It’s Sunday morning, it’s early, and I’m bleeding. I hadn’t planned to write for the Rat about emergency contraception, but now political and personal reasons have compelled me to. Consider that within the last two weeks, I have:

1. witnessed a battle-planning session led by a Right-Wing Warrior touring high schools and colleges nationwide, purporting to provide pro-life youth with arguments to use against “those against the Gospel of Life,” wishy-washy denizens of a morally bankrupt postmodern world
2. turned 32
3. fallen tempestuously (if somewhat problematically) in love
4. during the course of celebration of the above 2 if not 3 facts, supported by easy misconceptions on either lover’s part, had one of only 2 instances of full-on, no-holds barred unprotected sex, EVER, in my entire life
5. gone through an ensuing existential crisis
6. realized with some combination of horror and wonder that as I go deeper into my thirties, the unswerving no-babies-please determination of my twenties is waning. I have become prone to acts of buying adorable pink baby shoes with small appliquéed white flowers, “for my cousin’s baby”
7. left work early, spent an hour in a waiting room wondering about other women’s stories, paid Planned Parenthood $50, and taken Plan B emergency contraception pills
8. learned that the FDA had just decided to act against the recommendation of a medical advisory panel (which voted 23 to 4) and NOT approve over-the-counter sales of Plan B, citing concerns about young teens having uncontrolled access to the medication.

***

First, political thoughts. I’ve been thinking frequently about the Jenny Holzer aphorism “Abuse of power comes as no surprise” in the last few weeks. It’s one of her earliest, from when she was still stickering and postering the streets (& parking meters) of NY. I’ve thought about this chilling little phrase in the context of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and also in the context of the FDA decision to continue restricting access to emergency contraception. Because extensive testing has shown there are few-to-no health risks associated with Plan B, which is essentially a concentrated form of birth-control pills, there is little doubt that the FDA decision is politically, rather than medically, motivated. Emergency contraception is NOT the same thing as the “abortion pill,” RU-486, which actively terminates pregnancy. Instead, in the 72 hours following unprotected sex, Plan B can prevent a pregnancy which has not yet taken hold, but does nothing to a woman if she is already pregnant. Got it, Right-Wing Warriors? It’s not an abortion. If anything, it’s a final chance never to come to a point where abortion might become a consideration.

Newly 32, having thought and felt my way carefully to the decision I have made, I am horrified at being lumped into a group of Irresponsible People Who Need Expert Advice and Restrictions. Going to Planned Parenthood for emergency contraception, which I do instead of ordering online, feels like going through the formalities of asking for an expensive Hall Pass. The $50 is pretty much an access charge, as there is virtually no clinical examination component to my visit, and I spend a total of 5 minutes with a very sweet nurse. The packet of pills comes bearing a prescription sticker with some (unseen) male doctor’s name as a mark of respectability. I am grateful to have the medication, but also annoyed at being put into the role of supplicant to medical authorities for something which I have clear & personal cause to know I need, and which apparently requires no medical attention.

One amendment to the FDA restrictions proposes making Plan B available over the counter to women aged 16 years and older. I’m torn about this. It would make the medication available to women like me, Hall Pass-free. It would also leave teenage girls caught in a familiar and schizophrenic pattern of simultaneously living out adult situations AND having to request permission from adults for things ranging from going out with a boy on a Friday night to leaving the classroom to pee during algebra class. I am sure that for a young girl, talking to someone face to face about emergency contraception before taking it is a good idea, but should “a good idea” mandate a legal requirement? 72 hours of steadily decreasing opportunity is a very short time for anyone to find the courage to make a responsible decision about a potential unwanted pregnancy.

Having gone through the near-panic of realizing I needed to do something about having had unprotected sex & then weathered Plan B’s side-effects of early-onset menstruation, cramps, and emotional upheaval, I am pretty much certain that no one is going to abuse this medication as a regular birth control method. It’s just too wrenching for that.

***

On a personal level, the possibility of pregnancy has gained powerful new meanings through the influence of age and of nearly ten years’ Buddhist practice. I’m at a point in my life where I am not really satisfied with the youthful approach to sex as an activity which- outside of (more or less ephemeral) emotional attachment- should involve no real consequences. More and more, I find I hunger for the fuller experience of sex which carries the possibility of creation, sex as union unmediated by latex barriers & synthetic hormones, sex as core animal experience. I won’t seek out single parenthood, but if I actually came to a normal pregnancy in my current single state, I know I would not have an abortion.

Part of that knowledge comes through practice with the Buddhist precept, “Affirm life: do not kill.” I’m staunchly pro-choice politically & staunchly revolted by the reductionist meddling of people like my itinerant Right-Wing Warrior. His “you’re either with us or you’re a reprehensible murderer” rhetoric gives me glimpses of his world, a universe so flat, abstract and absolute as to exclude all possibility of life. Pro-life to the point of living death. Pro-life yet emotionally unequipped to cope with the intensely interdependent complexity that IS life.

At the same time that I feel no kinship with this man and his views, my training as a Zen disciple orients my life towards harmlessness, towards asking for the strength to live out all the consequences of my actions & towards receiving experience as my primary and best teacher. The Right-Wing Warrior and his ilk shudder at the implications of Plan B and think nothing of crushing insects underfoot; they trumpet the justice of war and their views are their armor. Meanwhile, life is tender, and terrible, and unspeakably complex.

***

The Sunday before I took Plan B, I slipped into a well of grief & doubt, feeling a ghost of motherhood leave me even as I understood that to keep it would be to indulge in irresponsible fatalism about a pregnancy which did not yet exist. I had had no intention of bringing a child into the world; my lover was poised on the brink of moving North at the end of the summer; and I saw how much of this new yearning for a baby was somehow part of an old wild yearning for radical change at the expense of the established order of my life.

***

So I took Plan B, and I am bleeding. It’s much later Sunday now, and time for me to stop writing for the Rat and start cooking Mother’s Day dinner for when my parents come over in an hour or so. There will be pasta and cheese, non-rat salad and mangoes, ice cream and yummy wine.

Oh, and condoms, for later.