Many female students have been rudely awakened when attempting to buy oral contraceptives at the Wesleyan’s Health Center. A complex federal legislative change has caused the price of contraception to jump more than ten times its original cost. As you can imagine, this forces hundreds of students on campus to make the difficult decisions about how, or whether, they can afford birth control.
This simply cannot stand. Bush and his administration know that as college students, our budgets are extremely limited. Before the law was enacted this January, most students didn’t have to worry about birth control pricing. Students were able to buy affordable birth control at Davenport because drug companies sold it to Wesleyan (and other universities) at a reduced price. The government has suddenly stripped university health centers of their ability to purchasing birth control inexpensively.
It doesn’t need to be this way. Congress has known about this problem all year, and they have done nothing about it. The solution is simple, and better yet, doesn’t cost a cent! All Congress need do is make university clinics eligible to buy birth control at nominal costs, just as it was before the new law came into effect.
This is a simple problem for Congress to fix and the change can be immediately enacted. I am urging Wesleyan’s local Congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro, to help fix this issue. You can do your part by coming to Usdan on Tuesday, Oct. 23 at lunchtime, learning more about the issue, and signing our petition asking Rep. DeLauro and Congress to pass legislation that will restore affordable birth control as soon as possible. Thanks for your help!
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