Tag Archives: birth control

Just Use a Condom.

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Look, I love condoms, I really do. They protect against most STDs, frequently prevent pregnancy, and are easily accessible and affordable. But they aren’t enough.

Without fail, every time CNN or a blogger or someone posts an article about the need for accessable, affordable birth control, someone inevitable smugly comments, “just use a condom!”

Here is why I will not just “use a condom”:

  • Condoms break. They break from friction, improper use, and just plain old bad luck.
  • Condoms can be tampered with. One can remove a condom discreetly during intercourse, damage it beforehand, use expired condoms, or put it on incorrectly. Neither party should have to put the full responsibility/trust of protection into another’s hands.
  • Condoms are not 100% effective. Some STDs can still be transferred even with condom use through skin contact. Also due to the fact that they are essentially a latex glove, there is no guarantee it will stay in tact the whole session.

Bottom line: Condoms are great, but not always reliable. You know what can help patch up that hole of unreliability…?

  • The pill is a wonderful back up in case of broken condoms.
  • Being on BC leaves you in control of your baby-making (or lack of).
  • BC means constant protection, whether you’re having sex or not.
  • While not 100% effective against pregnancy, the pill used in conjunction with condoms gets you as close to that number as possible.
  • Birth control makes more sense to most people in long term, closed relationships. You know you’ll be having sex fairly consistently with the same person (or people if you’re in a closed poly relationship), you know you are both clean and faithful, and you can hold off on kids till you’re ready without buying boxes of condoms that may or may not break.

Are condoms awesome and great at protecting against STDs? YES! Is the pill awesome and great at protecting against pregnancy? YES! Should you be able to choose which one or both or none to use when you want? YES!

Telling the millions of sexually active people in the world to simply use one method of birth control that is not 100% reliable is ignorant and careless.

And also, frankly none of their damn business.

What I Can Do With Birth Control Coverage

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Barack Obama is asking women what it would mean to them if they didn’t have to cover the basic health care of birth control. Here was my answer:

This policy will impact my life because I’ll know that every month, I’ll be able to be safe.

I’ll be able to control my painful cramps enough to go to my job every day.

I’ll be able to know that if I choose to be intimate, I’ll be responsible about it.

I’ll know that every month, I’ll have that extra $50 to spend on food, necessities, and my asthma medication.

I’ll be able to know that even if I have to take a lower paying job some day, I won’t have to choose between birth control and dinner.

I’ll be able to control when or if I have children, and how many.

I’ll be able to work in a career and know there’s minimal chance of me getting pregnant and having to cost the company money with maternity leave.

These benefits are numerous and I know I am not alone in them.

This benefits everyone – women, men, children, companies, families. Everyone is effected by birth control access in some way – being able to control not only your own health, but your own family planning is what allows 50% of the population to move forward and, in that, progress America.

To put yet another hurdle to birth control in the way of women is to say, “I do not want America to move forward. I do not want our workforce strong, our population under control, or our people happy.”

Mississippi: “The best way to solve all our problems is to take away birth control.”

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Mississippi sure knows how to solve a problem!

They have the highest poverty rate in all of North America.

They have the highest rate of childhood obesity.

They have the 8th highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the country.

And their shining crown of glory – the highest rate of teen pregnancy births in the country.

It’s a recession, people are out of work, fed up with wars, lack of resources, and fickle government. They’re getting knocked up all over the damn place and then feeding their children crappy food because nutrition education is lacking.

NEVER FEAR! yells a bunch of batshit insane ultra conservatives, WE HAVE THE ANSWER!

The answer to solve your most pressing problems of poverty, obesity, HIV, and teen pregnancy…

At last, something that focuses on the hard hitting problems that effect everyone: what is happening with someone else’s body.

Mississippi’s Amendment 26 looks to create a “protection of personhood for anyone of any developmental stage” meaning some sperm that’s wigglin’ it’s way in to an egg (or before, because conception is like fertilization, and pregnancy is a punishment for sex).

The poorly written, holier-than-though, white-top-class-privilege-denying load of shit defines personhood as beginning at fertilization or “the functional equivalent there of”, meaning the pill, Plan B, IUDs, the patch or anything that equals conception.

But that’s not a big deal, because sex is for procreation only which is why it’s a public matter and not pleasurable or natural, and therefor unneeded.

Also it solves the state’s problems, which was what again? Oh yeah, abortions and stuff. Priorities!

Mississippi readers, vote no on Amendment 26 so that rape and incest victims, those who enjoy sex, those looking to in vitro-fertilization, those who are married and don’t want more kids, those who cannot afford more children, and the common person don’t have to have their body and actions regulated by the government.

UPDATE: It didn’t pass, hoorah hoorah! While this is just a small victory (the amendment is going up in other states), it is still a big step! Keep fighting, uterus-defender!