pushing my buttons

When I heard the young student from Georgetown University talk of the mournful looks of her fellow female classmates, I wondered if something horrible had happened. I thought of the high school shooting that took place earlier this week and questioned if there had been a copycat shooting at Georgetown. I turned the radio up and heard this young woman talk of the emotional and physical pain that she observed in these suffering students. She also mentioned the financial hardship that they were going through.

And then the word contraception came up. Contraception? Specifically contraception for female university students. This woman's plea was to our government; begging them to provide to these suffering female students a way to prevent pregnancy? I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I thought of being on the St. Louis community college campus later today and searching the faces of the young women there. Would I see their anguished pain, their grief and heartache ever present because the government won't buy their IUD or pay for their birth control patch? And besides, isn't it a right of passage that every young man have a condom in his wallet for his unplanned sexual encounters?

I have to wonder about the truly suffering and tortured souls in this world... people who suffer from hunger, abuse, illness, loneliness or fear.  Would they be able to have empathy for a world of women in sorrow for lack of contraception? Could the Hallmark channel make a movie about this wretched and neglected world of women without the morning after pill? Where is the humanity!?

I am left in shock...
Speechless in a way and still shaking my head.