I’m looking forward to reading this! I personally use the natural cycles app and I love how empowering it is to actually be in control of my body in that way!
Long but oh so informative! Pregnancy is not an issue for me at this stage in my life BUT I've had numerous female related issues throughout my life and had to have my ovaries removed at 27. Birth control pills in my late teens and after my first pregnancy. Medication for morning sickness with my first pregnancy and my first was born with a birth defect that he received surgery for twice before the age of five but he ultimately passed at age nine. I can't help but wonder
While I appreciate this history of birth control, the wicked motives of the people involved in the creation of these technologies give me more pause than the arguments that they’re unhealthy for women’s bodies. The medical establishment is generally uninformed about women’s bodies. It’s a problem in pregnancy and fertility care, not just contraceptive methods. Anecdotes of women’s bodies reacting badly to birth control are not a good argument against birth control per se.
I’ve had the copper IUD for a year and my body feels totally normal and my sex drive is high. I’ve experienced zero negative side effects.
The reason I’m here is that recently, I heard someone call Paragard an abortifacient (which I do not want to have in me) and I started to do some research. What I have found was that there hasn’t been enough research done to know whether it prevents the implantation of healthy embryos, or whether it works by damaging sperm and egg so that no healthy embryos can be formed. This makes me uneasy, and I’m considering getting it removed despite its efficacy and lack of side effects.
But more than anything, I wish we knew how these things worked! I’m creeped out by the willingness of doctors to recommend these devices when they’re foggy on what the devices do. As women who care about the eternal significance of human life, we should be able to understand what’s going on in our bodies.
It’s printed in the insert. One small evasive discreet sentence. I’ve read it, you can find it. Something like it inhibits the terrain for implantation (not, inhibits conception).
While I'm always interested in opinions from the other side, most women I know consider contraception (especially the Pill and its offshoots) one of THE greatest developments in our lifetimes for women. My great grandmother lived in squalor in rural North Carolina with 11 children that neither she nor her alcoholic husband could care for. Her life was a misery, in part because she couldn't control her fertility. I know so many women with similar stories about their female forbears. Artificial birth control's not perfect, of course, but women and their families are objectively better off because of its availability.
I wonder how many people we personally know where the false safety net of contraceptives failed, rather than truly understanding their fertility. I personally know 3 women- 7 babies -in my immediate family and 5 closest friends alone. The better route would have been to more fully educate people on fertility.
Great article, I'm in agreement with the horrors BC has caused for the last century. Please share any info you have gathered on the effects BC has on the current epidemic of infertility that has now grown to rampant proportions. I am convinced that it is also the cause of many women being unable to breastfeed after their long fought achievement of pregnancy. What a sad state the world is in, no one is able to trust their own physician anymore.
I really appreciate the work you put into this one. After my first child was born and I had the mirena put in. It caused severe depressive episodes and I could hardly get out of bed. I had two stepsons and one baby to care for, and I just knew that thing was causing my problems. I demanded removal immediately by the women’s clinic (not PP) and they wouldn’t take it out because it was meant to be long term. I went to another physician who actually listened to me and removed it for me. I felt better within a couple of weeks. I have learned so much about my body and hormones since then, and I’m so glad to be free of that stuff. We now have a total of five children. 🩷
I have tracked over 100 cycles now and am so grateful that I have not been on these horrible things for so many years. I was convinced that I had to take the pill after I married. It caused to abortions, and then I was switched to nuvaring which made me desperately sick before I grew a backbone, did the research for myself and threw away the drugs. I was repeatedly gaslit by the nurse at my Christian college who said it wasn’t possible that what i experienced was a miscarriage. Or that the nuvaring had made me sick. Like someone above, it was interesting, shocking, and maybe validating to see the class action lawsuits against the brand. I read Randy Alcon’s book about the pill which was very helpful.
It’s just so disappointing how the church at large stays willfully ignorant about this, and how Christian parents push their adult children to delay marriage and parenthood to such detriment.
I’m looking forward to reading this! I personally use the natural cycles app and I love how empowering it is to actually be in control of my body in that way!
Long but oh so informative! Pregnancy is not an issue for me at this stage in my life BUT I've had numerous female related issues throughout my life and had to have my ovaries removed at 27. Birth control pills in my late teens and after my first pregnancy. Medication for morning sickness with my first pregnancy and my first was born with a birth defect that he received surgery for twice before the age of five but he ultimately passed at age nine. I can't help but wonder
While I appreciate this history of birth control, the wicked motives of the people involved in the creation of these technologies give me more pause than the arguments that they’re unhealthy for women’s bodies. The medical establishment is generally uninformed about women’s bodies. It’s a problem in pregnancy and fertility care, not just contraceptive methods. Anecdotes of women’s bodies reacting badly to birth control are not a good argument against birth control per se.
I’ve had the copper IUD for a year and my body feels totally normal and my sex drive is high. I’ve experienced zero negative side effects.
The reason I’m here is that recently, I heard someone call Paragard an abortifacient (which I do not want to have in me) and I started to do some research. What I have found was that there hasn’t been enough research done to know whether it prevents the implantation of healthy embryos, or whether it works by damaging sperm and egg so that no healthy embryos can be formed. This makes me uneasy, and I’m considering getting it removed despite its efficacy and lack of side effects.
But more than anything, I wish we knew how these things worked! I’m creeped out by the willingness of doctors to recommend these devices when they’re foggy on what the devices do. As women who care about the eternal significance of human life, we should be able to understand what’s going on in our bodies.
It’s printed in the insert. One small evasive discreet sentence. I’ve read it, you can find it. Something like it inhibits the terrain for implantation (not, inhibits conception).
While I'm always interested in opinions from the other side, most women I know consider contraception (especially the Pill and its offshoots) one of THE greatest developments in our lifetimes for women. My great grandmother lived in squalor in rural North Carolina with 11 children that neither she nor her alcoholic husband could care for. Her life was a misery, in part because she couldn't control her fertility. I know so many women with similar stories about their female forbears. Artificial birth control's not perfect, of course, but women and their families are objectively better off because of its availability.
I wonder how many people we personally know where the false safety net of contraceptives failed, rather than truly understanding their fertility. I personally know 3 women- 7 babies -in my immediate family and 5 closest friends alone. The better route would have been to more fully educate people on fertility.
Great article, I'm in agreement with the horrors BC has caused for the last century. Please share any info you have gathered on the effects BC has on the current epidemic of infertility that has now grown to rampant proportions. I am convinced that it is also the cause of many women being unable to breastfeed after their long fought achievement of pregnancy. What a sad state the world is in, no one is able to trust their own physician anymore.
I really appreciate the work you put into this one. After my first child was born and I had the mirena put in. It caused severe depressive episodes and I could hardly get out of bed. I had two stepsons and one baby to care for, and I just knew that thing was causing my problems. I demanded removal immediately by the women’s clinic (not PP) and they wouldn’t take it out because it was meant to be long term. I went to another physician who actually listened to me and removed it for me. I felt better within a couple of weeks. I have learned so much about my body and hormones since then, and I’m so glad to be free of that stuff. We now have a total of five children. 🩷
I have tracked over 100 cycles now and am so grateful that I have not been on these horrible things for so many years. I was convinced that I had to take the pill after I married. It caused to abortions, and then I was switched to nuvaring which made me desperately sick before I grew a backbone, did the research for myself and threw away the drugs. I was repeatedly gaslit by the nurse at my Christian college who said it wasn’t possible that what i experienced was a miscarriage. Or that the nuvaring had made me sick. Like someone above, it was interesting, shocking, and maybe validating to see the class action lawsuits against the brand. I read Randy Alcon’s book about the pill which was very helpful.
It’s just so disappointing how the church at large stays willfully ignorant about this, and how Christian parents push their adult children to delay marriage and parenthood to such detriment.