Add to the list of “things about America I (american) didn’t know were not normal worldwide”
Not only this, but a huge percentage of hospital systems around the U. S. are run by religious organizations who are explicitly against birth control. Their employee health insurance (because yes most places in the US still don’t have universal healthcare) don’t always cover birth control for their employees, and in some cases, the physicians are told not to prescribe unless it is a medical necessity, meaning not for birth control itself, especially for anyone under a certain age or unmarried, etc. So. Believe it or don’t, this is huge for us Stateside. We won’t see them in drugstores for almost another year, probably, and hopefully the ever-more-conservative higher courts won’t try to take it out before we can get there.
Also on top of all that shit: In the late 90’s into 2010’s, I couldn’t get birth control without a pelvic exam first, and that used to be the norm
