Birth Control: let's talk about it

Is freedom found via birth control?

I saw a woman on social media the other day talking about how questioning birth control or being anti birth control is a propaganda tactic encouraging anti-science, anti-feminist viewpoints

And wow. I had to write something about that.

Birth control is a paradox. The invention of birth control brought women reproductive freedom, something that we had never had in such a large scale way before. So that’s great.

Birth control is also an experiment. It hasn’t been around long enough for us to know exactly what it’s doing to our bodies long term. And for many women, we were given birth control as young teenagers to mask the symptoms we were presenting with, instead of having doctors actually look deeper and figure out why those symptoms were present, like they SHOULD have done.

Birth control helps some women. It can help with cramping and PCOS symptoms and endometriosis. But it’s not helping heal those things from the root. It’s still just a bandaid for those symptoms. And those conditions (in general) could be treated more holistically, with nutrition, movement, hormonal balancing, womb-specific body work, energetic/spiritual healing, ancestral healing, etc.

So birth control isn’t helping at the root level even for the women who tolerate it well. It’s just masking symptoms.

Also - reproductive freedom is available to us whenever we want to get to know our body’s cycles and learn to track them. It’s easier than ever before to learn this knowledge and implement it correctly. And if your cycle is not regular enough to track, then that’s an invitation to dive into some healing work, not an indication that you need a bandaid!

So back to birth control - questioning birth control is just smart. It’s not anti science to question science, especially in relation to the medical system which has a lot of issues with women’s healthcare. Some personal examples: I had the nexplanon implant for a year for birth control. I bled for a year. An un-ending period, for a year. When my doctor finally agreed to remove it I was so anemic that my iron levels were in the single digits.

Another one: I had the copper IUD as well. Copper IUDs work by causing inflammation. A side effect of inflammation is ovarian cysts. I got two of them and had surgery twice. The second surgery (when the IUD was finally removed) ended in the complete removal of my left ovary which has had long lasting (likely lifelong) implications on my health. I have not had an issue with cysts before or since then.

And another one: I was put on the pill as a teenager, like many women in my generation. The pill masked my missed periods and overtraining from running, as well as caused immense anxiety and depression - once I got off the pill and hormonal birth control, regulated my hormones and exercise, I’ve never had the same kind of mental imbalances or missed periods since.

These are personal stories, sure. But do a simple google search and you’ll find there are many more stories like mine. I also work with women and their wombs every day, and the stories I hear in my work are more similar to mine than not.

Another horrifying opinion I saw recently on social media was from a woman who said she was an obgyn who has not had a period in however many years (I don’t remember the number now) because she uses birth control to skip it. I have seen posts like this before, and they never fail to shock me. The period is a vital sign for women. The health of your period is a strong indication of how healthy your overall system is. And, a healthy woman is a fertile woman. Balanced hormones, healthy period, able to reproduce. Like it or not, the period and fertility are important indicators of health, and when we suppress the period we are suppressing the body’s signals as to its health. The reason this sentiment was so shocking to read on social media was because it came from a doctor. Someone who should be championing health was instead celebrating skipping out on one of the most important indicators of her body’s health. And if she’s doing that to herself, you can assume she’s recommending that same course of action to her patients.

It’s time to get rid of the outdated idea that the period is not necessary for women. As I was growing up and trying to figure out birth control, I heard over and over again that it’s not medically necessary for women to have periods.

Excuse me? That’s insane. Periods and the natural hormonal cycles that women go through each month are necessary for our health, our bone density, our fertility, our brain health, etc. Willfully suppressing the period is a symptom of how sick our society has become, believing that we can override our body’s natural signs and signals via science and medicine.

Let me be clear - I am grateful to modern medicine. It has saved my life before. If I am acutely ill, I am heading to a hospital. But being grateful to what modern medicine is good at does not equate to never questioning modern medicine.

As to if questioning birth control is anti-feminist? Well, it’s only anti-feminist if you’re anti-women’s choice in being able to decide what is healthy for their body. It’s only anti-feminist if you don’t think that women are smart enough to question what isn’t working, and if you think that women who question what isn’t working for many of us (look at the fertility issues we’re having as a society as an example. The generation of women who were put on birth control at a young age then struggle to conceive - that’s probably not a coincidence) are somehow less intelligent or well informed. Calling anyone who questions birth control anti-feminist or anti-science is lazy.

To wrap it all up, let’s come back to the idea of birth control as a bandaid. It’s a bandaid to what is really going on in the womb, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Women don’t need more medication thrust at them. We need more rites of passage, initiating us through the stages of our lives, with other women. We need more womb care, including hands on body work, spiritual womb work, ancestral healing practices, and self-touch/self-pleasure practices. We need to be in relationship with our womb every single day. A womb that is ignored and stagnant energetically is a womb that will hurt, struggling with periods and fertility. A womb that is acknowledged, loved, tended to, and cared for is a womb that will thrive. And a womb that is thriving means that the woman she belongs to is also thriving.

The womb is the epitome of what it means to be a woman. Woman = womban. The great gift of the feminine is the gift of the womb, the gift of creation. This is true whether you want children or not, so don’t disconnect from your womb just because you don’t want babies. Our society is unhealthy for many reasons, but one reason is because we keep ignoring the womb. We ignore her importance and health. Women are encouraged to be disconnected from their wombs (for example, hysterectomies. That’s a whole other post). If we want to birth a world that is healthier and more loving for our children, those here and those yet to be born, we have a responsibility to come back to relationship with the womb. No longer can we ignore her and suppress her via birth control.

Your body, your choice, always. But please, don’t fall for the lie that birth control is giving you freedom. It’s giving you a bandaid. True freedom comes from being in relationship with your body and your cycle. And the path to true freedom is harder than taking a pill, because it will require you to go on a healing journey. But if you want true freedom, you can’t ignore the call of the womb.