Beyaz: It's Good (?) to Have Choices

So remember how I said I was a crazy Catholic hippie? Here's something I do (or don't do) that strikes fear into the heart of just about every American woman. Brace yourself...

I don't take birth control.

Have you regained your composure? Are you thinking about how I will inevitably have 12 children, spaced precisely 9 months apart, and live in the poor house? Are you thinking of forming an intervention to keep me from ruining my life? Don't panic too much. Let me rephrase my previous statement:

I don't take ARTIFICIAL birth control.

My husband I absolutely practice birth control. I just don't take, use, or do anything to sterilize either of us. You may have heard of NFP - natural family planning. If you're anything like I was, you're thinking a variety of choice phrases. "Useless wishful thinking" was one of my favorite objections. "Old fashioned wives tale" was up there too. But this isn't your mom's rhythm method, or your crazy cousin's cycle beads. For the past year and a half, I have used something called FAM - fertility awareness method. I won't go into the details of how it works, other than to say that it's a series of precise measurements to determine, scientifically, when a female body is fertile. It's medical, it's easy, it's not any more work, and it's not based on "we'll see what happens." I won't go further than that, because the goal of this post is not to educate you on HOW to practice NFP. The point is to open your mind to the possibility that it might actually work just as well as any chemical out there.

That's right - when practiced well, the method I use is 99% effective. That's better odds than most pills. And it comes with some really great side effects, unlike your ortho-tri-whatever. For example, greatly reduced chances of the big four - uterine, ovarian, cervical and breast cancer. No one talks about how the pill, or any hormonal birth control like hormonal IUDs, increases the likelihood that one of your female organs will become cancerous, but it's huge. Other things that hormonal birth control does: decreases sex drive, increases weight gain, and (yes) aborts successfully fertilized eggs by preventing them from attaching to the uterine wall. Just to name a few.

But doesn't that mean that I practically don't have sex? Ever? Like, ever? True, there are about 10 days a month when we are mutually fertile (a hilarious statement, considering that men are always fertile) and we choose to abstain then. But I can pretty much guarantee that we have sex as many times a month as any married couple. I'd wager more. Go without chocolate for a month and see if you don't eat your weight in it when you get the chance again. I'm just sayin.

The funniest thing to me is how the American woman feels so safe with her little pill. Sex is now "safe" (translation: recreational). There's no way you'll get pregnant on birth control! Who does that happen to? Ask that of my sister-in-law. She has two boys, both of whom were concieved on the pill. Two different pills, actually, since the first one obviously didn't work. Oops. Birth control fails* all the time, guys. When you factor in human error, it fails for 8 out 100 women (http://www.contracept.org/risks.php).

*Fail is a funny word. Let's talk about that.

It's not until you take the leap of faith and accept the natural fact that "sex makes babies" that you realized how royally f-ed up our views on pregnancy are. We are the queens of control, aren't we? The masters of instant gratification. We sterilize our bodies for decades, then - when we FEEL the time is right - we throw those meds in the trash and expect to be pregnant the next week. And if we aren't pregnant in 2 months, there is something wrong. Off to the fertility specialist** we go for more hormonal treatments! Now now now!

**This is not to say that there aren't couples who suffer from infertility - it is a serious and tragic problem that I have seen many women close to me suffer. But I'm sure they would agree that they often cannot get the treatments that they so desperately need because the lists are jammed with people who could very well conceive on their own.

Just stop to think about it - before the pill in the late 60s, people had larger families, but not huge. The 12 and 14 births that you hear about in your great grandparents generation were a choice, and that was limited to America. French women in the 1860s did not have that many children. Americans were raising children to help them survive a hostile landscape, not succumbing to the inconvience of multiple pregnancies. So how did we survive before our little miracle came along? Hmm... makes you think.

So after I did all this research and gather all the information you see here, I made the switch. Begrudgingly. More like I was dragged kicking and screaming by my own convictions - it was a violent battle). But then something happened that I never expected: it made me a better person. It made me question so much of my life, and what I now saw as the controlling, selfish way I had been living. Here's the best side effect of my choice: happiness. I am happier and my husband is happier (didn't see that coming did ya?). My marriage is stronger, my family is healthier, and I have a much better chance of living to see them be happy.

With such a profound change in the way I think about life, family, and pregnancy, it makes some of what our society puts out very difficult to swallow. Take this commercial, for example.



You hear, "It's good to have choices." I hear, "It's better to stay selfish as long as you can." You see a powerful, independent woman telling that stork to take a hike. I see a women denying the real power of her body and asking to be put in the dark about anything other than the here and now. You see freedom. I see chains.

Alright - bring it on. If I had a large readership now, I would expect anger! Hatred! Outrage! After all, that's what I gave myself when these ideas started. So if you're out there, and if you're angry, spill it. I guarantee there's nothing you can object with that I haven't already objected with. It's controversial and downright scandalous, and I didn't even talk about Catholicism once.