If healthcare leaders are serious about improving women's health, they must become more united and more public in their support of reproductive freedom. First, healthcare organizations must recognize the importance of family planning, sex education, and reproductive choice in their mission statements, policies, and procedures. At the practice level, healthcare providers must provide reproductive healthcare services in a way that acknowledges that, for women, the personal is political. It is not enough to write a prescription for contraception or test for STIs without backing these services up with information, education, and support that will help empower women to become actors in their own lives. Break the censorship barriers.
Censorship comes from both internal and external forces.
Rarely, however, are public portrayals of sex accompanied by parallel messages about responsibility or the consequences of irresponsible sexual behavior. Sex is easier to find on television than the weather report, yet most television stations refuse to air contraceptive advertisements. Some healthcare providers are reluctant to openly discuss sexual health issues with their patients. Young people, especially, suffer the most dramatic consequences of these mixed messages. These are enormous public health problems that, ultimately, we all pay for in the long term.