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

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/

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. 

My sister and I pestered my mother for a younger brother or sister around the time we were seven to nine years old. My mother always shook her head no, but it wasn't until I was 15-16 that she told me she couldn't have any children and I found out why.Most Puerto Rican women bearing children from the 1930's through the seventies were offered "la operacion", i.e. surgical sterilization, at the hospital immediately after giving birth. She was offered the tubal ligation, as was standard, and would have accepted it were it not for the fact that my dad is a pediatrician and knew everyone in the hospital. These details aren't clear, but my father overrode whatever consent, request, or desire my mother had to be done with children after her second was born.My mother, a feisty woman if ever there was one, drove herself to a women's clinic 1 1/2 hours away from where she lived, and had to drive her own groggy ass home afterward - all on a trip that had some business excuse. SHE DID IT BEHIND MY FATHER'S BACK. In the seventies. It blows my mind.   

My mother got pregnant when she was 18 yeMy mother got pregnant when she was 18 years old, back then in the 60's in Auckland, New Zealand it was considered outrageous for a young unwed women to have a child. So she made up an excuse and went down to the South island by herself and gave birth to a boy in a nunnery. She gave up the child went home and told no one, she was still producing milk and bleeding.I don't know how much has changed? Other than in New Zealand you can get an abortion without to many massive barricades in your way. Other than the fact you have to be declared "mentally unfit" to continue with the pregnancy. I know this because like my mum I got pregnant at 18. I didn't tell anyone by my boyfriend (only because I had to as I started to put on weight and it became obvious). I told no one else because I had seen what happened too young girls who got pregnant; you got labeled a "slut", "whore" or "prostitute". I went through with the abortion, the thing is at the time I was not “mentally unfit” I just didn’t want to bring a baby into the world I did not want and could not finically support. Two of my best friends (who I no longer speak to) would have conversations about how disgusting women where who had had abortions. How they are monsters for killing life. They did not know I had had one. No one ever includes a man in the conversation or points out men are just as responsible for pregnancy. I am tired of people committing on my sex life, tired of a large majority of my so called pro-feminist, pro-women and pro the right to choice male mates committing on my sex life – like they have some preordained holy right to. Tired of most of them thinking condoms are an option. We are sluts if we do; sluts if we don't. We are whores and prostitutes for demanding the right to state funded contraception. Pro-lifers bang on about the right to life, but have no concern over the fact that when you make abortion illegal the mortality rate of women dying from unsafe "backstreet abortions" drastically goes up but the number of abortions carried out remain the same. So really is more people die when you make it illegal. But it is women dying so it doesn't matter.