The other day I wrote a post about how I am tired of women being treated as political pawns. Since then, the Susan G. Komen foundation has backtracked on their funding decision and lost a VP of Public Policy, Planned Parenthood raised an additional million dollars that will surely go a long way in helping women, the Catholic Church has started a war with the government regarding birth control in health plans, and still Romney, Newt and Santorum are babbling on about Roe vs Wade and “taxpayers dollars”.

It makes me crazy.

A few days ago I went to CVS to buy some tampons. A 20 pack cost me $5.49 + 7% sales tax (FL). Then I thought, my period lasts on average about 5 days and according to the FDA, to prevent Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) I have to change my tampons every 4 hours or so, therefore I need 30 tampons a month roughly.

I will probably have my period for about 40 years so that means that I will need about 14,400 tampons or 720 packs during my lifetime. At $5.49 and 7% (not accounting for inflation), over my reproductive years, I will pay $276.70 in taxes that a man won’t pay. Now if you multiply this by 157.2 million, or the number of women in the United States as of the 2010 census, over 40 years that is $43,497,240,000 that men are NOT contributing to the tax pool.

This is only tampons-a basic necessity of life that I can’t escape unless I have a hysterectomy, which would probably cost the fine people of [my_insurance] Healthcare a whole lot more than some birth control pills. I think that those 44 billion dollars should afford women not only preventive healthcare, but also the right to decide what to do with their bodies. It should even allow Planned Parenthood to pay for abortions if need be.

To take it a step further, I am not on birth control pills though I should be for a number of different reason, but I could go on about the comparable monthly cost of my Lysteda, which is a reproduction-related cost I can’t avoid unless I want to increase my monthly tampon cost, lower my monthly work productivity or, again, have a hysterectomy.

Please tell me of one single exclusively male cost that is biologically inescapable a man has to incur regularly for 40 years and if you can find one, tell me if it is taxable.

The fact is that we are taxed disproportionately from men. Sadly, women are underrepresented so this will probably not change but the tax moneys we (un)willingly and unequally put in should at least afford us the right to not be used as political pawns.