Tag Archives: Birth control and contraception

More linkage: Magical thinking and unplanned pregnancy, a new report

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Since I’m in a linky mode today, let me direct readers to a PDF file (cap tap to Kate D.) from the good people at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Entitled Magical Thinking: Young Adults’ Attitudes and Beliefs about Sex, Contraception, and Unplanned Pregnancy, it takes a detailed look at some of the issues that came up in these two posts last year.

The study looks at young adults, whom the National Campaign defines as 18-29 year olds. These aren’t minors, and yet the fatalistic attitude towards pregnancy which we often associated with younger folks is all-too-prevalent among those who surely ought to fall into the “old enough to know better” category.

A note on the National Campaign: its chair is Thomas Kean, the Republican politician who served on the 9/11 commission. Yes, Virginia, there are pro-choice Republicans who are passionately committed to women’s rights and environmental causes. Tom Kean is a good lad, and he’s a fine ally on at least some issues. Would that more in his party were of his caliber and of his views.

Colleges and Crisis Pregnancy Centers: troubling signs of an alliance

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The new Ms. Magazine is on the shelves. The feature article (only a preview is available for free online — please subscribe) is on the disturbing growth in the number of college health centers who refer pregnant students (or those who think they might be pregnant) to CPCs: “crisis pregnancy centers.” Crisis Pregnancy Centers, funded by churches and, increasingly, by the federal government, are in the business of preventing abortion by counseling pregnant women and girls to carry to term. They rarely, if ever, offer the same panoply of health care options that might be found at, say, a Planned Parenthood clinic.

A survey conducted this past summer by the Feminist Majority Foundation, publisher of Ms., found that of 398 campus health centers at four-year colleges that responded to a questionnaire, 48 percent routinely refer women who think they might be pregnant to CPCs. Although 81 percent also refer women to full-service health clinics, some campus centers say they want to give students “all of the options,” as one health-center director put it.

But CPCs don’t offer all the options; rather, they push the unsuspecting young women who walk through their doors to keep the pregnancy. They often push dubious, or even long-since debunked statistics about the correlation between abortion and suicide, depression, breast cancer, and difficult conceiving future children. While health-care providers are required by state law and the Hippocratic oath to put the well-being of the patient first, CPCs follow a mandate to protect only one entity, the “pre-born baby” growing inside the body of a woman whose own needs are of, at best, secondary concern. Indeed, other than providing anti-abortion counseling, there’s very little that CPCs can offer:

19 year-old Nina Lopez, a student at nearby Santa Monica College, encountered CPC tactics first-hand:

“Even before I found out I wasn’t pregnant, the counselor said I should abstain from
sex,” says Lopez. She picked up a fact sheet on “post-abortion stress” and was asked to fill
out a form that sought nonmedical information about her family and her religious beliefs.
And then, when her urine test revealed not a pregnancy but a possible urinary tract infection,
the center did not offer her any medical treatment or refer her elsewhere.

College health clinics who refer students to CPCs thus put their clients’ health at risk. All medical providers have an obligation to either provide necessary care, or to refer to another provider who can provide that care. Nina Lopez’s UTI was not of interest to the CPCs, however, so she received neither care nor a referral. The fault lies as much with the college health department that referred her as with the CPC itself. Continue reading →

Pleasure, Prophylaxis, Procreation: more on “jumping the life to come” and unintended pregnancy

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This post two weeks ago about contraception and adolescent risk-taking sparked some rather heated discussion. In an effort to shed light rather than merely generate heat, reader Kate sent me an article (not available online, she sent the PDF): Pleasure, Prophylaxis and Procreation:
A Qualitative Analysis of Intermittent Contraceptive Use
And Unintended Pregnancy, which appears in the September 2008 issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

The study looks at what the authors call “pregnancy ambivalence”. It hasn’t been studied before:

Indeed, reflecting the field’s general neglect of the
role of sexuality in reproductive behaviors, few researchers
have examined whether unprotected sex or
ambivalence about pregnancy may heighten the sexual
experience, or whether the romantic notion of creating
a child with someone may deter the use of contraceptives.
We know little about the emotional, physical
and cognitive states that contribute to situations in
which lack of contraceptive use is pleasurable or purposeful
to women and men.

The study makes clear that the availability of safe and legal abortion has little bearing on the decision couples make to “spontaneously” avoid the use of contraception. Indeed, the idea of abortion as a “back-up” is never mentioned in the study. Rather, the triggers for intermittent contraceptive use, in addition to the phenomenon of “pregnancy ambivalence”, are three distinct types of pleasure both women and men may derive from unprotected intercourse:

1. Active eroticization of pregnancy risk. The least common
but most direct articulation of the pleasures of pregnancy
ambivalence took form in the eroticization of pregnancy
risk. In these cases, participants described increased
sexual arousal at the prospect of conception.

2. Passive romanticization of procreation. In many cases,
ambivalence manifested not as heat-of-the-moment
arousal, but as a less dramatic romanticization of the
general idea of a pregnancy with a particular partner.
Certain respondents flirted with pregnancy in the form of
a subtle romantic fantasy that also contributed to intermittent
use or non-use of contraceptives. While these
respondents did not actively intend to conceive, they did
not stringently avoid pregnancy, either.

3. Escapist pleasures. Even when they were not planning
or hoping for a baby, several respondents came to
embrace an unintended pregnancy as a way to foster
a relationship, cultivate a new family and potentially
escape the hardships of their lives. Not surprisingly, only
less socially advantaged women—especially those who
had become pregnant at a young age—described this
phenomenon. Pregnancies represented temporary hopes
that things would get better and that their unborn
children would enjoy brighter futures. Continue reading →

The longing to “jump the life to come”: some thoughts on Shakespeare, pregnancy scares, contraception, and romantic myths

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There are a great many things I could blog about this morning, my own pre-election anxiety not least among them. I’m grateful that I’m leaving town (actually, the country) from tomorrow afternoon until late Sunday night — and that will give me a break from incessant poll-checking. Yesterday, I visited RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight and the DailyKos at least a dozen times each. I met with Stephanie, my Pilates trainer, this morning at 6:00. Though I normally do a private session with her three times a week, because of my travel schedule I won’t see her until next Wednesday morning — the day after the election. “We won’t see each other until after the election”, I blurted on my way out the door. “Oh God”, Stephanie replied, “I know. Let’s hope we’re both giddily happy at this time a week from now.” “Amen, sister”, I replied.

I will have more posts up about porn soon, but I am always reluctant to post too often about the same issue. I have a diverse group of readers, fortunately, and want to do my best to cover as many bases as possible. Two important voices for sex workers rights and for a “pro-porn” position, Amber Rhea and Renegade Evolution, have thoughtful responses to my recent posts. (Ren’s site may not be work-safe for all.) I’m glad respectful dialogue can happen.

I’m thinking about something else sex-related this morning. In the past month, three of the students I mentor (two women, one man) have come to me reporting pregnancy scares. They are all between 18-21, and each is in a committed relationship, though not with one another. In the case of the lad and one of the gals, the tests came back negative; in the case of the second young woman, she’s planning on taking a pregnancy test later today. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I do have a solid number of students of both sexes whom I mentor — and some of those students choose to seek me out for advice about their private as well as their intellectual lives. In cases where professional counseling is needed, my motto is “affirm and refer”, but in most instances, what these students need is a safe and reliable ear. Given that I teach so many courses on gender and sexuality, it makes sense that some students would seek me out for direction and counsel. I see it as part of my job, remembering that in my college days, I had a few professors from whom I sought personal as well as professional advice.)

I’m familiar with pregnancy scares. Heck, I’m familiar with unintended pregnancies, both in my own life as an adolescent and in my work as a teacher and youth leader. I have helped arrange (and in a couple of instances, helped pay for) abortions, and helped facilitate one adoption. I have been to two weddings of former students who got married as a result of a pregnancy. I’m honored to be trusted by as many young people as I am, and I hope to continue to be worthy of that trust.

But I’ve been thinking more about why so many young people I know choose not to use contraception. The gal who came to see me yesterday had been on the Nuvaring, but her insurance coverage lapsed, and she couldn’t get the scrip refilled. She and her beau had condoms available, but chose not to use them. “I don’t know why we’re so stupid”, she said to me yesterday. The young man I work with who came to me last week, worried his girlfriend might be pregnant, also reported that “condoms were available” at the key moment, but “we went ahead without them anyway.” I wasn’t shocked. When I got my high school girlfriend pregnant, we had condoms nearby as well. I didn’t like wearing them, and my girlfriend said she hated the way they felt. So we used them “some of the time”. And predictably, a pregnancy resulted.

The $64,000 question is: “Why?” Why do bright, educated young people who are very clear about how exactly babies are made choose to have unprotected heterosexual intercourse so very often? Why, on many occasions, do they find such flimsy excuses for not using contraception, even when contraceptive devices are easily available? In some cases, of course, lack of affordability is an issue — condoms aren’t as cheap as some folks think, and other forms of prescription contraception have grown much more expensive in recent years. In other cases, one partner (almost always the male) will nag the other about how “uncomfortable” condoms are. But in plenty of cases, these young people have access to reliable methods of birth control, and choose not to use them. Ignorance is not an all-encompassing explanation, and neither is expense. Something else is at play. Continue reading →

The Pill, autonomy, male responsibility, and the virtues of body sovereignty

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As noted on Friday, historian (and fellow UCLA Ph.D.) Elaine Tyler May is looking for stories about the Pill.

Since she asks for stories from men whose partners have used the Pill, I’ll take the invitation to offer some thoughts.

I lecture on birth control every semester in my women’s history class. I always begin the same way, by talking about semantics, namely to make what ought to be an obvious point: “birth” control is not identical to contraception. The very names make clear the difference: birth control encompasses a wide variety of methods to give women control over their entire (or nearly entire) reproductive process; contraception is, evidently, limited to those methods designed to prevent conception. Contraception, in other words, is a subset of but never a synonym for birth control. One key feminist goal remains ensuring safe and reliable access not merely to contraceptive technology but to birth control.

Invariably, some students get confused, largely because the phrase “birth control” in their minds has come to mean only the Pill. When they hear an expression such as “Mary’s on birth control”, they assume that means oral contraceptives. This equation of birth control with the Pill hasn’t changed noticeably since I first started teaching fifteen years ago. Nearly five decades after it first appeared on the market, the Pill continues to exercise a powerful hold on the language — as well, of course, on the bodies — of women young enough to be the granddaughters of the first generation to use it. Continue reading →

Flying with Senator Scott, and a call for stories about the Pill

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I’m home from a very quick trip up to Yuba City for our niece’s graduation last night. On the flight down from Sacramento to Burbank this morning, I got a chance to chat with the former Pasadena City College president, Jack Scott. Jack’s now a state senator and soon to be the chancellor of the California community college system; a fellow historian, he was very kind to me when I was first hired. I worked on his 1996 and 1998 assembly campaigns, and have always admired him for the decent, thoughtful way in which he blends his passionate faith (he’s an ordained Baptist minister) with strong progressive politics. When you fly on a Friday between Sacramento and Burbank, you’re guaranteed to have at least one state legislator on board; I’m glad that today it was my own state senator and former campus president.

But the point of this post is to pass along an announcement, sent to me by Courtney Martin.

Elaine May, who teaches history at Minnesota, is writing a book about the Pill. Here’s the announcement she sends out:

Dear Friends (and friends of friends…),

The Pill is often considered one of the most important innovations of the twentieth century. As I investigate this claim for a new book—set for release on the 50th anniversary of the Pill’s FDA approval (Basic Books, 2010)—I’m looking to include the voices and stories of real people. I hope yours will be one of them. I’m eager to hear from men as well as women, of all ages and backgrounds.

· Have you or any of your partners taken the Pill? Why or why not? How did it work for you—physically, emotionally, and ethically? How has it compared with other contraceptive methods you or your partners have used?

· What has been the impact of the Pill on your sex life, relationships, political or social attitudes, and beliefs about the medical or pharmaceutical establishments?

· Do you have opinions about public policies related to access, availability, approval or limitations on the development and distribution of the Pill and related contraceptive products (the patch, the “morning after pill,” long-term injections, etc.).

· Anything else you think I should know?

Send me your most richly detailed answers to any and all of these questions (and don’t forget to include your age, gender, where you live, occupation, ethnic/religious/racial background, sexual orientation, marital status, political party affiliation, or any other biographical info you think is important). If you would like to participate in my study but would prefer to respond to a questionnaire, please let me know and I will happily send you one.
I’m interested in hearing from men and women who have used the Pill and those who have not, those who used it briefly or a long time ago, or who use it now. I am also eager to hear from people who work in fields that relate to the use and availability of the Pill (such as medicine, public health, social work, education, etc.). You will remain anonymous. I will use your contact information only to respond to you directly and to let you know when the book will be available for purchase (at a discount to contributors!).

And just one more thing. I not only want to hear your voice, but the voices of those you love, teach, preach to, learn from, and work with. Please pass this request on! The more responses I receive, and the greater the diversity of respondents, the more the book will reflect the wide range of experiences and attitudes that have shaped the Pill’s history over the last half century.

I hope to hear from you. Please write to me at elainetylermay@gmail.com.

I’ll be blogging my own answers soon enough.