Share Your Story or Your Mother's Story about the Challenges of Accessing Birth Control

55 years ago a family member got on the plane, went to England and had an abortion. Her NY Doctor would not give her an abortion. She had 4 children and the 5th would have been her undoing. She went to a clinic in  England, I believe, organized by her doctor and flew back to NYC. When she got home, she realized she had not had her tubes tied and again her doctor refused to do so.  So she got back on the plane for England and had her tubes tied. This was before Griswold.  She was relatively well off. Imagine how many had to go to unclean abortionists in back alleys.  Get real, America. Let's not go back to slums and airplanes to have clean abortions.   

First of all, what other drug usage requires a marriage certificate?Second, I was prescribed various hormone compounds that would be categorized in the "birth control" category.   The purpose for the prescriptions was to attempt to control "the out of control" growth of very aggressive endometriosis which was positively identified in it's early but very painful stages by a biopsy.Three years later, all hope to be able to have children was gone per my doctors.   I had been holding out for hope of a miracle cure to be discovered so that I could hopefully have a child and endured extreme pain for those three years holding onto that hope.  So, I gave in to the only reasonable option the doctors explained to me.  It was time to have a hysterectomy before the disease caused even more damage to other internal organs than it already had as it does not contain itself to only the reproductive organs once it begins reproducing itself.  Sure enough, once in surgery, the damage had consumed all my reproductive organs so the hysterectomy had to be all of my organs.  In addition, the surgery included repair and removal of the disease from other organs which has given me lifelong issues to deal with.This loss of the ability to have children left me barren and heartbroken.   That was many years ago but as I go through each stage of life, my grieving takes on a new meaning.  Now, I not only grieve that I could not have my own children but that I have no grandchildren to celebrate and enjoy.I am shocked and angry that politicians are making this a political issue and have grandeous "taling points" they use to "judge" women for using birth control drugs, if drugs is the right name to give them.In reality life, the government has no business dictating our personal medical lives.There are many reasons for women's health that these drugs need to be used.If a woman is using birth control to time her pregnancies, that should be her option and her right.Our country was founded on the principals of freedom of religion, beliefs, choices, rights, et al.  The government has no right to dictate our personal rights and lives.  Congress is far beyond its powers in claiming to try to limit our personal freedoms and rights.Congress is supposed to manage the business of the government to provide services and protect us as a nation.   It should get to work and start doing just that or go home and not get paid.I could say much more but will leave it at this.   I am personally disgusted with Congress and this is only one issue they have no right to dictate.  They should be protecting our health, not trying to limit access to maximizing our health.

My maternal grandmother had seven children. The family was not well off and it was a struggle to feed all of them even with her husband working good jobs.   My grandmother became pregnant with her eighth child a couple years after my mother, her youngest was born, she knew that the family could not support another mouth to feed.  She opted to abort.There were no options for safe abortions in the 1920s.  My grandmother had to do what she felt she had to do for the good of her family.  She contracted a post abortion infection and in 1923, she died of blood poisoning as a direct result. Her family was thrown into chaos at her death.  The children had to be "farmed out" to various people who would feed them while my grandfather looked for more work and another wife.  Many of the kids were fed little more then gruel, even though my grandfather paid for better food than that.  Finally when he was able to collect them, and remarried the family was reunited.But the stepmother proved to be mentally ill.  She suffered from post partum depression after giving birth to her sons, she had a daughter that was stillborn.  After that she abused, mentally and verbally and probably physically my mother, who grew up with a bad sense of self worth at the hands of a tormented woman.Birth control would have been a godsend to my grandmother---she would not have had to resort to the action that took her life and set her family up for privation and the abuse my mother suffered.My mother had four children--birthcontrol wasn't available to her until after the last was born.  She said she planned me, her youngest--but I wonder. I was born 12 years after her next youngest child.

My RH negative mother (who believed you shoud not have another child until you got the first one toilet trained) gave birth to my brother (1949) and me (1954), with a miscarriage in between. After my complete blood transfusion, mom had a tubal ligation (along with an appendectomy--so the insurance would pay for it!). Mom was lucky to have had an older sister who was a very knowlegable registered nurse--otherwise, she might have had to have douched  with Lysol rather than use a diaphram.And this was in Kentucky in the1950s. Getting contraception depended on who you knew.