Laura Eldridge - In Our Control: The Complete Guide to Contraceptive Choices for Women

Copyright 2010 by Laura Eldridge

A Seven Stories Press First Edition

This book is not intended to replace the services of a physician. Any application of the recommendations set forth in the following pages is at the readers discretion. The reader should consult with her own physician concerning the recommendations in this book.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Eldridge, Laura.
In our control : the complete guide to contraceptive choices for women / Laura
Eldridge.Seven stories press 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-60980-241-7
1. ContraceptivesPopular works. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Contraception. 2. Contraceptive Agents, Female. 3. Contraceptive Devices,
Female. 4. Womens Health. WP 630 E37i 2010]
RG 137. E 43 2010
613.943dc22
2009037886

v3.1

To Barbara Seaman (19352008)
A true heroine, a great activist, a fearless writer, a generous guide,
a wonderful teacher, and an even better friend.

When it comes to birth control, I fear Im like an ostrichI long ago stuck my head in the sand. Youd think I would have faced up to it by now. Im a feminist who was raised on Our Bodies, Ourselves. Im thirty-nine, I have two kids, and I dont think I want more. I live with my second sons father and have sex a few times a week. All that is good.

The problem is I have always been intimidated by my birth control options. Thus, I have often avoided using anything to prevent pregnancy. In the two decades in which Ive had sex, I spent six years with two girlfriends. During the other fourteen years with men, I was often frustrated with erection-deflating condoms, scary IUDs, and the nausea-inducing birth control pill. Sometimes I look at the array of birth control devices available and think, Hand me my rabbit pearl. Im not alone in wondering if masturbation beats sex, all things considered. All of my straight female friends fantasize about better birth control. My friend Christine used to fetishize the shot (Depo-Provera)Three times a year! You get it and forget it!but then she learned that the side effects were atrocious and, further bummer, Depo often didnt work. Many have dreamed a nasty feminist dream about a male pill, but few of those women would trust a guy to take it. My sister uses condoms, but she claims its because she rarely has intercourse. Why take a pill all month for that one time youre going to have sex? she asks. I wish I were kidding.

To be honest, I never found a contraceptive method that satisfied my contraceptive and sexual needs, and I never found a feminist guide that inspired me to make that search a priority. Until now.

Laura Eldridge is young, savvy, and smart. She worked intimately for most of the past decade with Barbara Seaman, the pioneering womens health activist. Seaman (who married into her last name but knew it was perfect for a health journalist writing about birth control) was a thirty-something mother of three in 1968 when she discovered, via her column at Ladies Home Journal, that women were suffering terrible, often fatal, side effects to the original high-dose Pill. Several pathbreaking books (including The Doctors Case Against the Pill) and campaigns against drug companies later, Barbara succeeded in getting birth control pills to carry warning labels and making the Federal Drug Administration accept input from patients as part of the drugs regulation. She came into my life when she swept into the offices of Ms. magazine. Within months of meeting her, I was off the Pill. In Our Control makes me see that my ceasing to take the Pill isnt where I should stopits just the beginning of figuring out how to find birth control that works for me.

The trouble with most advice out there for women and girls about preventing pregnancy and STIs is that the experts never give the full picture, and they dont take into consideration the unique situation every unique woman is in. Contraception is not a one-size-fits-all scenario. It is about options. There are many, and they all have their triumphs and caveats, and each woman needs to figure out what works best for her in her current sexual life. The message of In Our Control is an important one: there is an option out there for you, and your best option might change throughout your life. This book sets out to keep women in control of their sexual health by equipping them with all the information they need and trusting them to make their own decisions.

Yet, In Our Control does more than just offer a survey of contraceptive choices. It brings us into the fascinating history behind this hot topic. Laura Eldridge traces the historical and political roots and ramifications of birth control development, noting how times of social power for women are often met by hostility to birth control, and how middle class and rich women were always able to buy secrecy around their reproductive mishaps. Besides providing a cogent overview of everything from fertility awareness to female condoms, she analyzes why birth control is such a sticky wicket. Is the Pill liberating for womenor dangerous? Are condoms the least effective form of birth controlor the best, given that they also prevent the spread of STIs? Eldridge stays away from either/or prescriptions, concluding, If you arent happy with your birth control, there is no reason not to try another method. And with this book, you can figure out how to best do that, armed with health information and political context.

I realized after reading In Our Control that there was a lot I didnt know. We have more alternatives than I was aware of, for instance, and birth control options that may be annoying in some ways are powerful in others. Most of all, I learned that contraception does not have to be a damper on your sex life. With Eldridges astute work in hand, I might just get my head out of the sand and face the facts of life.

Three years ago, at twenty-seven, I ended my long-term relationship with the Pill. I had used it off and on for about nine years. Things hadnt been good for a long time, and I had desperately been looking for a way to leave, but felt trapped. It turned out the answer Id been looking for was there all along.

I first went on the Pill when I was eighteen. I had been in a relationship for almost a year and was thinking about having sex. Of course I planned to use condoms as well, but I was heading off to college in New York City in the fall and didnt want to jeopardize my future in any way. A good child of the 1990s, I had sat through tons of sexual education classes. They all conveyed the same message: birth control pills were the way to go. I also knew what my friends were saying, what the girls who had become sexually active before me whispered over French fries in the cafeteria of my small Utah Catholic high school. The only way to be really safe, pregnancy-wise, was to take matters into your own hands.