By Mac Weekly Staff

“Slut” is thrown around with a cringe-worthy casualness, and talk of 28-day cycles dominate the programming of 24-hour news. Corporations and eggs are people, and forced ultrasounds are being inked into law with the quick swipe of a pen. The faces of those with the privilege to make policy are nothing like the reflection we see staring back at us in the morning as we brush our teeth, wash our face, take our pill. Something doesn’t seem right to us. As students and as young adults with both good sex and good sexual health on the brain, stigma-free access to affordable contraception is our issue. When our fellow students come under vile misogynistic attack for voicing the reality that we—as sexually active and sexually responsible students—all live, we should be taking it personally…and we do. As Macalester students we recognize that we come from diverse positions in terms of our plural cultures, sexualities, faiths, personal experiences, ideologies and political leanings. We don’t presume that everyone on this campus practices the same sexual activities or makes the same choices about reproductive health. Yet even as we honor this heterogeneity among us, it would be irresponsible to say the issue of contraception belongs only to a fringe population or implicates only a few of us. According to the Guttmacher Institute virtually all U.S. women—more than 99 percent of—aged 15 to 44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method. Macalester and students nationwide are intimately linked by the most private parts of our lives. We often hear that the personal is political, but it turns out the personal is not so personal after all. When the moral character, intellect, integrity and autonomy of one is questioned, it collectively undermines the integrity of us all. The Mac community lives together, learns together, and must stand together against the attacks, misconceptions and repressive policies that are simultaneously invasively personal and collectively threatening. refresh –>