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

My grandmother had a back alley abortion because she had no access to birth control.  This was in the 1920's.  When she became pregnant again - they were still barely making ends meet for the two of them - her doctor told her that she had the flu. . .until it was too late for her to terminate the pregnancy.  She gave birth to my mom.  Both my grandmother and my mom have been strong advocates for a woman's right to choose.  Margaret Sanger was a common name in our household.  I was given the information I needed to access birth control, at Planned Parenthood.  A diaphram in my early twenties, and then the pill for several years.  I had my tubes tied in my late 30's, as I was single, and felt that it was too late in life for me to have a child.  This was in the late 80's.  My doctor was very supportive and respectful of my decision.

When I was newly married, we bought a business and moved to Pa.  The plan was I would work and my husband would run the Inn.  Unfortunately, I had difficulty finding a job in my field as a health educator so I began looking for anything that would help suppliment our income.  I had worked in a doctors office during graduate school so I went on a job interview for a local  physician.  First he asked if I was married (illegal in 1983?), then he mentioned that he probably wouldn't hire me because I would most likely leave "to have babies".   I told  him that he was out of line and that I wouldn't work for him anyway.  I was fortunate to have a mother who was a nurse and knew how important it was to be able to "choose" when to have children.  Despite the fact that she had serious issues trying to concieve (my oldest brother is adopted), she understood the health issues most women faced regarding pregnancy and birth control.  She converted to Roman Catholic when she married my Dad but told my brothers and myself that despite the church's teaching, WE should use birth control and there was nothing wrong with making that choice.   Since I was a teen ager in the late 60s and early  70s, she was certainly a pioneer in that view.  I consider myself fortunate that I never had to make the choice to end a pregnancy but know that if it were not for my mother and father educating me about birth control and encouraging me to be an independent woman, I might have had to face such a choice.  I am extremely grateful for the women like my Mom who worked hard to see that abortions were safe and that birth control was made available to all women, not just the married ones.  I hope that my own 22 year old daughter cotninues to have the choices I did and not have others (especially men) making decisions for her about her reproductive future.   My daughter may never have children or may have them later in life.  I am horrified to think that some politician may impact the choices she makes because they have a different religious or moral point of view.  I hope she and those in her generation will  join with  those of us who still remember when women were less than people and  were not trusted to make decisions for themselves about their own bodies in fighting against this attack on women.  We do not want to go back to the "good ole days"  and neither does my daughter!! 

My mom had no access to any form of birth control as was typical in the South in the 1920's-1930's-1940's-1950's-1960's. Dad used condoms in the 1950's but prior to then nothing was available for them. When I first got married and lived in the "progressive" (read that "recessive because that is what it was and alas often today still is) South, we had no access we could afford to any birth control. It was not until we moved North in 1970 that we finally had access to birth control we could afford. It was like we were living in the 17th Century when it can to human sexuality. This is America and that is just as wrong as if we lived in the most repressive dictatorship in the world.

I was pregnant with our first child when we moved to Massachusetts in 1960 because my husband was serving six months in the U.S. Army and was assigned to a National Guard unit in New Hampshire and I had a fellowship for graduate school. I attended Brandeis University and lived outside Boston. My obstetrician was Catholic, of course, and cauterized my uterus about six weeks after a successful birth. I knew contraception was illegal in the state, but a friend referred me to a female doctor who examined me and gave me a diaphragm with holes to "practice." Since we moved to the Cape shortly after that, I "practiced" a lot until the fall, when we moved back to Syracuse, N.Y. Planned Parenthood was one of my first stops. I was prescribed another diaphragm, which worked fine as it was another three years before our second son was born, another two for our daughter. I didn't want to stop at just one or two. After our daughter, my very understanding male obstetrician fitted me with an IUD, which I wore for about 10 years. At that time we had settled in North Carolina and my husband, after consulting with me, had a vasectomy. Now our only problem is finding the right dosage for Viagra.