By Amanda Coscarelli, Sept. 14, 2021
As women, we’re held unfairly responsible for all reproductive duties and if we fail to prevent pregnancy, then in Texas, a woman is liable for getting pregnant, whether it was caused by rape, a broken condom or a forgotten birth control pill.
On Sept. 1, a Texas law went into effect that banned abortions in the state. The law states that an abortion is illegal after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo, usually six weeks into a pregnancy.
However, this law eliminates nearly all women from receiving a safe abortion since many of them don’t realize they’re pregnant until after the six-week mark. According to doctor Monica Simons on Self.com, at six weeks, a person’s body has undergone “very little change.”
I had just quit my birth control pills when I heard the news about Texas. I had stopped taking them because I felt emotionless. I never felt happy, and I had no desire to have sex. I was paying $10 a month to feel worse about myself.
With a complete loss of libido, what was the point?
There are free options on the market and everyone experiences side effects differently, but I wasn’t the first person I knew that had experienced negative effects. My best friend had been on the pill for a year before reporting a period that never stopped. She had been bleeding off and on for six months. And she lost her sex drive too.
Some non-hormonal options include a non-estrogen pill, which, according to Mayo Clinic, is less effective than other methods and causes 13% of people to become pregnant every year. But for a working woman, this isn’t always practical. There’s also the IUD that’s pushed up into the cervix through a procedure that, I can confidently tell you, is not fun. It’s uncomfortable under the best circumstances. Then, there’s risk of penetrating the uterus and a number of other possible complications which can lead to difficulties in future pregnancies.
So, to have safe sex women endure either depression or an invasive procedure.
Why do women have to deal with it? Because men won’t.
The responsibility always falls on women for birth control because, truthfully, there aren’t many options for men. One of the most widely known methods of male contraceptives are condoms. However, condoms are notorious for causing accidental pregnancy by either slipping off or being deliberately removed by the individual who’s wearing it.
Simply using a condom isn’t safe enough for women, which is why we also use our own form of birth control.
In 2016, a trial was held to test a male birth control injection. It was meant to lower sperm counts by acting on the brain’s pituitary gland. But trials halted when men reported that the side effects outweighed the benefits.
They reported side effects such as depression and increased heart rate, which led researchers to discontinue the trial. Yet, women experience these side effects and some that are even worse when taking birth control.
Why do women have to deal with it? Because men won’t.
Doctors and researchers say that more research needs to be done on hormone balance in order to release the male injection method to consumers, but when I go to the gynecologist and report the same side effects, I’m told that they’re normal and should be expected.
If women are told to suck it up, handle the cost of preventing pregnancies and take responsibility for all reproductive matters before a sperm meets an egg, why is that right taken away when the egg is fertilized?
If we’re not being controlled by a pill, then we’re controlled by men who can’t handle even the same things we can. These same men make laws to control what we can and can’t do with our bodies.
At the end of the day, it’s important for women to be responsible for their own birth control because it’s our burden to protect ourselves against rape, sexual assault and condom malfunctions. However, if men aren’t willing to take responsibility and take their own birth control, they need to back off our reproductive rights.
