OP-ED | Birth Control in BC: What Now?
Photo Credit: Access BC via Saanich News
On Apr. 1, British Columbia became the first province to make prescription birth control free. This includes oral hormone pills, subdermal injections and implants, IUDs, and plan B. Not all forms of contraception are covered, such as vaginal rings and transdermal patches, but the province is looking to expand coverage in the future. Prescription contraception is free for men as well.
While vasectomies have been covered by Medical Service Plans for quite some time, condoms are not yet covered. Birth control is not available over the counter either. Thankfully, youth clinics offer free condoms as well as prescriptions for birth control to increase accessibility. While this was a huge accomplishment for BC and made many citizens proud to call our province home, the change opens a larger discussion around contraception, the economical side of it all, the imbalanced responsibility placed on women, the latency of this coverage in the first place, and the question mark around what the government plans next in the area of sexual health.
Women have been prescribed birth control since the 1950s, but are only now receiving free access to it. This means that for the past 70 years, safe sex has been a commodity only for those able to pay the several-hundred-dollar oral pills’ cost per year. While condoms have been given out for free for years in schools and clinics, the same attention was not given to birth control directed at women. Why is this? One would think the action of making certain hormonal birth control free would have been done ages ago if messaging around the responsibility of contraception is predominantly focused on women. This socially accepted message is not fair, as sex safety is an equal responsibility between partners, and yet it becomes the woman’s financial burden simply because she drew the unlucky card of having a uterus.
There are other forms of male birth control being tested despite many young men hesitating to take the pills due to possible side effects – despite research showing a lack thereof. However, when it came to prescribing hormonal birth control to women, side effects such as depression, vomiting, extreme bleeding, and a plethora of other symptoms, were seen as more than okay. Why are these side effects normalized in women, while asking men to take a non-hormonal pill seems like a daunting task? By looking solely at the contraception options, it is easy to mistake the onus of birth control being placed on females.
As a young woman, I would like to see our government use the positive feedback from the recent birth control coverage to not only expand what is included but focus on correcting the entire narrative established around birth control. I am anxious to see what happens next. Will menstrual products be included?
There are conversations about including free menstrual products in workspaces of federally regulated industries, but as of right now, one in three Canadians struggles to afford these products. Some could argue that sex is a choice, yet the funding dedicated to safe sex greatly outweighs the funding allotted to menstrual health. There should never be a financial barrier to an involuntary human function. We look at conditions in developing countries and gasp at how a flushable toilet is a privilege there, but we willingly turn a blind eye when period poverty exists underneath our noses. It is hypocrisy at its finest.
There is much more work to be done in the industry of sexual health and our government’s part in eliminating financial barriers associated with it. This should not be something reserved for the wealthy, but a right for every person.
British Columbia was the first province in Canada to cover prescription contraception, and I certainly hope it is not the last. I would like to believe that these changes will not end with birth control and extend to other areas of sexual health like menstrual products and better education while continuing to discover a wider variety of options for male contraception. All we can do is continue advocating for the right to accessible birth control and voice the need for these actions.