Yesterday morning, former ‘Bachelor’ star Heather Maltman spoke openly about her experience with something that should be simple and easily accessible in Australia, but sadly often isn’t – birth control.
The ‘Studio 10‘ panel were discussing a Mamamia article by Christie Hayes, which spoke about the fact that men are often not allowed to purchase the morning-after pill.
Maltman said the article rang true for her, as she’d had a similar experience where she’d sent her then-partner to purchase it (as she was unable to leave work), but he was denied.
“This actually happened to me, this exact situation.I was actually seeing a guy for a while and unfortunately we had a situation where I needed it and because I couldn’t go the next day, because I had work on and stuff, I asked him to go and get it for me.He actually couldn’t pick it up, they said no to him, and because of it I took it too late and I actually ended up having a miscarriage.”
Her story made her visibly emotional on the panel, as she spoke about it being “one of the most crazy moments of my life”.
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Maltman went on to say that the experience made her feel “like the worst person in the world”.
“It made me feel like a whore.”
Being made to feel bad when attempting to get emergency contraception is a common experience for women of all ages, but it’s particularly common for young women.
It’s super important to remove the stigmatisation of women’s sexual identity, and women’s sexual health – even in a privileged Western country like Australia, women still face an incredibly uphill battle with things like birth control, body autonomy, medical care, and the right to an abortion.
Stories like Maltman‘s are sadly not that rare – getting the morning after pill should be as simple as possible, otherwise women can face some truly devastating situations that could strongly affect their physical and mental health.
Sending enormous amounts of respect & love to Heather for telling her story – the more women that speak out, the closer we get to normalising sexual health as an everyday conversation and removing the stigma completely.
If you want to know more about the morning after pill, you can read about it here: au.reachout.com/what-is-the-emergency-contraceptive-pill
Source: Studio 10.
