W

ith 
Republicans 

now at the helm of 
both the legislative 

and executive branches, the last 
couple of months have 
been 
riddled 
with 

uncertainty over the 
future 
of 
women’s 

health care. From the 
return of the global gag 
rule to the attempted 
reinforcement of the 
Hyde Amendment, the 
new 
administration 

has 
flippantly 
dealt 

blow after blow against 
pro-choice policies on 
an international scale.

However, 
it 
wasn’t 
until 

Congress voted to repeal the 
Affordable Care Act and threw 
legislative 
stones 
at 
Planned 

Parenthood’s federal funding that 
I finally realized the gravity of this 
political turbulence: If the GOP has 
its way with women’s health care, I 
could lose access to birth control 
altogether. It is for this reason — 
and, frankly, because there are 
very few painful, long-lasting 
procedures I would not withstand 
to keep the Paul Ryans of the world 
from playing my reproductive 
organs like a GameCube controller 
— that I finally decided, after 
wrestling with the idea for months, 
to get an IUD.

For those of you who are not 

super well-versed in the fascinating 
world of birth control methods, 
an intrauterine device is a tiny, 
T-shaped piece of plastic that you 
insert into the uterus to prevent 
pregnancy. There are two types 
of IUDs: copper and hormonal. 
While I got the copper one, both 
work by thickening the mucus in 
your cervix to prevent sperm from 
reaching the egg, and they can last 
up to 12 years (or three presidential 
terms) with more than 99-percent 
effectiveness. When you’re ready 
to start a family, you simply ask 
your doctor to remove it and BAM: 
instant fertility.

I won’t sugarcoat it: The 

procedure itself is excruciating, 
but it only lasts a couple of 
minutes. You can get it done at 
a gynecologist or at your local 
Planned Parenthood (where I 
opted to get mine). Let me walk 
you through my experience so you 
can get a sense of what to expect 
if you ever decide to follow suit, 
keeping in mind potential barriers 
some women might encounter in 
their pursuit of bodily autonomy.

To begin, you should probably 

carve out a few hours in your day 
and schedule an appointment. 
For women with children or full-
time jobs, this is enough of an 
impediment to make the entire 
process nearly impossible. In 

preparation for your visit, make 
sure you eat, drink lots of fluids 
and take some ibuprofen. If you’re 
fortunate enough to have reliable 

transportation, 
you 

should secure a ride 
to and from the clinic, 
because you will not 
feel like driving when 
you’re done.

When you arrive, 

endure the wait until 
they call your name. 
If you’re as lucky as I 
was, the lobby will be 
playing reruns of “The 
Fresh Prince of Bel-

Air,” and occasionally someone 
in the room will rap along to the 
theme song. Did I mention you 
should probably have insurance? 
Yeah, both the device and the 
procedure can cost up to $1,000, 
which is why many women forgo it 
as an option.

Once you’re inside, the doctor 

will evaluate you. Have you had 
unprotected sex in the last month? 
When was your last period? Do you 
usually have a heavy flow or a light 
one? Are you allergic to iodine?

Then, they’ll do a pregnancy 

test just to be safe, as being 
pregnant with an IUD is bad 
news bears. This entails the 
always glamorous act of pissing in 
a cup, so that’s where those fluids 
will come in handy.

Finally, 
once 
all 
of 
the 

formalities are out of the way, 
the doctor will perform the 
procedure. First, they’ll check 
your uterine alignment (I was 
informed that I have a tiny cervix, 
to which I bewilderedly replied, 
“Thank you”). Then, they’ll insert 
a large speculum into your vagina 
to keep everything, uh, out of the 
way. Lastly, they’ll put the IUD 
in place. A slight pinch. A wave 
of terrible cramps. A few seconds 
pass. Another wave of terrible 
cramps. All done.

You’ll walk out of that clinic 

feeling like someone kicked you 
in the uterus, and you’ll probably 
have to deal with cramps and 
spotting for about a week or so 
if all goes well and there are no 
infections. Women who cannot 
afford to take time off work to rest 
will have to find a way to distract 
themselves from feeling as though 
they’re giving birth to a set of 
knives — but, hey, that’s just the 
price of reproductive freedom.

Believe it or not, I’m not the 

only one who jumped at the 
chance to insert a foreign object 
into my uterus as a frantic and 
final attempt at bodily autonomy. 
Since the election, the demand 
for these suckers has increased by 
900 percent as women everywhere 
are scrambling to protect the last 

shreds of their right to choose in 
the Trump administration.

Sure, months ago, I could have 

carefully 
weighed 
my 
birth-

control options to figure out which 
was best-suited for my body and 
my lifestyle. If I couldn’t remember 
to take the pill every day, I could 
switch to NuvaRing. If I didn’t like 
the shot, I could try a cervical cap. 
Now, however, there is a greater 
sense of urgency. I feel like I can’t 
choose something I would need to 
replace or refill every few weeks 
because the possibility that my 
insurance may not cover the cost 
or that my health-care provider 
may not even exist in a few weeks 
will always linger in the back of 
my mind. If Republicans make 
good on their threats to roll back 
reproductive-health coverage or 
defund Planned Parenthood, I’m 
totally screwed.

And my concerns pale in 

comparison to the effect these 
legislative hits will have on low-
income women, who make up 80 
percent of Planned Parenthood’s 
clientele. 
Studies 
show 
that 

unintended 
pregnancies 
occur 

disproportionately in communities 
with 
high 
concentrations 

of poverty, and this can be 
traced directly to disparities in 
contraceptive access and use. What 
are these women supposed to do 
when lawmakers roll back access 
to birth control and government 
services at the same time? Where 
will they turn when they are 
unable to provide for families they 
were stripped of the right to plan 
themselves? What then?

The Trump administration has 

it completely backward if it believes 
that cutting reproductive-health 
care will accomplish anything 
other than endangering the lives 
of millions of women. After all, 
these services are difficult enough 
to obtain without Republican 
lawmakers 
introducing 
their 

skewed notions of justice into 
them. We should instead be 
working to increase birth-control 
accessibility and affordability so 
women like me don’t have to take 
drastic measures to ensure they’ll 
be protected.

IUDs should be a choice, not a 

last resort; and though I can rest 
easy knowing that I’ll probably 
be safe if lawmakers decide to 
turn back the clock 50 years 
on women’s health care, many 
other women can’t. In the land 
of the free, if we have to undergo 
a 
painful, 
inconvenient 
and 

expensive procedure to ensure we 
won’t be fucked over by stringent 
legislation, how free are we, really?

“I

t ain’t what you know 
that 
gets 
you 
into 

trouble. It’s what you 

know for sure that just ain’t so.” – 
Mark Twain

After arriving home 

for Spring Break just 
a short two weeks 
ago, my parents and 
I watched the movie 
“Hacksaw 
Ridge,” 

based on a true story 
of U.S. Army corporal, 
Desmond Doss, who 
saved 75 people in the 
battle of Okinawa. Each 
year my parents aspire 
to watch all the Oscar-
nominated movies before the 
awards ceremony, and this was the 
final one on the list. Serendipity 
is a beautiful thing, as the movie 
climaxed in a scene that affirmed 
the relevance of Twain’s prescient 
quote — with particular pertinence 
to current political discord.

The 
left’s 
appetite 
for 

persistently 
disparaging 
and 

obstructing incendiary storytelling 
was no more revealed last week 
than when Senate Minority Leader 
Chuck Schumer immediately called 
for Attorney General Jeff Sessions 
to resign for an answer he provided 
during his confirmation hearing.

However, the objections to 

Sessions’s Russian contacts are 
completely 
unfounded. 
In 
his 

confirmation 
hearing, 
Sessions 

answered 
a 
limited 
question 

regarding whether or not the 
Trump campaign had any contact 
with Russian officials. While it 
has been revealed Sessions did 
meet with Russian officials, he 
did not perjure himself. Sessions 
met in his capacity as a senator, 
not on behalf of or as an agent of 
the Trump campaign. While this 
distinction seems quite clear, many 
high-ranking Democrats, Schumer 
included, have disregarded the 
context of the meeting and his 
answer. Schumer seemed to smell 
blood, posing the opportunity for an 
easy political attack that cared little 
about trying to fully understand the 
limited disclosure.

I was not surprised by Schumer’s 

unwillingness, or perhaps inability 
to 
understand 
the 
situation, 

recalling his response to Trump’s 
call for unity, immigration reform 
and 
infrastructure 
spending 

during his address to Congress: 
“(It) was one of the most anti-
immigrant 
speeches 
that 
we 

heard any president ever give.” 
It might be said that Democratic 
leaders understand Sessions, but 
simply don’t care one way or the 
other if their resistance is purely 
calculated and political.

What is so troubling — and why 

I appreciated “Hacksaw Ridge” 
— is that Schumer, Pelosi and 

many others on the left remind 
me of Smitty (Luke Bracey), 
Sergeant Howell (Vince Vaughn) 
and 
Captain 
Glover 
(Sam 

Worthington.) 
They 

each were certain that 
Desmond Doss was 
a coward, but it just 
wasn’t so.

Desmond 
Doss 

was a young enlistee 
in the army who was 
ridiculed, beaten and 
nearly court-martialed 
for his conviction that 
he not use a firearm 
during the war. His 
values originated from 

his Seventh-day Adventist religious 
beliefs. Despite little doubt of his 
cowardice and liability by his fellow 
soldiers, history reveals that he 
was awarded the Medal of Honor 
for service above and beyond 
the call of duty during the battle 
of Okinawa. In one scene, Doss 
spends the night in a foxhole with 
Smitty, a squad mate who was the 
first to call him a coward.

Only after Doss shares the 

history behind his aversion to 
holding a weapon does Smitty 
apologize for doubting his courage, 
and the two make amends. Smitty 
dies that night but Doss rescues 
more than 70 injured soldiers 
including Sergeant Howell, who 
had been most abusive to him 
during basic training. Near the 
end of the movie, Captain Glover, 
who had been one of Doss’s 
staunchest critics, tells him that 
the men had been inspired by his 
miraculous efforts and that they 
refused to launch their next attack 
without him. Glover himself admits 
to Doss that he had never been so 
wrong about a person before, and 
asks for forgiveness.

Prior to acknowledging this, 

however, Glover and the entire 
squad had been very misguided. 
Their interpretation of Doss had 
been incorrect. The current political 
frenzy in which breaking stories 
— by virtue of their messenger and 
the messenger’s certainty — seem 
to become authentic, informative 
and fact-based may also prove 
misguided! Seeing in “Hacksaw 
Ridge” the destructiveness of an 
“it’s what you know that just 
ain’t so” attitude illuminates the 
perilous consequence of the left’s 
narrow optics and unwillingness 
to seek first to understand Trump 
and his surrogates.

Twain’s quote references the 

basis for the nonfictional prejudice, 
bias and arrogance expressed by 
Doss’s squad mates in “Hacksaw 
Ridge.” This same bias, partisanship 
and arrogance fuels persistent 
intimation by the left that Trump 
himself, or his surrogates, colluded 
with the Russians to influence the 

results of the presidential election. 
Calls for a special prosecutor rest 
solely on the presumption that 
there is evidence out there and 
that it’ll take a neutral, nonpartisan 
party to reveal it. However, not a 
single fact has been provided by the 
left to support its claims.

Of course, it’s hard to prove 

a negative, and as a result, the 
stories will continue as long as 
an appetite to destroy Trump’s 
agenda 
continues. 
Trump, 

in fact, has been extremely 
consistent in delivering exactly 
what he promised. There has 
been no bait-and-switch. The 
man will not change — even to 
a fault. He has built a team of 
experts on his cabinet that will 
mitigate his weaknesses.

Trump’s call for unity during 

his recent address to Congress 
invites folks such as Schumer and 
Pelosi to become part of the team. 
He understands that a strong team 
requires maximizing the benefit of 
different perspectives. Yet, blinding 
bias seems to restrict their capacity 
to lay aside differences and engage 
in fruitful dialogue.

Reciprocity, in this case, requires 

that naysayers give something — 
that they participate. They appear 
only to want to take by persistently 
aiming to discredit, destroy and 
delegitimize. Schumer’s call for a 
Sessions resignation and Pelosi’s 
call for a Trump impeachment are 
akin to Captain Glover’s call for a 
Doss court martial. This rush to 
judgment is scandalous in its own 
right. It is force-feeding a narrative 
derived from a fear of change, at 
the very least. Peggy Noonan, in a 
recent article titled “Washington 
Still Reels From the Quake of 2016” 
recommends: “The ground beneath 
Washington’s feet shifted. People 
here need to get over their shock 
and start recognizing the new lay 
of the land.”

I submit that the numerous 

stories that abound in the current 
political reality are just that: stories. 
And in response, alternative stories 
emerge. 
Ultimately, 
none 
are 

necessarily right or wrong, but, 
when discussed together, the sum 
results in a dialogue, and perhaps 
— at the end of this process — a 
modicum of mutual understanding 
develops. Of course, allowing this 
dialogue to occur may deprive 
Schumer and his colleagues an 
opportunity for more stinging 
sound bites, but we all might be 
more informed by the process, 
without a rush to judgment.

As I think about it, both Schumer 

and Pelosi might consider becoming 
more relevant by jumping into the 
foxhole with President Trump.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Thursday, March 9, 2017

REBECCA LERNER

Managing Editor

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

EMMA KINERY

Editor in Chief

ANNA POLUMBO-LEVY 

and REBECCA TARNOPOL 

Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

Carolyn Ayaub
Megan Burns

Samantha Goldstein

Caitlin Heenan
Jeremy Kaplan

Sarah Khan
Max Lubell

Alexis Megdanoff
Madeline Nowicki
Anna Polumbo-Levy 

Jason Rowland

Ali Safawi

Kevin Sweitzer

Rebecca Tarnopol

Stephanie Trierweiler

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Jump into the foxhole and become relevant

NICHOLAS TOMAINO | COLUMN

The things I do for Trump

LAUREN SCHANDEVEL | COLUMN

Lauren Schandevel can be reached at 

schandla@umich.edu.

Nicholas Tomaino can be reached at 

ntomaino@umich.edu.

LAUREN 

SCHANDEVEL

T

he last two weeks of class 
before Spring Break were 
rough; 
it 
seemed 
like 

midterms and projects popped 
up one after another. After my 
midterms were over, I 
needed something to 
distract me from the 
drop my grades were 
going to take and put me 
into a positive mindset 
for Spring Break. 

I saw the posters 

for 
events 
at 
the 

Canterbury 
House 

called “A Night For Us: 
Colorful Soul” around 
campus. They showed 
artwork of a woman with a massive 
afro with the words “live music” 
and “poetry readings” above her. I 
had always wanted to go, but I never 
could because of an upcoming test 
or homework. Since my midterms 
were behind me, there was nothing 
stopping me. One of my friends, 
also searching for a distraction from 
the horror known as exam season, 
wanted to go too, so we met up and 
walked over to the Canterbury 
House together.

We could hear the music from 

across the street. After looking both 
ways, we ran across East Huron 
toward the Canterbury House. We 
came in and walked into the room 
where jazz was playing. There was 
a good number of people, but not 
so many that you couldn’t move 
around or felt claustrophobic, and 
everyone was standing up listening 
to the music — no one was staring at 
their phone or drunkenly teetering 
from side to side. 

As I looked around the room, 

I noticed how eclectic the group 
around me was. Most of the people 
looked like young college students, 
but there were also people in their 

thirties or forties. People wore 
everything from sweatpants to 
berets and oxfords. There were 
Black people, white people and Asian 
people. I didn’t feel any pressure to 

be a certain way, and I 
didn’t feel out of place.

That was one of the 

few times in college 
I didn’t act excited, 
though I actually was. 
I didn’t have to pretend 
like I liked the music that 
was playing. I wasn’t 
bored, 
or 
annoyed, 

and I didn’t want to be 
anywhere else.

Despite this, I wasn’t 

as comfortable as I would have liked 
to be. I wished I could be like one 
woman I saw there. She was on the 
other side of the room, smiling and 
dancing to the rhythm. It was like 
she was in her own world; she only 
looked straight ahead at the band 
and paid attention to the music.

She reminded me of the friend I 

was with; I even joked, “That’s you 
in the future.” My friend is the type 
of person who will start playing 
reggaeton on Spotify in an empty 
dorm lounge and force people 
passing by to dance with her. While 
we were at the Canterbury House, 
she tried to get me to dance but I 
wanted to stick with what most of 
the other people in the room were 
doing, so I just tapped my foot along 
with the music. I leaned against the 
wall because I didn’t want to attract 
attention or stick out as one of the 
few people dancing.

When there were only a few 

people left in the audience, a girl 
came up and started to sing “On 
& On” by Erykah Badu. Listening 
to her sing reminded me of when 
I was young; instead of being 
nervous, unsure and on the brink of 

adulthood, I was a kid in my mom’s 
car listening to the R&B station. I 
was the type of person who would 
try to start a “Soul Train” line and 
run to an empty dance floor at a 
wedding. I wasn’t afraid of having 
fun or looking silly and I didn’t care 
who saw me.

By this time, all the people left 

in the audience were dancing. 
It would be weird to be the only 
one standing still, so I started to 
dance. I had fun earlier, but I had 
so much more fun once I actually 
started dancing — when I did what 
I wanted instead of trying to blend 
in. It would’ve been a good idea to 
do it sooner. I could have, but it felt 
like something wouldn’t let me.

I know that just going along with 

what a group does is silly, but it can 
be difficult to do something different 
or new. We’re told to “be ourselves” 
but conditioned to fit in so that we 
make friends or avoid being a target 
for bullies. This process erodes our 
willingness to express ourselves 
freely. We’re afraid of being labeled 
“weird” so we become restricted to a 
constant state of fear and struggle to 
fully enjoy ourselves or be comfortable 
when we could be judged.

To free ourselves of these 

restrictions, the answer may be to 
constantly do things we expect to be 
embarrassing and act like we don’t 
care. But for me, this is easier said 
than done. When I force myself 
(or am forced by my friend) to do 
something I know will make me 
feel awkward, I usually have to 
give myself a pep talk or pretend 
I’m Beyoncé to remind myself to 
be less insecure.

Canterbury tales

COREY DULIN | COLUMN

Corey Dulin can be reached at 

cydulin@umich.edu.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

COREY 
DULIN

NICHOLAS 
TOMAINO

— An open letter published yesterday by the global campaign CHIME FOR CHANGE, 

signed by artists such as Beyoncé, Madonna, Coldplay and John Legend.

“

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

We fight for education. For health. 

For justice. For every girl. Every 
woman. Everywhere. We fight for 

our future. Because none of us 
can move forward if half of us 

are held back. ”

