Woman Screams "Fuck You Paul Ryan!" While Nurses Insert Her IUD

Birth control can regulate menstrual cycles and hormones, get acne under control, and then there's the obvious benefit — it helps those who take it make sure they don't have children before they're ready (if they want to at all). Yet, finding the right birth control can already be difficult, and as the new administration is taking steps to defund clinics that offer reproductive health services and make birth control less affordable, it's only getting harder to find a method that fits your needs and will be available (and affordable) for a long time. That's why many people who want to avoid getting pregnant are now looking to long term methods of birth control, like IUDs.

Twitter user @TheDreamGhoul is a nurse at a women's clinic in the midwest that provides STD testing, birth control, and abortion services. On Friday, when a patient who came to the clinic for an IUD had a unique reaction during the procedure, she tweeted the story. The initial tweet says, "Someone just screamed "FUCK YOU PAUL RYAN" while we were inserting her IUD and I've never laughed so hard in my life." While this initial tweet sounds funny, she backed it up with some sobering information.

In a succession of tweets, she said, "This was funny, yes. But the meaning behind it is what should frustrate everyone. With all of the threats to reproductive healthcare, women everywhere are feeling pressured to get long acting contraception. A lot of docs won't even provide IUDs if you haven't had children. It's very stupid. So women feel pushed to get IUDs or implants when that may not be the right choice for them ultimately. So once again, the choice is being taken away from women. So sincerely, fuck you Paul Ryan."

She told Allure that her particular clinic narrowly avoided defunding last month, but they're not completely out of the woods. (It's fair to say that no one is, as one-third of the Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa will be closed by the end of this month.) She said, "We see women who are rushing to get long-acting contraception because they feel they are backed into a corner. These women are afraid of losing their coverage and their clinics altogether while this administration is in power. On one hand, it makes me so happy that we can provide these services and contraceptive methods to women, but it is so frustrating when you understand the fact that women are, once again, feeling like their choice and their bodily autonomy is being taken away from them."

While it's fantastic that @TheDreamGhoul and others like her are working so fervently to provide care while they still can, she makes an excellent point here. Birth control and the choices surrounding it should be made with full autonomy, and not because one is backed into a corner. Medication affects everyone differently, and we all need different things from our birth control — being forced to choose a method that's long-acting just because we feel our healthcare is under threat is far from ideal, and takes away much of a patient's agency.

She told Allure, "For many women, the pill or the birth control shot is a better choice, but with methods [like] that you have to rely on your clinics for your supply, [and] it is seeming that women are rapidly losing faith that this will be an option in the future." While this is disheartening, sharing stories like this can at least make us feel less alone, and knowing there are people out there willing to fight is inspiring. She said that if her clinic does end up closing, she intends to continue the fight for reproductive rights and the LGBTQ+ community they serve with all she has.

More on reproductive rights:

1. This Woman Live-Instagrammed Her IUD Insertion to Stress the Importance of Planned Parenthood
2. Trump Just Signed a Bill That Lets States Defund Planned Parenthood
3. This Is How Much Birth Control and Women’s Health Care Could Cost Under the AHCA

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