years? Why didn’t anyone tell me?

It wasn’t until I was in my late 20s and pregnant with Ms. Ainsley that I learned about fetuses and birth and how exactly a baby becomes a reality.

What surprised me was the shroud of secrecy surrounding the whole biological process. It’s absurd really, to have the body and not be informed about how it works.

Every girl and woman on the planet has a right to know how her own body functions. It’s basic biology for heaven’s sake. What’s the big dirty secret? Are we assuming that if we don’t know how it works we won’t use it?

If girls and women know more about our own bodies we will be more responsible about our bodies.

There are so many problems with being uneducated about reproductive health. Taking 2 years to get pregnant because you waited until your fertility, biological ability to conceive, declined is one of them. Teen pregnancy is another. Sexually transmitted diseases is yet another.

There really is so much risk in not understanding our own biological facts.

In March, Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Christopher Shays (R-CT), along with Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), introduced the Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act (H.R. 1653/S. 972). This bill would authorize federal funds for states to offer comprehensive and medically accurate sexual education in their schools. Currently, there are three separate federal programs that fund abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, but no federal funding exists specifically for comprehensive sex education. States can only receive funding if they agree to teach abstinence-only-until-marriage while excluding information about the health benefits of contraception to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The REAL Act is a comprehensive approach to sex education - education that promotes abstinence but includes information about contraception.

If we’re old enough to pay the consequences of not knowing, then we’re old enough to know.

Visit American Association of University Women to send a letter to your reps. It only takes two minutes to be an activist.  

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POSTED IN: Fabulous Mothering, Fabulous Politics