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

Not sure this is appropriate here, but I, too, have been stewing over the possibility (and reality) of contraception and abortion being more difficult to get. I wrote this piece for my local newspaper (Davis Enterprise, Davis, Calif.). I thought about my grandmother and her 10 babies and three abortions. Thanks for the important work you all do. Lyra Halprinhttp://www.davisenterprise.com/opinion/opinion-columns/a-necessary-rewind-on-womens-right-to-choose/ April 12, 2012 | Posted by Special to The EnterpriseA necessary rewind on a woman’s right to chooseThis photo of Davis families was published Jan. 22, 1987, in The Davis Enterprise as part of an ad honoring the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision. The ad reads: "Pro choice is pro family. No one loves their children and families more than we do. And no one understands more than we that a woman's difficult decision about an unplanned pregnancy is her own." Courtesy photo      By Lyra Halprin Ten births, three abortions — that’s what I know about my grandmother Anne. During her childbearing years, 1911 through the 1920s in Austria, Canada and the United States, it was almost impossible for women to access birth control.She raised her children in Cleveland, where the first birth control clinic — a Planned Parenthood forerunner — opened in 1928. A woman who committed suicide by stepping off a Lake Erie pier because she was pregnant for the 10th time inspired clinic founders.The clinic faced threats from government authorities, the Catholic Church and other religious groups, the same ones who are undermining women’s rights today — my hands clench in anger when I think about it. I remind myself that women’s health has always been a “two-steps-forward, one-step-back” process; counting on common sense and decency is not what keeps us healthy and safe. It’s persistence, courage and using our anger and experience that drives progress.But I am alarmed at the campaigns to cut government funding for women’s health, eviscerate abortion services and strip contraception from services covered in President Obama’s health care plan. I’m exhausted thinking about what’s at stake here —but I’m not giving up. My Grandma Anne left Austria-Poland after her first child was born in 1912. She and my grandfather were turned back at Ellis Island because he had pink eye. Instead, they entered Canada, and had five children in Montreal. They eventually immigrated to the United States.By the time I graduated from college in the 1970s, Planned Parenthood and other community clinics were helping women get needed care: treatment for bladder infections, mammograms, birth control pills, Pap tests and abortions.But now we’re living in a climate of lies — Planned Parenthood clinics are closing all over the country as state and federal lawmakers come under increasing pressure to withhold funding. Eighty new restrictions on abortion rights were enacted by state legislatures in 2011. Arizona’s proposed legislation would let employers demand that women using birth control pills provide proof they’re using them for non-sexual reasons.I knew we’d have to remain vigilant to hang on to these rights. I just didn’t think that we’d be called upon to fight the same battles so soon.For inspiration about how to fight the latest anti-woman tide, I dug out three photo advertisements that appeared in The Davis Enterprise in the 1980s.My friends Diane, Lynn, Elaine and I, with Yolo County NOW, arranged for an ad on the 12th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade, when the clinic in our town that performed abortions was picketed and vandalized. The ad shows several babies on my living room couch — one is my daughter, Julia, who sits near twins Emily and Rose.“No one understands more than we that a woman’s difficult decision about an unplanned pregnancy is between her conscience and her God,” the caption read. “Today we celebrate 12 years of choice.”The second ad, on the 14th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, shows families and friends at a playground. We’re at the swings, my cheerful son grinning at the camera, my daughter staring straight ahead.“No one loves their children or families more than we do, and we also support choice in reproductive health,” the ad reads. Two years later, on the 16th anniversary, seven children and babies are in our ad.I’m comforted when I remember other ways to take action. Letters to the editor make a difference. Emails nudge friends to act. Can I say how much I like Facebook and Twitter? I “share” good ideas online and am happy to reach women who aren’t aware of what they may lose.I vote for candidates who support reproductive rights. I take heart when I see the courage of young women like Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student Republicans refused to let testify when they convened an all-male panel on birth control coverage in mid-February.When conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh called Fluke a “slut” and challenged her to post sex videos, millions of Americans were outraged. Thanks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Fuke got the chance to testify.When the Virginia legislature debated cruel legislation requiring that all women seeking abortions have invasive transvaginal ultrasounds, comedienne Amy Poehler skewered this outrageous idea on “Saturday Night Live.” Embarrassed by the backlash, Virginia lawmakers modified the law.We must use our talents in art, economics and politics to nail down our rights again and again — and be persistent like those who came before us, moving forward in as many steps as it takes.— Lyra Halprin wrote this piece, which is signed by the other three women who arranged the 1985 ad in The Davis Enterprise — Diane Adams, Lynn Schimmel and Elaine Fingerett — and two of the now-grown-up babies in the ad, Julia Halprin Jackson and Rose Wilkinson.Halprin is a writer whose commentaries have appeared on NPR, Capital Public Radio and KQED, and in area newspapers and online venues. She worked for more than 20 years as a public information officer for the University of California and UC Davis sustainable agriculture programs. Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=158022

My parents married in 1969.  Although the pill wasn't new then, my mother said that OBs would only give it to married women, and they had to have their husbands come to the office and sign a release form.  She thought that was off and questioned it and the OB staff said "well honey what if your husband wants to have a baby?"  Mom also said back then OBs were self regulating by doing this - imposing their morals and beliefs on others regardless of what their patients needed or wanted. Government needs to get out of healthcare.  Healthcare decisions should be between a woman and her physician.  The doctors own religion and morals should not affect the care that the patient recieves.  Government should not be limiting what services women have access to.  There's so many different reasons a woman may need or want certian services, and it is up to her and her physician to decide what is the best course of action.  Government STAY OUT OF MY VAGINA!

Sex was only explained to me in terms of 'with your husband' and 'when you are married' but I learned that girls have sex before marriage when my 13 year old friend got pregnant in junior high and had an abortion.  An avid reader, I knew about the pill, so went to my regular doctor at age 16 to get a prescription. I had to endure his disapproval (I knew from my mother that he was Catholic), although he did give me the prescription, but only after lots of negative comments.  I also had no idea what a pap smear was, or that any of this was part of the usual physical exam for women, so for several years, I thought he had abused me by feeling my breasts, putting instruments inside me, etc--but I did not have any idea how else to get the pill and was scared to say anything for fear he would not give me the prescription.  It was only years later at Planned Parenthood, that I had all these procedures explained to me (the doctor did not say a thing about what he was doing), and that I knew that it was normal.   I avoided getting pregnant, but it was shamed by an indifferent judgmental doctor, an experience that was horrible!  This was in 1974...

My family lived in a small college town in the Carolinas in the 1950’s. My grandmother worked in a print shop. My grandfather worked at the local gas station. Working class girls often had no sex education and were expected to graduate high school and marry. When my mom first started menstruating, she thought she was dying! My mother became engaged while still in high school, to a local “good boy”. Then my mom realized she was pregnant. She said that she knew nothing about her body, had never heard of birth control or even “how a girl got pregnant!” My enraged grandmother took her to several doctors, but found no doctor who would perform an abortion. They immediately took mom to a home for unwed mothers in another town. The home brought my mom into their office every day and tried to browbeat her into signing adoption papers. She refused so they told her to leave. Next my grandparents carted her to the coast to stay with a distant relative. The woman was addicted to paregoric/laudanum and by the end of the afternoon was prostrate on the floor in front of a locked refrigerator on the back porch waiting for her husband to come home and dose her with a fix. The woman called my grandparents and told them ‘I can’t take care of her, she’s suicidal, come and get her’.  So, my grandparents ended up keeping my suicidal mom prisoner in the back room of their house, thinking no one would find out. Of course, by then the whole county knew. The ‘good local’ boy instantly dumped my mom. His parents went around town, telling everyone their doctor said that their son ‘couldn’t make children’, so this pregnancy couldn’t possibly be his!  Mom learned that ‘good boy’ had another girl pregnant in another state at the same time he had been engaged to my mom. His parents had quietly paid for the other girl’s medical care and got rid of her. They were furious to find out about my mother’s pregnancy. A young friend, home on military leave, friends with ‘good boy’ and my mom, heard what was happening to my mom, came over and brought my mom some records. When he left, my grandparents told my mom ‘he likes you, so you get him to marry you a.s.a.p.’  He married my mom. I was born. My mom immediately became pregnant with the second. No birth control. He ran off with another woman. My mother spent years being considered a ‘slut’ and the deadbeat fathers remained ‘good boys’ in the community.