Social Media’s Beef with Hormonal Contraceptives

Have you really considered the alternatives?

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My great-grandmother had eleven kids. Twelve, actually. One, little Arthur, died a few days after he was born. Twelve kids in less than twenty years. My grandfather was her first born. Growing up, the image he had of his mother was that of a permanently pregnant woman. After ten pregnancies and as many births, some of which were less than one year apart, the doctor started to warn my great-grandmother that it was time to stop having children. The toll it was taking on her body was too great and the risks of developmental issues in the children too high. Her last two kids both had type one diabetes, her second-to-last developed life-threatening bone cancer at age seventeen, which he survived, but would leave him permanently disabled.

My great-grandmother had had no choice in the matter. Married young, already pregnant, her life had been one of constant submission to her husband and the forces of nature. Condoms already existed in the nineteen forties, but most people had not heard of them and those who had, usually ex-military men, were not always prepared to go through the embarrassment of asking after them at their local pharmacy. There was no hormonal birth control. All other methods, if a couple was even willing to attempt them, like or the…