On privilege and birth control
Jul. 8th, 2012 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupI am a pretty vocal critic of hormonal birth control. I recognize that it was a great leap forward for women when it was invented, but I'm angry that we've gotten stuck on it as The Anti-Baby Mechanism, and I see it as a symptom of our disconnect from our bodies in general and science's disconnection from women's experiences in particular. I've wondered out loud how Depo can possibly still be legal, when it has such horrendous side effects.
I'm an idiot. A privileged idiot.
This was driven home to me while reading Escape, which is about a woman's escape from a fundamentalist mormon cult. Her first or second pregnancy ended with a placental abruption, and every subsequent pregnancy (there were eight total) mandated bedrest and still risked death. And then her 7th child was born and required near 24 hour care and constant medical visits; her husband fought her when she took the child on her own. If she didn't have the mental energy to do that or the physical ability to follow through, her son would die. And while it wouldn't be quite as quick, her death or incapacitation put all of her other children at risk as well. Staying not pregnant was literally a matter of life or death.
But being caught with birth control could get her, or her children, killed as well. Contraception that was absolutely undetectable, and required as few doctors' visits as possible, was all that mattered. However bad blood clots and bone density loss are, they were first world problems, relative to a hostile uterus and rapist husband.
So Depo? I take it back. You're like that friend who is sometimes impossible to deal with but is absolutely there when you need them, and I respect you for that.
I'm an idiot. A privileged idiot.
This was driven home to me while reading Escape, which is about a woman's escape from a fundamentalist mormon cult. Her first or second pregnancy ended with a placental abruption, and every subsequent pregnancy (there were eight total) mandated bedrest and still risked death. And then her 7th child was born and required near 24 hour care and constant medical visits; her husband fought her when she took the child on her own. If she didn't have the mental energy to do that or the physical ability to follow through, her son would die. And while it wouldn't be quite as quick, her death or incapacitation put all of her other children at risk as well. Staying not pregnant was literally a matter of life or death.
But being caught with birth control could get her, or her children, killed as well. Contraception that was absolutely undetectable, and required as few doctors' visits as possible, was all that mattered. However bad blood clots and bone density loss are, they were first world problems, relative to a hostile uterus and rapist husband.
So Depo? I take it back. You're like that friend who is sometimes impossible to deal with but is absolutely there when you need them, and I respect you for that.
