Tre and Courtney Everette with their children, Dru, left, and Kinlee. |
Adults waved off Courtney Everette's painful menstrual cramps. Just part of the joy of being a woman, the teenager was told. Deal with it. So she did, for years. Until one day when she was 17, staying with her grandmother.
"She recognized things seemed a little more intense," said Everette, now 35. "I was really rundown. The level of pain was getting worse."
Her grandmother took her to the hospital. Doctors diagnosed endometriosis, a condition where the tissue usually forming each month inside a fertile woman's uterus instead grows outside it, in the abdominal cavity, leading to scar tissue, cysts, pain.
Added to those woes, for Everette, was fear of infertility.
"Even at 17, I knew I wanted to be a mother," she said.
Endometriosis can be treated, however.
"I was lucky," Everette said. "My doctor told me my best option was to use hormonal birth control, and that would reduce pain and preserve my fertility."
Time went by. She attended graduate school at DePaul.
"Back then, you got kicked off your parents' insurance at 21, 22. So I got booted and found myself unable to afford the hormonal birth control I needed to manage my endometriosis," said Everette. "I called a good friend, crying, and told her 'I'm in pain and really worried this is going to hurt my chances to be a mother.'"
The friend replied: You're in a big city. Chicago has to have a Planned Parenthood.
It does. So Everette went...
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The Republican party has gone insane. I don't mean this as bombast or an ideological judgment. It is a party that has lost it's mind. The attacks on Planned Parenthood are a prime example.
ReplyDeleteThe demonization and defunding of Planned Parenthood, an organization that has done more good for women, and men for that matter, than almost any other organization in America is outrageous. They are a health care provider. Period. That women continue to vote for GOP candidates while they undermine women's health care options is a central mystery of my life.
GOP politicians continue to rail about Planned Parenthood using tax payer's money for abortions when, in fact, remember facts, no tax money is used for abortions. They are shameless.
Dropping 24 million people from the health care rolls is outrageous, defunding reproductive health care for all American women is a historic betrayal.
Thank you, Everette, for sharing your experience. I have never been fond of Planned Parenthood mostly because I thought the name was a euphemism. Now I know how apt it is.
ReplyDeletejohn
Superb column- if only we could sent it to every
ReplyDeleteright wing pundit.
Don't do that! They'd twist the whole thing around to make it look like Everette had uncaring parents and thus should not be qualified to become a parent herself.
DeleteAfter our second child was born, we decided not to have any more. My husband opted for a vasectomy, he felt I had been through enough w childbirth so this was a noninvasive way. My OB/Gyn suggested Planned Parenthood for the procedure, saying that they are the most experienced and trustworthy. He went in, got it done, no problems. That organization is a place that actually does what the name says, and we need it to stay.
ReplyDeleteAt one point in the defund-Planned-Parenthood debate, some Republicans in Ohio or some such place released a list of "alternative health care centers" to prove that if all the PP clinics were eliminated, women would have plenty of other options. A newspaper looked into that list and found that much of it consisted of utterly ridiculous entries like dentist's offices and--no lie--food banks.
ReplyDeleteThe one talent these people have is getting themselves listened to and elected. That's it. They have no more idea how to actually set policy and govern than a bunch of preschoolers.
Interesting that Trump is today playing the anti-abortion card in attempting to push the House to vote on their Trump University style health bill. Says the Freedom Caucus will lose a chance to defund Planned Parenthood. He didn't used to give a damn about Planned Parenthood. Or abortion.
ReplyDeleteTom
As long as Planned Parenthood provides abortions, it will make no difference to its detractors whatever else they do.
ReplyDelete