Remembering Birth Control

In the lecture this week, we talked a lot about the various options available to teen girls...and whether or not the show 16 & Pregnant framed each option as healthy, or available, or even at all...
There were a couple of things I overheard and wanted to point out. First, there was a discussion of who is responsible for birth control...as I was searching the internet this week I found this website that is supposed to inform, educate, and assist women in understanding their contraceptive options, remind them to take them, and give them the info that they need that they often miss...Take a look at how the website presents the information both about the forms of contraceptives, but also the services and products they offer to inform, remind, and educate women. Is it helpful? Check out who sponsors the website...does that surprise you?

Perhaps more interesting to me, when listening to this discussion, was that many students spoke up about how it was the woman's job to know about birth control, to prevent pregnancies...and how she should be strong enough to ask her doctor, to find contraceptives, and to ensure that she doesn't get pregnant again...This seems to put a lot of responsibility for prevention of pregnancy on just one person....the teenage girl.

But is she really the only one responsible? What about her partner, parents, doctors, friends, family, community? What if she has no insurance? What if her pharmacist refused to give her birth control? What if her doctor treats her like a child and doesn't sit her down to inform her? What if she doesn't understand her doctor, or nurse?

We have spoken a lot about how sexuality education in this country is a little bit lacking...and we have talked about how girls are often uninformed about pregnancy and contraceptives....can we really only blame the girl?

Choice...gender and abortion

Last week in class we had a lot of discussions surrounding what choice really means. In labs we split into "couples" and discussed what our choices would be should we be pregnant right now...and we talked about how other people's input might make a difference in how we thought about our choices.

One thing we mentioned, but didn't spend a lot of time on, was the impact of the woman's partner's idea of what the choices mean....this article is written by a man whose girlfriend and mother both made the choice to have an abortion, and his thoughts, experiences, and ideas about the abortions themselves as well as how men's voices should or can be a part of the debate about choice.

What do you think, after reading this article, about the role that men have in the debate over choice?
Do you think that he raises valid points?
Is abortion just a woman's issue, or is it a human issue?
Given what we know about the problems of masculinity and fatherhood, how much credence do we give to men in the choices of teen mothers?

Please remember to sign your name if you leave comments here...alternatively, if you would like to take this "home" to your blog to have a discussion for comment points, please let me know you chose to do that....
Marilyn