Many people have very different opinions about birth control. Some of the older generations say it’s not even an option for their kids because it opens the gateway for them to have sexual intercourse, but the world we live in know is very different now then it was back then. Birth Control also does more than just keep woman from becoming pregnant; it can help with hormone levels, acne, hopefully avoidance an abortion, and of the control the number of children a couple desires. There are some opposing views on birth control like it does open the door to intercourse in teenagers because they think it is safe. Also it is not always effective, and it does not protect you from STD’s.
Birth Control first came out during the 1930s. It was in society way before that but only in secret because it wasn’t accepted. Many people of the Protestant and Reformed Jewish faith promoted birth control as a way to limit family sizes, free women from unwanted pregnancies, avoid economic hardships, and take advantage of God’s gift of science and technology to alleviate human suffering. The people that didn’t believe that birth control could be all those things were the Catholics and the orthodox Protestant. They believed in the more contraceptives in moral rather than the science of it. (Zorea, 53)
The birth control movement really got started with a lady by the name of Margaret Sanger. She first took a stand against the Comstock laws by publishing Woman Rebel and Family Limitation. Those articles helped her connect with other activists. The reason she really got into the birth control movement was that she was a nurse and saw first hand what it was like to see families have unplanned pregnancies reoccurring and not be able to afford to have as many children as they were going to have. Sanger was the first woman to ever help open the first birth control clinic in America in 1916. The clinic was opened on October 16, 1916, and opened in the Brownsville neighborhood of New York. The clinic didn’t last long but it helped the birth control movement get a really good foothold and start to get approved by the whole United States. Sanger did, however, support abortion but did believe it was also immoral. She started the National Birth Control League. This league helped make birth control a topic of American discussion. (Mundt, 125)
In 2012 there was a political fight that many people referred to as the ‘war on women.’ It was promoting that everyone needs access to birth control because it is a matter of public health. They believed that it was a right for people to have access to birth control and abortions. They called it part of a right to citizenship since at this point in time many underage kids are having sex they need to have an opportunity to get knowledge on how to be safe. Many people started to try and get the funds for birth control pulled because they saw it as not useful to society.
Today some girls start on birth control as early as they start their period because some young girls don’t want to have to worry about that while they are playing sports. Some women wait to get put on it till their hormones get really out of control. Some people like myself get put on it because your acne gets way too out of hand even when you have changed a single thing in your face cleaning routine. It was a shock to me just as much as it probably was to you. I did not know that birth control could be used for other things besides not getting pregnant until my doctor said that was my only choice because I had already tried everything else. It can also help level out your hormones that can also help out with acne, and you don’t have as many mood swings. Everyone can agree that when women are on their periods they are very moody and crap very badly sometimes. Some people’s symptoms are so bad that they have to skip school or work. Birth control can help with those symptoms and even get to where you don’t even have your period and it levels out your mood swings. People have also found that if you are on the pill you are less likely to get glaucoma. Here is what Elizabeth Cohen had to say on this subject “Four out of five sexually active women have been on the pill. And you usually don’t go on the pill for just a matter of months. You’re usually on it for years and years. And so these researchers said, let’s study it, because there’s a known connection between hormones and glaucoma. They’ve noticed that women, as estrogen goes down, glaucoma rates go up. And the pill makes your estrogen go down. So it actually makes sense.” (Perfect Storm)
Some people like to plan out their lives point-by-point and day-by-day. If you take birth control it can help you set your whole life in a plan. Say you don’t want to have a kid till you are twenty-five but you and your boyfriend love each other and want to start having intercourse. Taking birth control helps you plan that so you can save up money and be ready when you have your first kid. It can also limit your chances of having kids. If you have already had the number of kids you want to have and neither you nor your spouse wants to get the surgery done to either tie your tubes or get the surgery done for men to stop supplying sperm. Birth control can help in many ways like that to help plan out when you have children and when you don’t. If you have already had an abortion but still aren’t ready to have kids you can plan it out by taking birth control and getting an app to help you keep track of when you are ovulating and when you aren’t. (Tilland)
There are a lot of good things about birth control but also some bad things. Taking birth control can cause some short-term side effects such as headaches, nausea, and weight gain. If you are sexually active birth control does not protect you from getting STD’s. That is one of the major reasons to either just use condoms while on birth control or while you’re not one it. You can always be double safe if having intercourse is really what you want, but some people have STD’s and are not open about having them. That is why it is always safe to have made 100% sure that you will not even have the possibility of getting one and use a condom. Once you get an STD you can most likely never get rid of it. They stay with you forever and some of them can be transferred to your babies as they are born or as they are growing in your womb so it is always better to be safe than sorry.
Abortion is another really good reason as to why you would want to be safe and not get pregnant when you’re not ready or way too young. In 2017 there were 881,000 abortions in that year alone. (De La Garza)It can also be bad for you while having the abortion because it can cause you to not have kids further down the line when you are ready to have them. Something can also go wrong in the procedure with having the abortion. You can bleed out while having it and you can also have something go wrong and the doctors can cut something they are not supposed to and then sew you up, then you bleed out from the inside. I can get that in some cases abortions can be the only way out. Like you were too young or something bad happened to you as in you got rapped. In cases like that, I can see that the only way to get out of that would be an abortion but there are many ways you can prevent that from happening. Also during the procedure, there can be an infection in the womb. Sure abortion is always a backup plan but things can go horribly wrong before, after, or during the operation so make sure before you start having intercourse you are well aware of your options and what you are eventually getting yourself into if things do go wrong.
In conclusion, there are many ways that birth control can help you in your regular every day lives. Multiple people had to take a big risk to get this movement going good. It took quite a while to actually get it fully accepted into society, but because of those people many women can have safe sex and can also go through life without having to worry about unplanned pregnancies. Also can help young women with controlling when they have their period and symptoms that come along with their periods.
Works Cited
- De la Garza, Alejandro. “Number of U.S. Abortions Hits Lowest Rate Since Roe v. Wade, CDC Reports.” Time.Com, Nov. 2018, p. N.PAG. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=133136848&site=ehost-live.
- Mundt, Ingrid. “Margaret Sanger, Taking a Stand for Birth Control.” History Teacher, vol. 51, no. 1, Nov. 2017, pp. 123–161. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tfh&AN=126740170&site=ehost-live.
- “Perfect Storm; Birth Control Warning; ‘The Romney FamilyTable’; Interview with Ann Romney; God Has a Sense of Humor.” New Day (CNN). EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=n5h&AN=32U2935352820NDA&site=ehost-live. Accessed 29 Jan. 2019.
- Tilland, Bonnie. “Broadcasting Birth Control: Mass Media and Family Planning , by Manon Parry.” Women’s Studies, vol. 45, no. 8, Dec. 2016, pp. 791–794. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00497878.2015.1048630.
- Zorea, Aharon W. Birth Control. Greenwood, 2012. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=439908&site=ehost-live.
