Far From Home

The events in the house last week (and the week before that and the week before that) have made me down right depressed. They have pushed me even further because, as a young American living abroad, I feel I should be in my home state for Pennsylvania and taking the train up to New York this weekend to take action against the insulting bill that threatens to rip all funding from Planned Parenthood.

I’ve signed the open letter to congress, even made a tiny donation to my local rep in hopes that it would make a difference when the vote came in yet I still feel useless. And worse, I feel like I am about to lose something just at the time I need it most. I’m graduating from an art University in England this summer, currently I have no job, no money (I can’t even get a loan) and when I return to the US this fall, I’ll have no health coverage.

I’ve never needed planned parenthood before. I was comfortable enough telling my parents I wanted to go on the pill and since high school I’ve had annual GYN visits with little incident, I got the pill and pap tests and the Gardasil vaccine all before my senior year. But now I face a reality were I won’t be able to pay for my pills or any other contraceptive, I won’t be able to pay for my annual pap test or other basic screenings. My friends here can hardly understand how our health care can have so many gaps since they’ve grown up with the NHS. I’m pretty jealous of that.