Progress: As Seen In My Morning Routine

I wake up.

My room is a little bit messy.

I have learned that there is no need to berate myself for not folding my socks before they go into the drawer. Skipping laundry day does not make me a bad person.

I stumble into the bathroom wearing boxers and a star wars t-shirt.

I am not obligated to wear sexy lingerie and nightgowns to bed. I am not obligated to wear underwear designed for women. I am only obligated to wear what makes me feel comfortable.

I brush my teeth and wash my face and I DON’T weigh myself.

There is no scale in my bathroom. I have learned that my health is measured by how I feel, and my worth isn’t measured at all.

I rub styling paste into my short, boyish hair and stand it straight up.

My hair is not my crown of glory. My hair is not a symbol of my relationship with a deity. My hair does not hide the roundness of my face or accentuate my femininity. My hair is just hair. And it makes me feel free and powerful and I think its sexy as hell. And that’s all that matters.

I slap on a swatch of winged eyeliner.

I don’t care what it “says” about me. I just like how it makes my eyes look greener. It’s not for you. It’s for me.

I get dressed.

Dress pants from the men’s section of Banana republic. A flattening sports bra. A button up, tucked in. A grey cardigan. Wide, flat stud earrings. My clothes make me feel confident, and they reflect me very accurately. I am masculine and feminine rolled into one. I am me. I am different. And that’s okay.

I eat breakfast.

Fruit and toast with almond spread. I am a vegan. Respecting nature is important to me. This is a personal moral decision, and it doesn’t mean that I am foolish, or arrogant like I was taught. Living vegan makes me feel honest and compassionate, and that’s a good enough reason.

I kiss my Hunnie goodbye on my way out the door.

I’m off to work an 8 hour day. I bring home the bacon, and that doesn’t make me less of a woman any more than it makes him less of a man.

On the way to work, I call to make an appointment with my Doctor.

I’m getting a  hormonal birth control implant in my arm, because I don’t want to get pregnant. Not now, maybe never, and that’s okay. My value is not defined by my willingness or ability to give birth. My family is not defined by how many children we have.

Feminist, queer person, agnostic, vegan, student, nerd, employee, blogger, singer, activist; these labels fit me, but they don’t define me. I am Sarah, and I am more than the sum of my parts. I am free, and I am finally learning what it means to be happy.

Anti-Birth Control or Anti-Women?

During my engagement, my fiancé and I received a call from another young couple we knew. They had been married for about 5 years and already had 4 small children. I had mentioned in a previous conversation that I was considering some kind of IUD to prevent pregnancy for our first year of marriage, so I was not surprised when they revealed that they wanted to talk to us about birth control. “Any birth control besides a barrier method is basically an abortion” they told us. “We will come visit you tonight (it was a 15 hour drive) if you’re really serious about using BC, we feel that strongly about it.”

I took their passionate response as a sign from God: birth control is murder. They gave me the same argument I grew up hearing, but in more detail. If you haven’t heard the argument, it goes something like this: Birth control pills work by thinning the lining of the uterus. If your birth control fails to prevent ovulation (this happens in 2-10% of cases) and an egg becomes fertilized, the uterus will reject the egg, thus causing the “baby” to die and be expelled from the body. The argument continues by saying that millions of babies are murdered by birth control every year.

Some of you may have seen this video circulating on the Internet. It’s the one that claims birth control is responsible for adultery, homosexuality, divorce, murder, and a slew of other “evils.” I won’t even begin to address the dozens of lies and misleading statistics in the video. I just want to address the issue at the core of the anti-birth control. Namely, that birth control is murder.

  

Now, this whole position is ridiculous if you don’t believe that a zygote is a baby. Most people hear the anti-birth control argument and shrug it off. There are some, however, that believe life begins at conception. For those people, hormonal birth control seems to be completely out of the question. However, the anti-birth control crowd leaves out one very important fact: a woman’s body naturally rejects at least 18% of fertilized eggs. This means that if you have unprotected sex that leads to the fertilization of an egg (30% chance or successful fertilization), the resulting zygote has an 18% chance of being rejected by the uterus. The human body naturally performs “abortions” almost 20% of the time. So does taking birth control actually increase the chances of zygote abortion, or does birth control actually reduce the chances of this occurring? Let’s do the math.

Without Birth Control:

Out of 100 fertile women on birth control, 100 of them will ovulate in any given month.

Out of those 100 released eggs, 33 will become fertilized.

Out of those 33, 18% will be rejected by the uterus.

In a group of 100 women not on birth control: 6 zygotes will “die”

With Birth Control:

Out of 100 fertile women on birth control, around 6 of them will ovulate in any given month.

Out of those 6 released eggs, only 2 will become fertilized.

Out of those 2, 100% will be rejected by the uterus.

In a group of 100 women on birth control: 2 zygotes will “die”

So let’s get this straight, taking birth control makes a woman’s body LESS likely to dispel fertilized eggs. If you believe that life begins at conception, shouldn’t it be your moral duty to reduce the number of zygote “abortions?” If you believe that a zygote is a human, you actually kill more babies by refusing to take birth control.

How has such a massive flaw gone unnoticed all this time? Did anti-birth control advocates really just “miss” these obvious facts, or could it be that they like the result of this misconception? Denying women rights to their own reproduction is the oldest weapon in the war on women. Even if you believe that a zygote deserves the same rights as a full grown human, there is still no reason to oppose birth control other than to control women.

 I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of the “personhood” smokescreen. Let’s call the anti-birth control message by its real name: anti-woman.