Posts Tagged: birth control
Black Women & Birth Control: A Complicated History
Birth Control Access Gave Me Peace of Mind
The first time it happened, I was terrified: my period was late. Although I can’t remember when it was exactly, it must have been sometime around the beginning of my sophomore year in college. I had been lucky for a few months of having protected sex with my boyfriend at the time, but I thought that it was finally my time for my life as I knew it to end because I was pregnant. Even though my period was only three days late the first time, I was much less lucky in the later months. Stress from school, work, and my other activities caught up to me and delayed my periods by up to a full week. Once, I went so far as to take a pregnancy test just to… Read more »
The Science Behind The Copper IUD: How Does Metal Work for Birth Control?
Most forms of birth control, in terms of understanding how they work, are fairly straightforward. Barrier methods like diaphragms and condoms physically prevent sperm from entering the uterus, and hormonal methods like birth control pills, NuvaRings, and Nexplanon administer dosages of hormones that disrupt ovulation. But there’s an outlier in the BC field: PARAGARD, also known as the copper IUD. It is different from its other T-shaped counterparts because it does not contain any hormones; copper is the contraceptive in this product. How does copper actually work to prevent pregnancy? Is this method as reliable as its hormone-based peers, like other IUDs and the Nexplanon implant? Medical mechanisms In a mechanism of action report by CooperSurgical, the company that makes the copper IUD, the pharmacology behind this birth control… Read more »
Supreme Court Nomination – What’s Going On and What You Can Do!
Who is Brett Kavanaugh? He’s Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Currently, he’s a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. He’s a cis white Catholic man who went to Yale and is a member of the Federalist Society (a conservative group for lawyers). And, ideologically, he is more conservative than all members of the current Court, except Justice Clarence Thomas. Remember Jane Doe, the unaccompanied immigrant minor in government custody who sought abortion care? The Trump Administration tried to stop her from having an abortion and, after hearing the case, Judge Kavanaugh sided with Trump. Judge Kavanaugh also believes that the religious or moral beliefs of your employer or university should get to dictate whether or not you can access birth control. His… Read more »
Breaking News: Sexual Education Did Not Prepare Me for Sex
Let me introduce myself. I am an upper middle class woman who grew up in a fairly prosperous area. I went to a middle school and high school that are highly ranked in the country. I am currently in the Honors College at a well-ranked public school on the pre-medical track. My friends, for the most part, are progressive and openly talk about sex. All of these factors, one may think, might make me more prepared for sexual encounters. This may be the case, but I still would not label myself as “prepared”. In fact, I think I was fairly far from it when I started having sex and still do not know as much about sex and sexual health as I would like. I have made many mistakes along… Read more »
Why I Put a (Nuva)Ring on My Busy College Schedule
We have more birth control options now than ever. With advancing medical technology, scientists have been able to offer effective hormonal birth control in many different methods. One of the most infamous method is the pill. The advent of the birth control pill as we know it today came from the efforts of activist Margaret Sanger and endocrinologist Gregory Pincus, with contributions to synthetic hormone studies by other scientists. The first oral contraceptive was approved by the FDA in 1957 to treat menstruation issues, then again in 1960 actually as a contraceptive. Since then, more birth control options have been tested and approved for use, and many aim to reduce human error with the medicine. One of the drawbacks of the standard birth control pill is that a person needs… Read more »
Why Trump’s Sabotage of Obamacare Is Terrible for Young People (and What You Can Do About It!)
The mainstream narrative portrays all young people as not needing insurance, but we know that’s the furthest thing from the truth. Amazing young activists showed up to say they need and deserve health care coverage and helped defeat the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in Congress over the past few months. But now, the Trump administration is sabotaging the ACA all by itself through executive actions. Here’s just a few ways these changes will be terrible for young folks: Putting birth control out of reach by granting a License to Discriminate. Two new Trump administration rules allow employers or universities to deny insurance coverage of contraception for religious or moral reasons. Young people deserve access to birth control no matter where they work or go to school,… Read more »
Supporting Sexual Health Care in Kansas Starts with Education
Last week, I attended the Protecting Sexual Health in Kansas forum at Kansas State University. Speakers Jennifer Greene, director of the Riley County Health Center, and Micah Kubic, executive director of the Kansas ACLU, discussed the state of sexual health care in the country and in Kansas, specifically Riley County. Greene called Riley County a “contraceptive desert” as it only has two publicly-funded clinics that offer a range of family planning options. Many of the surrounding counties in the area don’t have a single clinic like that, so the need for contraceptive services are greater there. Looking at the entire state, Greene said that in 2010, 45 percent of pregnancies in Kansas were in unintended. In Riley County alone, 9,190 women (aged 13-44) are in need of publicly-funded sexual health… Read more »
Tell Me I Look Sexy With My IUD Strings Pushed Back: Let’s Chat About IUDs
Let me tell you a true story: I took the birth control pill for less than a month, and it made me feel horrendous. I gained weight, my skin broke out, and my pre-existing anxiety got even worse. This is where my first true love, my Mirena IUD, comes in. I’ve never had huge issues with my periods. They’ve never been particularly intense or cumbersome, but, instead, merely just annoying and inconsistent. I decided to get an IUD by the suggestion of my doctor before I went to college. It felt like not only the responsible thing to do as I take my first steps into ~adulthood~, but also, the thought of not having a period for FIVE years sold me. If you do the math, that’s roughly seven… Read more »
No Teen Pregnancy: #ThxBirthControl?
November 16th was “Thanks, Birth Control” Day and as such, reproductive justice organizations flooded their timelines with tweet after tweet of birth control users everywhere pledging their undying love for what every knows and loves as — birth control. And, although the day was a ray of positivity after a week of what many saw as despair, I still feel strange about the entire thing. “Thanks, Birth Control” Day, known online as #ThxBirthControl, was started by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. When this information came to my attention, I felt an instant irony. As the product of an unplanned teenage pregnancy, there are many reasons in my life to “thank birth control” and yet, here I stood the exact opposite of everything the day hoped to… Read more »
