Reply to Article: Why Can't Allyson Get Ahead?

Forum Index » Political Discussion

Reply to "Article: Why Can't Allyson Get Ahead?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I also was religiously taking birth control correctly, same time every day, and got pregnant at 38. BC is not 100% effective even with perfect use. Being AMA didn't work out for not getting pregnant either.

She seems like a smart girl and a good mom. I hope things work out for her. I do think abortion should be easier to obtain. She was not in a good position to have a baby. [/quote]

Birth Control isn't 100%, but most "unplanned" pregnancies aren't from situations where people were using birth control 100%. There is a segment of my family that is fairly typical rural poor. Most of them had children very young. None were using birth control at the time, and they consider all their pregnancies are unplanned, just something that happened.

If we separated out actual birth control failures and considered those unplanned, and separated them from people who used a condom once in a blue moon or took the pill almost randomly and labeled those as "not using prevention" we would see a huge difference in the number of "unplanned" pregnancies, because many of them would suddenly be categorized under "didn't use prevention."[/quote]

Poster you are responding to, and I agree. The thing is, I started having (safe) sex at age 18, with my long time boyfriend. Other than twice when I planned to get pregnant, the pill worked for me without fail for 20 years. The problem is, millions of people are on the pill, some like me, for many years. So that means even a failure rate of 1% means over a decade or two or three, hundreds of thousands of women get pregnant. I wish we would acknowledge that more. The NY Times had a great article on it a few years back but people hear the pill is very effective and blame women for getting pregnant on it.

Anyway, the good new is that IUDs are on the rise and now they have a few on the market aimed for teens and young women who have never had a baby (most people don't know this, but many obgyns discourage IUDs for women who haven't given birth yet. My very good friend never wanted kids, and wanted off the pill when she turned 40. Her dr. discouraged the mirena because she hadn't given birth. But now there are more options, in the last 5 years).

The problem is that traditionally IUDs have been very costly. With the Affordable Care Act, more women have access to them but not everyone does. I'm guessing this young woman didn't have decent insurance. And she was probably growing up in a town where she didn't learn these options. Given where she grew up, I would be shocked if it were even close to an option for her.[/quote]

I'm the PP who lamented about the pill being the go to birth control for everyone. I completely agree that even that 1% failure rate, over the course of 20-30 years and across a broad population is actually...quite high in the number of women who will have unintended pregnancies. And add in the user error rate and it is startling.

I am an IUD user and while I completely recognize that no one birth control method will work for all (like the pill worked for you for 20 years, the pill made me bleed daily for 2+ years and a hormonal mess) I think these alternatives need to be considered and pushed as they have in Colorado. I got my IUD as a single (in a 3 year long relationship using condoms), nulliparous woman. I had to go to 5 doctors before I found someone who would give me one and was delighted to do so, after citing medical research to four others showing it was safe in women who hadn't had children (Mirena) and was the most popular form of birth control in Europe and much of East Asia to the other doctors. It was ridiculous. I remember reading an article before I had my IUD inserted calling it "the Birkin Bag of Birth Control" specifically because it was hard to access (I was actually turned away from all birth control after saying no to the pill by multiple doctors), accessible mostly by word of mouth through almost "underground" awesome gynos, and EXPENSIVE. Very expensive. I was a white, upper middle class, 27-ish year old with rocking health insurance and I believe it was $900 for me. That would be prohibitively expensive as a one-time cost for the Allysons of this country.

This should not be.

The ACA has made this so much more accessible, but we also need the education and outreach so that these young people know their options. If I had a hard time getting an IUD 7 years ago in NYC and Washington DC as a woman who hadn't given birth with all of the knowledge and privilege that I had and  I had to push for what I wanted (and is now standard...), I have very little faith that anyone in most of this country is getting the kind of preventative care they should be afforded. If we care about the cycle of poverty, addressing women's reproductive needs just makes sense. [/quote]

One way to do this is to support the BC Pill being a behind-the-counter medication, like Sudafed. Right now, in order to get the pill, I have to schedule an appointment with my doctor, have a vaginal exam, pay for this appointment and exam, and then go get my prescription and pay for that. As a professional woman with transportation, I have the ability to take off work, drive to my appointments and the pharmacy, and pay for all of this. But I can buy tylenol over the counter without even the pharmacist reminding me to be very careful about overdosing. There's no reason a quick pharmacist reminder about smoking, antibiotics, etc, wouldn't be perfectly sufficient so I could get the BC pill just by going to the pharmacy. More states are moving in this direction, but the gatekeeping required for all female-oriented birth control is still ridiculously paternalistic.

I have recently been reminded about how difficult this is because my 16 yo DD wants to try the pill, and her pediatrician wouldn't prescribe it. I was required to find a gyn practice that was accepting new patients, make an appointment (that was 3 months from the time I was making the appointment because that was their first new patient appointment available), etc. And yet she can go to the drug store and buy tylenol for herself, whenever she wants.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics