11 Things We Must Protect in 2017

Image via Etsy/WeAreCrimsonClover

Planned Parenthood

This one is, perhaps, getting the most real we’re gonna get, but it’s also arguably the most important item on this list and at the top of any “To Do” list you might be making for 2017. We need to protect Planned Parenthood. Literally. We need to continue to have this as a haven, as an information center, as a healthcare provider, as a distributor of and educator about birth control. We need this for women who can’t afford cancer screenings, or regular checkups, or who are too scared (or too young) to go to their friends or families for help. And yes, even though it only accounts for 3% of the services they provide, we need this for the women who choose to have or, for any reason, must have abortions.

If you think about it, a place like this doesn’t really exist exclusively for men. That’s not a coincidence or an oversight or a case of reverse sexism, which is nothing. It’s because men’s access to healthcare has never been a right, nor a question. Men can get anything and everything they need taken care of at a little place called “the doctor,” because there exists no stigma around any type of medical care a man might need. There are stigmas surrounding, like, 75% of what we as women need, medically. Even something we can’t control that happens to us literally monthly for 40+ years is, somehow, made out to be shameful and repulsive. Planned Parenthood is so necessary because often, it’s our only choice, and often, it’s when we really, really need to make a difficult or confusing one. The men (and women ugh) who are trying to take this away from us need to be defeated in 2017 in an epic showdown wherein we employ any and all methods of monetary, physical, psychological (maybe even sexual???) warfare. We need to take these clowns down so that we can keep our goddamn healthcare. I’m not afraid of you, 2017. I bleed out of my body for days on end and don’t die; what can you do?