I take birth control because it is my f*@&I#g right to take it.

I am so fucking fed up.

The latest is from Arizona: now, if an employee uses the company’s health insurance to purchase contraceptive pills, they must prove to their employer that they are using them for “non sex” purposes. If they don’t, they could be fired.

How is this supposed to go?

“Oh, yeah here is my ultrasound from my ovarian cyst. See it over there? Yeah, its a big one.”

“Here is a testimony from my ex-boyfriend about just how terrible my PMS is that it lead to our eventual, inevitable catastrophic breakup. Then he became gay.”*

How are you supposed to prove that you have ovarian cysts popping a mile a minute and a slough of gay ex’s to prove how terrible your PMS is while simultaneously proving that there is no way in hell you are using it for "sex purposes?"

How are we supposed to prove that birth control–whose very name not so implicitly implies controlling a birth–is not our bang without a baby free card?

We can’t even refer to it by its official name, contraception: it is also an explicit word for just what the pill does, contra/conception. And calling it “the pill” just sounds ominous.

But none of this is even the point.

The point is, who the hell has the right to not only legislate my uterus and my private sexual practices, but make this a matter of national security?

I was on the pill long before I was an appropriate age to start having sex. I hate the cysts, the cramps, and the horrific PMS that turns straight men gay to boot. But I do not want to justify the fact that I take birth control with the idiosyncrasies of my ovaries.

I take birth control because it is my fucking right to take it.

It is my right to take it to take care of cysts, make me more comfortable, and keep my boyfriends around and heterosexual. It is my right to take it to have crazy, wild all day all night (did I mention wild enough to make Rush Limbaugh quiver?) pre-marital sex with said boyfriends (and non-boyfriends)–for as long as they stay heterosexual and it is still consensual. It is my right to keep all of this to myself, because what I do with my body is no one’s interest but my own–I would prefer it not to be a part of the national agenda.

But lets say, for a moment, that it is.

If I am having so-much-sex-that-i’m-going-broke-because-for-some-reason-i-use-the-pill-like-viagra-like-how-rush-limbaugh-taught-me (talk about hormonal), isn’t it in the country’s best interest that I protect myself? Isn’t it best for people not to have children when they can barely financially support themselves? Isn’t it best that I wait until I no longer have to rely on the terrible, socialist state for welfare for me and my child and can fend for two in the brave new privatized world?

(I’m a journalist, so that will be never. I should probably take birth control like Viagra, just to be safe.)

*For anyone wondering, I have never (to my knowledge) turned any former boyfriend gay through the sheer power of my PMS. It was just a sarcastic theme that stuck throughout the post. However, I now feel it is necessary to check in to make sure.

Editor's Note: We know you all know already that the idea of "turning" people any orientation through any behaviour is either someone smart like Anna just making a funny, someone with a truly overinflated sense of their own sexual power, or people not knowing what on earth they're talking about, right? Thought so.

Originally published here.