Category Archives: Birth Control

Katharine Dexter McCormick: Fierce Feminist and Secret Smuggler

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Katharine Dexter McCormick was born into a life of wealth and privilege — and progressive politics. The family home in which she was born in 1875 had once been a stop on the Underground Railroad. Her parents encouraged her education, and she was among the first women to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and, in 1904, one of its first female graduates, having earned a bachelor’s degree in biology.

Katharine McCormick harnessed stereotypes about wealthy women to hide subversive acts of civil disobedience in plain sight.

Katharine wanted to be a doctor, but in 1904 she married Stanley McCormick, a Princeton-educated man and heir to a vast fortune. Her oath to stay by his side in sickness and in health, until death did them part, was tested just two years into their marriage, when Stanley’s mental health had deteriorated to the point that he was institutionalized. He was diagnosed with what today is called schizophrenia, and his family sent him to their mansion outside Santa Barbara, a “gilded cage” run by an all-male staff of doctors and nurses who provided round-the-clock care.

The all-male staff was necessary, as Stanley had developed violent tendencies that seemed to be directed primarily toward women. Katharine went nearly two decades without any physical contact with her husband — though she could write letters, talk to him on the phone, or crouch in the bushes and watch him through binoculars. Katharine stayed married to him until his death in 1947. The entire time, she was heavily involved in directing his care — despite constant clashes with his family — and remained optimistic for a cure.

But outside of her marriage, Katharine cultivated a rich life, devoting herself to women’s rights and becoming a high-ranking leader in the fight for the right to vote. After women’s suffrage was won, she was eager to turn her attention to the next fight — and was invigorated by the energy of the birth control movement, which, like the suffrage movement before it, drew ire and outrage from both church and state. Continue reading →

How Birth Control Empowered Me

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The following post comes to us via Ava Budavari-Glenn, a political communications major and a nonprofit communications minor who is entering her sophomore year at Emerson College. She is a writer whose work focuses mainly on advocacy, and a community organizer who has worked for nonprofit organizations and political campaigns. She is a media and communications intern at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona.

As many of you reading this blog post probably already know, birth control is not “optional” health care. It is not a bartering chip, nor is it something our society can do without. It is a needed part of health care, just like any other medication.

Rarely does the birth control conversation extend far beyond pregnancy prevention. But actually, what birth control does for women has a far wider reach, because birth control empowers us to live our own lives, exercise bodily autonomy, and have a choice over what the future looks like for us, in more ways than one. I know firsthand how birth control can do that.

Everyone deserves bodily autonomy.

Because birth control gave me my life back.

Growing up, periods were something nobody really talked about with me. There was just a set of norms I had to face. Your period was never something you talked about above a whisper, or through the use of code names that no male around you was supposed to understand. If you leaked blood through the pad, you were supposed to find a way to hide it and not tell anyone, because it would be shameful if anyone around you knew you were menstruating.

I had grown up with other aspects of my body being sexualized by people around me (breasts, hips, really any new curves that suddenly showed up), but this was a different kind of shame. My period was gross. The time of the month where I bled suddenly made me disgusting, even though it was a normal part of growing up. Stereotypes of women having their periods as being bitchy, having mood swings, screaming in pain, or something for people to stay away from because it was that “time of the month again,” suddenly applied to me. So I just learned not to talk about it, and hide it as best as I could. Continue reading →

Who Knew? Hobby Lobby Is a Person

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Five years ago this week, on June 30, 2014, for the first time in the history of the United States, the Supreme Court ruled that some for-profit corporations could, like human beings, exercise religious beliefs and exempt themselves from general laws that violate those beliefs. Five justices bestowed upon a handful of business owners the right to deny thousands of their employees the contraception method of their choice otherwise guaranteed under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Guess who performed this legal baptism?

The Hobby Lobby majority quintet: Justices Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, and Scalia. Source: Media Matters, June 30, 2014

Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority quintet. His rationale seemed to be:

  • The statute at issue, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), doesn’t specifically exclude for-profit corporations as protected “persons” who collectively exercise religion and deserve exemption from laws, so the court relies on the legal Dictionary Act, which states: “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise … the words ‘person’ and ‘whoever’ include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.”
  • Religious exemption requests are taken at face value — without regard for actual scientific evidence. In the Hobby Lobby case, the religious exemption was requested based on the claim that some forms of contraception are infanticide (Plan B, ella, and IUDs). (Such claims are false. Per the Guttmacher Institute, “The weight of the evidence clearly shows that emergency contraceptives and IUDs are not abortifacients.”)
  • The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has not implemented a legally acceptable accommodation for for-profit corporations (our new “persons”). Alito suggested a workaround that the government provide these women contraceptives (with tax dollars) instead. (Subsequent to the decision, an HHS accommodation was reached to allow these closely held, for-profit corporations to use the same opt-out procedure allowed for entities operated by religious groups — e.g., universities, hospitals, and charities).
  • This is a narrow decision that won’t open the floodgates of other religious objections to other laws. (More on this later.)

Continue reading →

The Gag Rule and the Abortion Bans Explained, and What You Can Do to Fight Back

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The following post comes to us via Ava Budavari-Glenn, a political communications major and a nonprofit communications minor who is entering her sophomore year at Emerson College. She is a writer whose work focuses mainly on advocacy, and a community organizer who has worked for nonprofit organizations and political campaigns. She is a media and communications intern at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona.

Reproductive health has been under attack in the United States for decades, and this administration is no exception. Especially within the past few months, both national and state governments have taken definitive steps to take away bodily autonomy from those who can get pregnant. Title X funding and legal abortion are both essential aspects of reproductive health care in this country, but several states have made attempts to effectively ban abortion, and the Trump administration has attempted to place restrictions on Title X funding. Although Title X is only used to fund birth control, not abortion care, the two issues are connected, as hostility toward abortion and hostility toward birth control both come from the same place.

Access to reliable birth control prevents abortion. So why is it being restricted?

Title X is a program that was passed by Congress in 1970 that provides federal funding for birth control and other reproductive services to low-income families who otherwise could not afford them. These lifesaving services include birth control, cancer screenings, wellness exams, and STD testing and treatment. Approximately 33 percent of recipients are Hispanic/Latinx, and 21 percent are black/African American. Thanks to Title X funding, in 2016, health centers provided more than 4 million STD tests, 1 million breast exams, and 720,000 Pap tests.

The gag rule that the Trump administration has issued would prevent doctors from telling women how to access abortion, prevent Planned Parenthood from providing Title X-subsidized birth control to eligible patients, and prevent health-care professionals from giving women complete and accurate information about their sexual and reproductive health. It would impose strict and unnecessary requirements on the separation of Title X-related services and abortion services. It prevents doctors from giving abortion referrals, which discourages comprehensive reproductive health centers such as Planned Parenthood from offering counseling and referrals, while encouraging the same from inadequate resources such as crisis pregnancy centers, which shame women and do not provide accurate medical information. Low-income people using Title X shouldn’t have their health care compromised by politicians playing doctor. They should receive the same high-quality care as anyone else. Continue reading →

Why Periods? False Hopes, Popes, and the “Grandfathered” Withdrawal Bleed

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The birth control pill and other hormonal contraception are popular. Menstrual periods are not. Hormonal contraception can be used to suppress menstruation — so why isn’t this method, called “continuous contraception,” more popular?

For decades, packets of birth control pills have typically contained 21 “active” pills and seven “placebo” pills. These placebos — sugar pills — trigger bleeding (which most people think of as a menstrual period, even though it’s technically called a withdrawal bleed). Because menstruation is natural, some people think this withdrawal bleed must somehow be healthier. But there are actually no health benefits — and it might also increase risk for pregnancy.

There is no reason to have a period when on the birth control pill — unless you want one.

Last month, British medical guidelines were revised to recommend continuous use of the birth control pill — that is, with no week-long “break” designed to trigger a withdrawal bleed. We could have been skipping our periods since the Pill was introduced in 1960 — so why is it only now that we are coming to see them as optional?

A flurry of recent articles has touted a rather conspiratorial claim: that the monthly bleed was included in an attempt to make the Pill more palatable to the pope. The Telegraph quoted reproductive health expert John Guillebaud: “John Rock devised [the week of placebo pills] because he hoped that the pope would accept the Pill and make it acceptable for Catholics to use. Rock thought if it did imitate the natural cycle then the pope would accept it.”

Many journalists, pundits, and bloggers have expressed outrage that we’ve been putting up with decades of unnecessary bleeding (and all the attendant pain, headaches, and missed work) just because of an unsuccessful attempt to appease the pope before most women of reproductive age were even born. But the history of the placebo week is more complicated. Continue reading →

The Scoop on IUDs: Busting Myths About a Highly Effective Form of Birth Control

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One of the most misunderstood forms of birth control is the IUD — short for intrauterine device. This contraption is inserted through the cervix and into the uterus to provide years of no-fuss pregnancy protection, making it a reliable and cost-effective method for anyone not planning to have kids any time soon.

Thanks to the zero-copay birth control mandate, an IUD should be free to most people with health insurance, and it’s about as effective as getting your tubes tied — with the option to remove it if you decide to start trying to get pregnant. Regardless, it’s not as popular as condoms or the pill. There are many reasons for that, but the fears and rumors surrounding IUDs might be one of them.

IUDs are highly effective birth control options.

In response, Planned Parenthood Arizona’s family planning and primary care director, Deanna Wright, NP, shed some light on some of these fears surrounding IUDs.

Can I have an IUD if I’ve never given birth before?

Even some physicians won’t provide IUDs to patients who have never given birth, based on the idea that only people who have already had children can handle IUD insertion.

“This is completely untrue,” says Wright. “In fact, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology encourages clinicians to offer LARCs, including IUDs, as the first method of contraception to all patients. They recently reaffirmed this position in May 2018.” Continue reading →

World Contraception Day: An Opportunity to Solidify Your Birth Control Knowledge

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Today is the 11th anniversary of World Contraception Day, first celebrated in 2007 when it was introduced by the World Health Organization, International Planned Parenthood Federation, and a coalition of other international health care organizations as a way to “improve awareness of contraception and to enable young people to make informed choices on their sexual and reproductive health.”

To appeal to young people, the coalition behind World Contraception Day crafted a website called Your Life that addresses frequently asked questions about birth control. You can start increasing your awareness now.

What is the difference between the “male condom” and the “female condom”? *
Male condoms are intended to cover a penis or dildo. Female condoms (aka “internal condoms“) fit inside the vaginal canal. They can also be inserted into the rectum. Both types of condoms are used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases (aka STDs). When used during vaginal intercourse, they are also used to prevent pregnancy.

How do I use a male condom?
Male condoms are used to cover the penis or a dildo. This video will show you how to apply the condom. Continue reading →