I am up, showered, dressed, and have sprayed copious amounts of perfume.
My favourite scent, usually applied sparingly, spritzed everywhere. I’m wearing my decent pants and even found some matching socks. One more quick, paranoid fuelled, mist of perfume in the direction of ‘down there’ and I’m flat on my back again. All by 9am on a Tuesday morning.
June 20 to 26 was Cervical Screening Awareness Week and with that reminder I decided to book my overdue smear test. The savvy marketing folks behind the campaign reminding me of the number of women in the UK who, sadly, pass away each year from cervical cancer. 850 if you’re interested.
Preventable deaths
Amazingly, they inform us, over eight in ten of these deaths could have been prevented if they’d attended their appointments. Allegedly ONE IN THREE women don’t book their appointments. One. In. Three. Why???
What possesses us, as grown women, to not attend a relatively painless, fleeting appointment for the sake of our health? Why do we place ourselves at the bottom of the ‘to do’ list? If we’re not here to do everything, who will? We need to remind ourselves more often we cannot pour from an empty cup.
We’re all busy. We ALL have stuff going on. I’m certainly long past the age where stripping from the waist down in front of a stranger is remotely comfortable. Finding a top long enough to pull down to cover my ample belly in an attempt to retain a smidge of dignity then making small talk with a pleasant, chipper nurse while they have a hunt for my ever-elusive cervix are chores. I’m fully aware the nurse is looking inside my body BUT I’ll continue hiding my knickers inside my neatly folded trousers thank you very much. Simply because it’s all a much more pleasant experience than the alternative.
Women in the news
There has been so much in the news this week about women it’s made me abandon my intended column and write this one instead. We are frankly too important.
The Roe case
The recent decision to overturn Roe is simply devastating. For all. Regardless of whether you’re an American citizen or not, if you support woman’s rights, hell, if you support basic human rights, it remains YOUR business and you should want to be vocal about how drastic and appalling the overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion is. A decision declaring all women to be second class citizens because, when you don’t control your own body – you don’t own your own life.
Think on all the women who, in the coming weeks, will be criminalised for making decisions about their own bodies. Woman forced to have children against their will. What ended in more than 20 states was LEGAL abortion. They cannot ban abortion; only ban SAFE abortions and enter us into an era of unsafe practices.
Who would have thought this generation would be fighting this battle? To have the clock turned back on hard fought woman’s rights? That America would revert to the 1940s, where women are still controlled by old white men?
Sadly, if this shook you then you haven’t been paying attention. Abortions might be illegal, but folk can walk into a school/ nightclub/ supermarket/ hospital and start shooting and the politicians turn a blind eye. Maybe someday, women in America will have as many rights as guns do. Remember this day every single time you’re tempted to tell someone who has had to fight for their rights for generations to stop ‘over reacting’ or being ‘hysterical’.
Right to bodily autonomy
The right to bodily autonomy and the fragile notion everyone is free has been decimated. I don’t know where we go from here, but this cannot be the end of the fight, it must be the beginning. A global battle in which we stand united.
Maybe if every time men had sex they risked death, disability, social shunning, a life altering interruption of their education or career and the sudden life-long responsibility for another human – they’d expect a choice in the matter. Do we cry out for mandatory vasectomies? Should all women, and all who support them, stop for a minute, take a long, deep breath and then burn everything to the f****** ground. Maybe starting again is the only way? BUT, only after you have your smear.
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