Women's healthcare, including managing menstruation and avoiding unwanted pregnancy, is harmed by forced birth beliefs.
The undercurrent of "women are for bearing babies" prevents a focus on their health and comfort. I have observed this second hand as my spouse, friends, and former partners have all struggled with often debilitating discomfort and pain on a monthly basis. If men were to have the same symptoms, no one would be hand-wringing about not wanting to interfere with the natural reproductive cycle--someone would have found away to effectively and safely prevent menstruation and pregnancy. Current options are clearly minimum effort solutions, in large part because forced birth advocates have made birth control difficult and expensive for insurance companies.
Forced birth harms women by putting their health into a special category where it can't be addressed like men's health. For this reason, and many others, I am writing a letter a day until we end forced birth by writing reproductive freedom into law.
