Control

Yesterday I found myself reading about birth control on Kaiser’s website. (Kaiser is my medical provider.) I’m getting tired of the rigorous schedule required to make the pill work — did you know that when they say take your pill at the same time every day, they really, really mean it? Being off by even an hour drastically increases your chances of getting pregnant. The more you know, eh? — and was browsing around to see if anyone had invented something really awesome since the last time I looked into contraception. (Spoiler alert: they haven’t.)

Anyway, it was while reading up on Kaiser’s various birth control methods that I discovered this little gem:

“If an unplanned pregnancy would seriously impact your plans for the future, choose a birth control method that is highly effective. Or if you have a stable relationship and income and plan to have children in the future anyway, you may feel comfortable using a less reliable method. ”

And now I am annoyed.

I really hate the assumption — and I’ve encountered it elsewhere — that if you’re married and you probably want kids someday, then getting pregnant right now shouldn’t be such a big deal. As if an unplanned pregnancy wouldn’t be a huge, life-altering deal in any life, anywhere, ever.

Let me break it down for you like a crumbly cracker: You ever wake up in the morning excited because you’re planning to go to happy hour somewhere after work? You lie there in bed and you can just imagine how great it will be to have that half-priced margarita, right?

Okay, but it’s six in the morning. Do you want that margarita right now?

Granted, for me it’s more like eleven in the morning. Okay, maybe one in the afternoon. The point is, I’m not ready for that part of my day to start. So yeah, I’m going to need a reliable form of birth control, because all women everywhere should get to pick when (if ever) in their lives they swell up like a balloon and then lose 18+ years to the demands of someone else. And yeah, if my birth control breaks down, I’m going to get the morning-after pill. And yes, friends, if all these options somehow fail me, I will have an abortion. And it won’t be easy or ideal. But it won’t be wrong, either.

Being a wife doesn’t automatically mean you have to be a mother. Being a mother doesn’t automatically mean you have to be a mother again. And I won’t let anyone, including my own bloody doctors, bully me into thinking it does.