I've seen very similar things down here in Georgia. I'm 17, and I've been emotional support for a few friends who went through just about that same thing. In fact, if she hadn't said she was in NJ, I would have asked her if she was one of them.

One actually tried two drug stores before someone would let her buy one. Mind you, she was my age at the time and looked a few years older (this was about three years ago), but they still managed to convince her that she could not buy one because she was a minor. Finally I directed her to the Publix pharmacy, the pharmacist there is the woman who introduced me to the idea of feminism way back in the 4th grade, where she was able to buy a two pack and the pharmacist talked her through it. As she was relaying this story to me later on in the tampon aisle of a store (from which you could easily see the check out) a guy who could not have been older than 16 walked up, grabbed a pack of neon condoms, and checked out with the same lady who had denied my friend a pregnancy test without a SINGLE issue.

Turned out she wasn't pregnant after all, but her experience did open my eyes to how women in the South are being taught to act about our own bodies and choices, and have been taught to act for ages. And as my generation gets older, I don't see anyone's attitudes changing in the least bit. They are carbon copies of the last one, and often the one before. I know I'll be working to see this change in my lifetime, but I often doubt that it will any time soon.

This is where self-check outs are your friends. No judgment there. Yes, most pharmacies don't have self-check outs, but a lot of major grocery stores do. And some major grocery stores have pharmacies that sell pregnancy tests.

And as much as I respect cashiers and other customer service people (I hate people and refuse to work in a service industry, so good on those who do), I'd throw an enormous fit in the store if this happened to me. I'd demand names, managers, and the number for the corporate office. I'd threaten lawsuits. Cashiers that refuse to sell pregnancy tests to girls they deem "too young" are bullies. They are using their limited power and (probably) their advanced age to pass judgment. It's their job to scan your produce, not to dictate your sex life and I'd be very sure to let them know they've overstepped their bounds and that there will be consequences from their meddling in the form of complaints and possible legal action. While I know that cashiers have the right not to serve, they discriminate if they refuse to serve a portion of society (young girls who may be having sex) based on a twisted set of beliefs.

Ugh. This just made me so mad.

Also, there's always lying: "I'm on an errand for my aunt."

“Now, I firmly think abortion should not be used as a form of birth control, but holy shit.”

While it does certainly suck that your friends had such a shitty encounter, I have an issue with the above sentence. If abortion shouldn’t be used as another form of birth control, what should it be used for then? Should it only be legal in cases of rape, incest, and health?

When talking to anti-choicers they use they same rhetoric because it feeds into the notion that women who have elective abortions are heartless selfish bitches who enjoy killing babies. Having an abortion is not easy, as you can see from calling all the clinics. I live in Northern Nevada and there is only one abortion clinic and it will cost you $600 cash only. I highly doubt that there is a woman who thinks, in the heat of the moment; yeah I could use a $3 condom or $25 pack of birth control but nah I will just wait till I get pregnant so I can have a painful $600 abortion. If a women used abortion as her sole method of birth control she would have more than 30 in her lifetime, seems pretty costly to be.

I just don’t think we should judge women who have abortions.

This doesn't even make sense. As twisted as the logic is against selling birth control to minors, I can at least sorta understand how people get from point A to point B. I fail to see how pregnancy tests can be seen as something the keep from a minor. It's not going to prevent or terminate a pregnancy so it wont "make girls slutty" (or whatever the reasons they like to use for it). When is the girl supposed to find out she's pregnant? When the baby pops out?

I went about buying my first pregnancy test in a similar, frantic fashion. Actually, I was so scared and so ashamed that I made my boyfriend do it for me. He paid for the test in change. I thoroughly expected him to be harrassed at the checkout counter for this. Not only did he look like an irresponsible, scruffy teenager but he was paying with a jar of change. I wished for death, but everything went smoothly. I spent the school day mentally abusing myself with Catholic Guilt.

After school we promptly realized that we had nowhere to go. After much brain-storming we went to Taco Bell (he was probably hungry.) I took the damned test in the bathroom and walked out all smiles-negative!-to find my boyfriend eating a taco and nodding in satisfaction. Whether the satisfied nodding was for the taco or the negative result I will never know.

It wasn't until later that I really got into feminism and began examining my relationship and the way I handled that situation that I became completely outraged. Yes, the buying of the test went smoothly, but there were sleepless, stressed filled nights, tears, and a very large sense of shame, (oh, and complete ignorance, courtesy of my utter lack of sex-education). The shame and ignorance are what angered me most. After this incident I learned all about reproduction and my body and couldn't help but wonder why I'd never been taught any of it. I've been wrongfully ashamed of many, many actions. Feminism has really helped me let go of all my shame, rooted in a religious background, and start enjoying life. It also helped me let go of that shitty relationship, and to care about a hell of a lot more things than I used to. (Thanks feminism!)

Yes!
I am in the UK (is that relevant?) and did not get quite this reaction the first time I had to buy a pregnancy test, but I did have to search the store for a good 10 minutes to find them, then realised they were positioned in full view of both the counter and shop windows and doors so quickly grabbed one...then uncomfortably (it seems so silly now) went to the counter...I nearly wanted to do a Homer Simpson buying illegal fireworks and ask for condoms and lube and anything else naughty I could think of to dilute the situation. The lady behind the counter paused...paused...raised her eyebrows (I guess I was pretty young and probably in a misjudged clothing phase) and eventually sold me the test, but did provide me with an audible tut. I left feeling completely horrible about the whole thing.

Most of my other experiences of buying pregnancy tests came from being a (whats called a) "female welfare officer" in college, where I'd have to regularly go buy tests to give out to students who needed them. I cannot tell you what a horror it became, week after week buying pregnancy tests from the same shops (sometimes the same people) and, almost without exception, getting a horrible negative reaction from whoever was selling them to me.

The really sad thing is, these bad reactions were *every time* from women.

This is not nearly the same, but I had this sort of thing happen to me when I was 19- although I do look a few years younger than I am. I was on my way to my boyfriend's so I stopped at a Mobil gas station for some condoms (NYC area).

The cashier asked me how old I was with this wry look on his face. He was in his mid-twenties. I just said "19" before I thought- he has no right to ask me that. I knew I was offended, but I was thinking about other things, and didn't realize just HOW ridiculous what he had asked me was. That's the fun part about injustice, you're just going about your day, and then WHAM. Even if I was very young- the point is protection, not pushing some fucked idea of morality on strangers, but I digress...

I wasn't yet calling myself a feminist, but I'll never forget how as I drove to my boyfriend's house all the clever things I could have said were swirling in my head. They still are, but much more eloquent thanks to some feminist literature and gender studies classes during my undergraduate years.

This is so WRONG. The worst part is that any one that would have this problem would probably be so freaked out that hey would come back and file a complaint. These poor girls! What kind of idiot thinks that preventing a teenager from buying a pregnancy test will (retroactively) prevent teenage sex?

The best part about this post is that you've managed to capture the name-checking, hyper-referentiality of Juno's writing. I laughed.

ElleStar- I mean it in the way that, the only thing we were considering was an abortion. I didn't want it to come across that I was under the impression that you could just go get an abortion every time you get pregnant.

Thanks Ann! That's wicked sweet of you. I really look up to the entire Feministing community, so it means a lot for a post of mine to be spotlighted like that.

Re: "This is where self-check outs are your friends. No judgment there. Yes, most pharmacies don't have self-check outs, but a lot of major grocery stores do. And some major grocery stores have pharmacies that sell pregnancy tests."

That's nice. Some of us are quite rural, and live somewhere where there's 1 pharmacy and we probably have relatives working there. There's no judgement at self check outs, but they're actually pretty few and far between. I had to leave the province to see my first self check out.

In 1989 when I was 17, I never had any problems buying condoms or the Today Sponge in a fairly conservative area of Western KY. One would think this sort of thing would go fairly smoothly 20 years later in NJ, but I guess this goes to show we still haven't really made significant headway.

Even last year when I needed Plan B, I went to maybe 3 stores before I found a pharmacy counter where random assorted old men weren't milling about waiting for prescriptions and totally in hearing range.

aly--

thanks for the post, you have wonderful expression in your writing and it totally brought me back to being your age and wondering what the fuck was wrong with the system (it's been 11 years and i'm still wondering...). your livejournal site rocks as well, keep it up!

katie

Wow that is so shit. I'm so glad I've never, ever had issues. We (in NZ, or at least the cities I've lived in) have pregnancy tests at supermarkets and Family Planning (equivilent to PP) give them out free.

I started on hormonal contraceptives at 16. I've had the morning after pill probably 5 or 6 times in the last 7 years, either from genuine mistakes or just paranoia - the first couple required a doctor, since then it's been OTC and you just need to chat to a pharmacist. I've got pregnancy tests from supermarkets and from Family Planning for free just to double-check since I don't get my period on my pill. I feel so lucky reading stuff like this that I've never, ever got any shit. The worst was a pharmacist who was pretty humourless about the morning after pill, but wasn't actively judgemental.

Dear Aly:

I think that you were deliberately given misinformation when you were trying to help your friend obtain information on getting an abortion.

First of all, there is no requirement that you inform the father. This is true even if you are married. "Spousal notification" requirements were held to be unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in the case of Casey v. Planned Parenthood of Southern Pennsylvania, before you were even born.

Second, I can't think of any responsible clinic that would require you to wait to the second trimester. By the time you reach your second trimester (that is, when you finish your third month), the abortion procedure is far more complicated. For that matter, in some states, you have to get court permission. I think these so-called abortion clinics were making transparent attempts at making sure that an abortion would become out of reach.

I think that you probably inadvertently contacted what are known as "crisis pregnancy centers." These centers are notorious for pretending to offer help for young women such as your friend, while in fact pushing an "anti-abortion" agenda. If you read this site, you will hear more about them. What they are doing is unethical, and probably illegal. I think that you should identify them to us, or at least report them to Planned Parenthood, NARAL, or some other concerned organization.

That having been said, I am curious as to whether in fact the Planned Parenthoods in New Jersey do not offer abortion services, and if so, why not? Fellow posters?

Wow that sucks. Jeez, I totally take stuff like that for granted. I mean I live in GA (where you can’t buy alcohol on Sunday, because Jesus will get pissed and we’ll all be up to our tits in frogs or something) and I’ve never known anyone to run into anything like this. I mean we have pregnancy tests at the dollar store, seriously. If you haven’t walked the aisles and looked at every single product the dollar store sells you’re totally missing out. Also, I’m not recommending anyone actually buy dollar store pregnancy tests if they really want to know if they’re pregnant. Although, the ones my friend and I took did work, I’m gay and he’s a dude.

I'm not sure the harrassment is reserved just for teens. When I went to snag a birth control test in San Diego, they price-checked the damn thing, and announced it over the loud speaker. "We need a price check on a pregnancy test at checkout four." I was 25 at the time and twitchy because I was trying to keep my roommates from finding out.

Catherine D'Medici - That may have been so, and is very probable. Some of their explanations were really off the wall. And I checked the Planned Parenthoods in my area-- the closest one that provided abortions was in Camden, which is wicked far away.