This is why, if you’ve had a poor experience with birth control, you might believe that to complain is to drag down the cause - especially at a time when reproductive rights are under attack. When someone is able to choose when to get pregnant, health outcomes for both them and their baby improve. This benefits everyone: Women with access to birth control achieve higher levels of education and greater economic stability, which can in turn lift families and communities out of poverty. Irrespective of the obvious and crucial use case of avoiding pregnancy, hormonal birth control is prescribed to alleviate common issues such as acne and period cramps, as well as disorders like polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis, for which there aren’t many treatments.īirth control is common because it’s hugely important, enabling people to decide for themselves whether their future includes children, and if so, when. But many spend decades on one method or another. People with periods - which includes not just cisgender women but also trans and nonbinary people - may not use contraceptives consistently throughout their reproductive years, if they’re not having sex with men or if they want to get pregnant, for example. Bayer, which makes a variety of IUDs and birth control pills, estimates that 33 million women in the US are potential birth control customers.
Of them, roughly 9 million were on the Pill, and another 7.4 million had long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) like IUDs and arm implants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 20, nearly 65 percent of the 72.2 million women in the US ages 15 to 49 were using some contraceptive method. But even in my relief, I was angry at myself for waiting, and frustrated that something that had been so great for my friends didn’t work out for me.īirth control is a part of daily life for tens of millions of Americans. Physically, I felt better almost immediately. How much physical anguish could I handle in exchange for the psychic comfort of not worrying about getting pregnant? In January 2019, just a few days after two federal courts temporarily blocked Trump’s attempt to roll back the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate, I set up an appointment and had my IUD taken out. I decided to keep it in.Īs the pain intensified, it became apparent that I was playing a game of chicken with myself. There wasn’t much she could do besides take it out. When I went to see my doctor about the pain, she checked the IUD’s placement and made sure that I wasn’t experiencing ovarian cysts, finally pronouncing that my body just didn’t like having this device in it. The cramps built gradually, and for a while I was able to justify their rising cost against the significant benefits of hormonal IUDs: no daily maintenance, a less than 1 percent risk of getting pregnant, and the common side effect of a lighter or nonexistent period. I’d already been leaning in that direction: When someone finds a method of birth control they love, they tend to tell their friends about it, and I have many friends who loved their IUDs. It was early 2017, right after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, and I was worried about his administration doing away with Obamacare’s birth control mandate, which required most insurance plans to entirely cover the cost of FDA-approved contraceptives (with some exceptions for name-brand versions). I switched from the Pill to an IUD at a time when many people were opting for this long-lasting form of birth control, which can be hormonal or non-hormonal and remains in the body anywhere from three to 12 years, depending on the type. Coping was a matter of downing Aleve and sending my boyfriend texts like, “My entire body is a cramp,” while I waited for it to pass. Last December was the apex of months of mounting discomfort, which began a year after I got a Mirena IUD, or intrauterine device, a small piece of plastic that sits in the uterus and prevents pregnancy by releasing a local dose of hormones. The pain came without warning, seizing and releasing into an ache that lingered for hours like a bad guest.
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