Don’t tell me it’s okay to have kids.

Rose Driscoll
Sep 5, 2018 · 2 min read

As of 2011, 43% of all pregnancies in the US were unplanned. And it wasn’t because people were like, “lol i’ll skip a condom to own the libs.” It was because it is difficult and expensive to prevent pregnancies.

Planning pregnancies is, in the US in 2018, a privilege afforded only to the well-educated and wealthy.

Chart from the Guttmacher Institute outlining that the poorer someone is, the less likely they will have adequate resources to plan pregnancies.

The average cost of an IUD is $1,111 before insurance. That’s 154 hours working at the federal minimum wage. A less expensive option, such as depo-provera, can cost $60 every three months. Under the ACA expansion, people are only reimbursed for birth control, which means that we still have to pay up front and trust that we won’t need that $60 for food or rent that month.

Doing even thirty seconds worth of research shows that the more reliable forms of birth control, the more expensive it is. Long acting reversible contraceptives like an IUD or implant, cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars up front. IUD insertion necessitates a day of bed rest, because it fucking hurts to have something shoved through your cervix. That’s a day of work that you have to miss.

And, even for a contraceptive method as unimposing as the pill, you need a prescription. This can entail as much red tape as waiting a month to see your doctor, missing an afternoon of work to go to the appointment (not all of us are writers who can work from home and at the hours we choose) paying for the appointment out of pocket, answering several questions and undergoing physical examinations that can open up past trauma and may (in the eyes of your physician) disqualify you for a more reliable birth control method.

“Well, why don’t you just use a condom?” The least of your problem is a male partners’ reluctance to purchase or use condoms. But one in seven people at risk for unplanned pregnancy have experienced birth control sabotage, including a partner who removes a condom without knowledge or consent during sex.

There are more obstacles to accessing birth control than those I’ve listed here. I’ve hurdled abuse from parents and partners to get birth control. Every uterus-haver or used-to-haver you know has had to listen to pastors and parents and talking heads and out-of-touch white male journos calling them sluts to get it. I encourage you to ask literally anyone you know whose body has or at one point had the capability to get babied, and ask them what challenges they’ve come across. I bet you’ll learn a lot.

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