Tag: reproductive justice

Permission to Procure Birth Control: U.S. Government Form BC-451

By Tara Campbell

 

U.S. Government Form BC-451: Permission to Procure Birth Control

In accordance with the Maternal Priority Act of 2020, any and all requests for contraception must be approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Fetal Services. To that end, please complete the following questionnaire:

Name of Infernal Harlot (Last, First): _________________________________________

Citizenship status

  1. U.S. Citizen
  2. Naturalized U.S. Citizen*
  3. Dual Citizen*
  4. Permanent Resident*
  5. Spanish-speaker*
  6. Olive-skinned*
  7. Otherwise suspicious*

* This is the incorrect form for your use. Please submit Form 4827: Voluntary Forfeiture of Citizenship Status and Form 3453: Requisition for Repatriation to Country of Ancestral Origin.

Race/Ethnicity

  1. Caucasian or White
  2. African American or Black*
  3. Asian*
  4. Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander*
  5. American Indian or Alaska Native*
  6. More than one*

* This is the incorrect form for your use. Please submit Form 3453 Requisition for Repatriation to Country of Ancestral Origin. Alternatively, submit Form 3423, Requisition for Federally-Funded Sterilization.

I, Infernal Harlot (First name, Last name) ___________________________________________, am requesting permission to procure birth control for the following reason(s); check all that apply:

  1. __ I choose not to have children at this time.
    Please report for six-month Re-Acculturation Training for self and husband. Be advised, failure to do so will result in a filing with your state’s attorney general.
  2. __ My family cannot afford to have additional children at this time.
    Please be advised that per the Find A Way Act of 2020, the right of the child to be conceived supersedes any and all other potential concerns, such as present ability to feed, clothe, house, or protect current or future children. Potential parents are legally bound to procure such means should conception occur, and as such, all petitions for birth control lodged upon this basis will be rejected.
  3. __ Bearing a child will disrupt completion of school/my ability to work.
    Per the 2021 Patriot Mother Act, an approved and notarized Form 1426b: Justification for Continuance of Educational/Professional activities must be attached. Please note that applications filed under this justification will be investigated and may result in termination/expulsion from your educational program.
  4. __ Health risks associated with pregnancy.
    Per the 2022 Valiant Vessel Act, you must attach a statement from your pastor attesting that the benefit to the world of any potential child that might have been conceived was considered coequally with the value of its mother’s survival. Please note, physicians’ statements are no longer considered valid.
  5. __ I’m too young to have children.
    Please consult the 2023 Budding Young Future Act, which revised age of consent with parental or assaulter’s permission, and harmonized it with appropriate childbearing age on a national level.
  6. __ To regulate my periods.
    Attach a statement from your husband along with form HOLI-1: Certification of Training: Understanding God’s Plan for You. Please note, physicians’ statements are no longer considered valid.
  7. __ Treatment for ovarian cysts, endometriosis, or other health conditions unrelated to pregnancy prevention.
    Attach statements from your husband and your pastor, along with form HOLI-1: Certification of Training: Understanding God’s Plan for You. Please note, physicians’ statements are no longer considered valid.
  8. __ Risk of sexual assault.
    Attach proof of address; most recent crime report from your precinct, certified by a reliable male law enforcement official; notarized letters from any potential assailants granting you their permission to not bear their children; and form HOLI-1: Certification of Training: Understanding God’s Plan for You.
  9. __ I am dating a married CEO or Member of Congress.
    Attach copy of text messages and current mailing address for immediate shipment of contraceptives.

IMPORTANT NOTE: All petitions based on reasons 1 through 8 will be rejected per the Fetal Host Act of 2024.

________________________________________________________________________
Name and Social Security Number of Infernal Harlot (print)

________________________________________________    ______________________
Signature of responsible party                           Date

________________________________________________
Relationship to Infernal Harlot (Husband/Father/GOP Elected Representative)

By signing this form, you acknowledge that you have given your wife/daughter/mistress permission to procure birth control, which may render your household subject to additional surveillance. Please be advised that per the Purity of Penetration Act of 2020, all carnal activity, including that between husband and wife, but with the exception noted in point 9 above, is purely for purposes of procreation. Anyone who knowingly commits fornication (sexual contact for purposes other than procreation, with the exception of point 9 above) may be subject to prosecution under federal law, potentially resulting in fines and/or jail time, and forfeiture of present and/or future rights to erectile dysfunction therapy.

 

Tara Campbell (www.taracampbell.com) is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction editor at Barrelhouse. Prior publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Jellyfish Review, Booth, and Strange Horizons. She’s the author of a novel, TreeVolution, a hybrid fiction/poetry collection; Circe’s Bicycle, and a short story collection, Midnight at the Organporium. She received her MFA from American University in 2019.

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash.

Floating

By Penny Perry

 

Mother couldn’t have known what to do.
She was only twenty-five,
drove her big sister, Leona, six weeks pregnant,
to the doctor’s in LA.

Leona squinted at California bungalows,
backyards with orange trees.
She thought about her husband home worrying,
her baby daughter waiting for her.

She told my mother about her screenplay,
a murder in the Braille room of the public library.
Then, she sat silent, her long fingers tangled like kelp.

The doctor glanced at his medical license
framed on the wall behind him,

said he was afraid to use ether.
Leona jutted her famous Heyert jaw:
“My friend Ruth told me to insist.
With ether I’ll float above the pain.”

It was hot that June morning, 1941.
No air conditioning. My mother
in the waiting room thumbed through magazines.
Big-eyed Loretta Young on the cover of Life.

It happened fast. Ether, a busy housewife,
pulled down the shades.

The doctor waved my mother in.
White face, head back, Leona was no longer breathing.
The ribbon in her dark hair floated in the breeze of a fan.

………………………………………………………

Penny Perry is a five time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her first poetry collection, Santa Monica Disposal & Salvage, was published in 2012 by Garden Oak Press. Her new collection, Father Seahorse, will be published by Garden Oak Press in 2017.

Reading recommendation: Santa Monica Disposal & Salvage by Penny Perry.

A Poem by Rae Rose

The Other Day I Peed on a Stick

and when I peed on the stick I knew my blood was like poison.
When I turned 18, I had just started my medication, I peed on a stick, called a number
from the phone book to see if I could afford an abortion without anyone knowing.
It was a pro-life group with a deceptive name, the woman begging me to keep the baby.

So I told my mother. The doctor she took me to stuck his head in the room, said “Congratulations, you’re pregnant.” Shut the door. The woman who filled out my outtake form rattled on about her midwife. Her face changed. “You’re happy about this, right?”
She slowly drew hearts around her midwife’s name.

I wished those hearts could work some sort of magic —

make my blood less like the poison I was just beginning to know.
My mother’s aunt died of a back alley abortion. My mother wrote a poem about it called, “Floating,” because as she bleeds to death she is floating above the pain. Or maybe it was the ether that killed her. All sorts of things could kill you from an abortion back then.

At 22 my mother’s future mother-in-law said, “I can get you an abortion, but you have to say you’re crazy.” But my mother wanted him. In fact, my mother has wanted every pregnancy, especially the miscarriage. She has his mobile hanging above her bed.
A group of tiny ceramic bears in bowties that clink sweetly, quietly.

The other day I peed on a stick and when I peed on the stick
I knew my blood was like poison, but without my medication, I’ll go crazy.
I’ll never be the girl in the movie who throws up, pees on a stick, then says,
honey? I’m pregnant! And runs to her lover. Buys bitty shoes. Buys bitty hats.

I’ll never read aloud to my belly, then deny doing such a silly thing.
I won’t look into a tiny face and see a glimmer of me, of my mother, of my husband.
I won’t be looking at someone I will love forever. Someone to give the world to.
Someone for whom I’d make sure the world was something to fall in love with.

Trump is the President-elect. I peed on a stick and when I peed on the stick I knew
my blood was like poison and I’d spare a child all sorts of deformity, sickness.
I waited the two minutes you have to wait, wondering, what if he changes everything?
What if someday I can’t get an abortion, my blood like poison?

Will we use the phrase “back alley,” keep notes for other women of doctors who perform
the operation? Could I become a story my nephews tell? Another aunt with a tragic end? Will I float above the pain? Right out of the world I’d try to make magical for my child
if my blood was nothing, wasn’t anything like poison.

……………………………………………..

Rae Rose is a California poet and essayist whose work has been published in Cicada Magazine, Lilith Magazine and The Paterson Review, among other literary journals. Her book, Bipolar Disorder for Beginners is an account, in poetry and prose, of her struggles with that disease. Marge Piercy characterizes it as “powerful and emotionally charged.” Rae earned her MFA from Goddard College and is a poetry editor for Writers Resist.

Reading recommendation: Bipolar Disorder for Beginners by Rae Rose.