We’re still number one…

Last week we learned that my home city of St. Louis Missouri still ranks number one in the United States for gonorrhea and chlamydia rates.

That’s right…we’re number one.

Next week…February 3rd…this bitch will join pro-choice activists in Jefferson City for Prevention First Day, when we will deliver petitions and lobby our legislators to support the Prevention First legislation in Missouri.

Putting prevention first would seem like an easy sell…since we’re number one. But we face a lot of opposition here to things like medically accurate comprehensive sex education, compassionate assistance for rape emergencies, birth control protection, a women’s health services program and patient protection.

Sigh.

And even though we have a new pro-choice Governor and several new pro-choice legislators, we still face a legislature that would rather restrict access to reproductive health care in an effort to protect women from…um, ourselves (ugh)…than deal with the fact that what we are currently doing isn’t working on too many levels...unless the goal is for St. Louis city to rank number one in the country for gonorrhea and chlamydia rates.

Blink.

The choice is clear…insulting as hell do-nothing ridiculous and medically inaccurate restrictions or education and prevention.

Missourians are not alone in this situation…politics is local and change happens from the ground up. So, we cannot sit back and wait for the Obama administration to wave a magic wand and make it more better here. We’ve got to make our case to those who govern our state, where the clock has been ticking and every second that passes is a moment lost when we could have been dealing with this shit.

And did I mention that we’re number one?

Mercy.