Beep if you like birth control
I've just been watching Choices of the Heart: the Margaret Sanger Story, a DVD I bought quite a while ago for about £1.25. Looking at the cover, after I paid for it, I admitted to myself that I had probably bought a "Lifetime Movie of the Week" rather than a hard hitting look at a woman's fight for the right to choose when and how many children she had. And, mostly, I was right. But despite that, this is a film well worth watching, because, like Vera Drake, which is also very good, it shows someone doing what she believes is right in face of the laws of the country.
Margaret Sanger, for those who haven't seen this oeuvre, is the woman who founded Planned Parenthood in the US, during WWI, at a time when diseminating information about sex - even for health reasons - was illegal, and suggesting that women might benefit from having fewer children was considered by many to be heresy. And, even from this cut down version of her struggle, it is clear that she had to sacrifice a lot, particularly time with the children she already had, to ensure that, in the future, which is to say now, fewer women would die from childbirth and botched abortions. And obviously that such an obvious choice had to - and still has to - be fought for is a shame, but that she fought, that is a good thing.
And it is also true that birth control, both the pill and earlier methods, allow people like me to do things she probably wouldn't have approved of - heck, things I don't think my grandma approves of - like living in "sin", but she also helped make life better for millions of women who weren't - for whatever reason - up to having a third child, let alone a thirteenth.
It is a shame, therefore, that this sacrifice has, even in the USA, not had the impact it deserves to have. As it stands the cultural practices and laws of many countries still mean that the person in control of a women's body is not that woman, and I'm all for multicultural tolerance, but that, to me, means listening to the whole population, rather than the most vocal part of it.
Today, therefore, I'm celebrating the fact that I'm on birth control, and taking a moment to look past the hormones that mess with my moods and the other crapiosity, to remember why I made that choice in the first place, and all the reasons it makes me happy. I am glad that I have this choice, and the freedom to talk about it on the internet, and feel, once more, inspired to do something positive with my life, something which the doldrums of job hunting had all but knocked out of me.
Margaret Sanger, for those who haven't seen this oeuvre, is the woman who founded Planned Parenthood in the US, during WWI, at a time when diseminating information about sex - even for health reasons - was illegal, and suggesting that women might benefit from having fewer children was considered by many to be heresy. And, even from this cut down version of her struggle, it is clear that she had to sacrifice a lot, particularly time with the children she already had, to ensure that, in the future, which is to say now, fewer women would die from childbirth and botched abortions. And obviously that such an obvious choice had to - and still has to - be fought for is a shame, but that she fought, that is a good thing.
And it is also true that birth control, both the pill and earlier methods, allow people like me to do things she probably wouldn't have approved of - heck, things I don't think my grandma approves of - like living in "sin", but she also helped make life better for millions of women who weren't - for whatever reason - up to having a third child, let alone a thirteenth.
It is a shame, therefore, that this sacrifice has, even in the USA, not had the impact it deserves to have. As it stands the cultural practices and laws of many countries still mean that the person in control of a women's body is not that woman, and I'm all for multicultural tolerance, but that, to me, means listening to the whole population, rather than the most vocal part of it.
Today, therefore, I'm celebrating the fact that I'm on birth control, and taking a moment to look past the hormones that mess with my moods and the other crapiosity, to remember why I made that choice in the first place, and all the reasons it makes me happy. I am glad that I have this choice, and the freedom to talk about it on the internet, and feel, once more, inspired to do something positive with my life, something which the doldrums of job hunting had all but knocked out of me.