Share Your Story or Your Mother's Story about the Challenges of Accessing Birth Control
It's been nearly fifty years since the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Connecticut v Griswold striking down state bans on birth control. Since then, contraception has become so central to women's lives that 98 percent of women use it at some point during our reproductive years. Yet we still see politicians re-litigating accessible, affordable contraception and other women's health needs.
Have you ever asked your mom, aunt, grandmother, or another loved one in your life what challenges she had gaining access to birth control? We want to hear the stories!
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Your Stories
Betty Jacobsma
New Port Richey, Fl, retired registered nurse
In early1962 my mother had baby number eight. She had asked her OB doctor for a prescription for "the pill" a year earlier. He had refused to give her one because HE was Catholic, even though she wasn't. She later told me that everything she had tried didn't seem to work to prevent her from conceiving. My mom always had to work because my dad's salary wasn't enough to support all of us. Imagine how another pregnancy affected that balance every couple of years. After my youngest sister was born, mom switched OBs and got on the pill and never got pregnant again.Meanwhile I had tried to get the pill shortly before my wedding in the summer of 1962. My OB also said "no" because the pill was "too new" and he only prescribed it for women who had already had babies. "What if you went on the pill and then couldn't get pregant, we would never know if the pill was the cause of it," he said. That wasn't my main concern at the time. Four months later my sometime roommate at nursing school got pregant. She said when she was home from school, one night she was sleepy and forgot to shake the bottle of foam long enough prior to intercourse.Since I still had 2 years of school left, I found a new OB and went on the pill. I finished school and five years later, was able to get pregant when I tried. I often give thanks that I did not end of with 8 kids and think how different my life and that of my family's would have been if I had been unable to control my fertility.
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Jean Alford
Orlando, FL, retired
My paternal grandmother who was born in the 1890's only used the papal approved birth control method which at that time was celibacy, also called, "don't touch me until the baby is four." She had 4 children in 20 years. My maternal grandmother never had more than 3 or 4 periods a year. Both of her husbands were widowers with children when she married them. She never used birth control. After eight years of marriage at age 28 she got pregnant once and that was it. People in their small town thought she'd gone crazy when she first said she was pregnant because everyone knew she was infertile. She was very glad she had my mother but also very grateful for her infertility as it was the Depression and money was very tight. She told me if she'd started getting pregnant frequently she would have sent her husband to work overseas & not come home to visit.
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Kate Arrinzo
New York, New York,
I am all for women having access to birth control, but am outraged by any woman who thinks their government or employer should have to pay for them. Doesn't that just make us slaves again. We need to be financially independent enough to pay for our own contraception, or its just like the bad ole days.
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Brenda Russell
, New Jersey,
After making a very subconscious decision not to have children (after a rather difficult childhood of my own), I wound up with three. I'm the exception who skews the statistics, since I got pregnant while on the Pill, got pregnant while using an IUD, and got pregnant (as did many others) while using a diaphragm. When the fourth ( ! ) pregnancy arrived, my husband supported my decision not only to end the pregnancy, but to ensure no further pregnancies by means of a tubal ligation. At the age of 29, please imagine my astonishment when the doctor (male - the last I've seen) told me I was "too young to make that decision" - but he was quick to change his mind when he found out I already had three and suggested he should contribute to their college funds. I should have just sued the bastard.
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Vasu Murti
Oakland, California, social services
The Supreme Court decisions on contraception were based on a presumed right to privacy. Ladies, if you value your privacy and civil liberties, join the ACLU! In January 2006, on the eve of the West Coast Walk For Life in San Francisco, CA, Carol Crossed of Democrats For Life (kind enough to write the foreword to my own book, The Liberal Case Against Abortion) spoke optimistically of Roe v. Wade being overturned. When I asked her if Roe could be overturned without Griswold v. Connecticut (the 1965 Supreme Court decision which guarantees a right to marital privacy regarding the practice of contraception) being overturned as well, Carol froze, and couldn't answer the question! Although this was well before the scandals involving Republican poltiicans David Vitter and Larry Craig, I would have preferred it if Carol had said: "You're right. Only a pervert watches or eavesdrops when others pee, defecate, copulate, masturbate, etc. It's wrong to put people under surveillance without their knowledge or consent. Democrats For Life will never resort to draconian tactics to protect prenatal life." ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York NY 10004 (212) 549 - 2500 Democrats For Life of America, 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, South Building, Suite 900, Washington, DC 20004 (202) - 220 - 3066
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Momma Science
, Kansas, Chemist
My great-grandmother used bacon grease to coat her cervix to avoid having more children. When she believed her menopause change was complete, she stopped performing her method, and had my wonderful grandmother in her 40's.May my daughter never have to return to bacon grease as her method of preventing pregnancy. Mother's Day is a wonderful time to talk about birth control (all forms, even NFP, require a lot of knowledge to be passed from woman to woman!). I'm grateful to live in a time of safe abortions, but we have work to do to ensure access to safe medical care. I know this - I'm a better mother (than I would be) because I have control over my fertility.
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Carol
, Vermont,
My mother could not have children. She and my father adopted me because my biological mother chose not to have an abortion.
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Laurie
, Texas, Wife, mother, grandmother, sister, daughter
My mother had five children. I have no idea what her method of contraception was, since it is none of my business. I do know after her third child, for medical reasons, doctors told her not to have more kids. She had two more. Eventually, she had a complete hysterectomy paid for by insurance provided by the Air Force, my father’s employer. I wish I had access to the information, sonograms, listening to a heartbeat, etc. in 1976 that Pro-life groups provide today, I would have 37-year-old twins. How do I know that? I woke up during the abortion and heard the nurse say “twins!”. Twins? I asked and was sssh’ed, and told go back to sleep. That I choose in my teenage ignorance to kill those babies has been a horrible regret for my entire life. The fact that you are using MOTHER’S DAY to obtain CONTRACEPTION stories absolutely blows my mind in the stupidity of the request. Even my 5-year-old Granddaughter knows you have to be a MOTHER to celebrate Mother’s Day. Celebrating contraception for Mother’s Day is one of the most asinine things I’ve heard of, and I’ve heard a lot of crap spewed by pro-abortion fanatics. I have three amazing children, even though I was “finished” after two. Reading some of these stories makes me weep for mankind. You want contraception? Get it yourself, but do not use it to “celebrate” mothers, it’s offensive.
http://abortionno.org/
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Laura
, Texas, Retired Teacher
Before marrying my Dad, my wonderful Mother was married to an idiot 10 years older than her, who drank too much, and was abusive. When he raped her and she got pregnant, she left him and then had to contend with a back-alley abortion, because it was about 1942, and back alley abortions were the only way for small town women without much means (kind of like a whole huge group of women today.) The abortion was horrible, and my Mother almost died because of it. She truly thought she could never have a baby again, because of this horrendous abortion, only slightly better than a Coathanger Special. After she married my Excellent Dad, roughly 9 years later, she had me, her only child. Thank God she didn't die from that abortion in '42. If she had, I would not be here, and I've had a really really good and fun 60 years of life so far.
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Ann Malokas
Marina, CA, Writer
Gramma used to tell me about her own mother, my great grandmother,who tried all kinds of toxic potions and also threw herself down the stairs to try to terminate pregancies, but nonetheless had nine healthy children in the 1880s and 1890s. Her doctor told her there was no way to stop this for a healthy woman, at least none he was willing to share. When Gramma married birth control was still illegal but Grampa snuck home condoms smuggled from Europe. Remembering her mother, Gramma kept her family to two much loved children. Mom and Dad had access to both condoms and diaphrams, wanting a large baby boom family, but spaced exactly as they preferred. Gramma was delighted that I had access to birth control pills...as was I...even though there were health risks and my three children were planned, wanted loved. Today my daughter and daughter-in-law have all kinds of healthy choices. If anyone takes this away, I will be the one doing the smuggling.
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