I didn’t have dystopian back-to-school shopping lists on my 2023 bingo card, but here we are. USA Today recently published “Not your average back-to-school supply list,” which included contraception, fentanyl test strips and naloxone (Narcan), Covid tests and vaccines, and making sure you’ve got a mental health expert’s contact info on hand. Undoubtedly, that last one is for the inevitable breakdowns that will occur from the depression caused by your daughter’s birth control, the disturbing sight of teens dropping dead on campus from fentanyl overdoses, and the looming threat of mask mandate reinstatements — not to mention, for making sure kids with conflicted feelings about their sexuality are affirmed in their confusion, and that it’s all hidden from parents.
Welcome to the 2023-2024 school year, kiddos!
Not to be outdone, NPR is in on the fun, too. In a glowing “All Things Considered” segment on “proactive” young women ticking birth control off their back-to-school lists before shipping out to colleges in those backward states that ban fetal dismemberment, we’re treated to a serene description of the insertion of a Nexplanon implant underneath the skin of an adolescent girl’s arm in an Oakland, California high school clinic, all set to pan flute music, and complete with muted sounds of the procedure as it happens in the background.
At the end of the segment, with the young woman having been effectively, temporarily sterilized, we hear the host of the segment characterize the teen’s “relief” as one of being able to “focus on her education and revel in the freedom of college” — of course, it’s
