Using Birth Control as a Trans or Nonbinary Person

Suzannah Weiss, a certified sex educator and sex/love coach, offers facts and advice for trans and nonbinary people about using birth control.

• Know that there are resources that aid trans and nonbinary people in finding providers that are respectful of gender identity and understand our needs.
• For those who may experience gender dysphoria, birth control can be used to control menstruation.
• Hormone therapy won’t prevent pregnancy; birth control is still necessary.
• If on birth control and hormone therapy, it is important to speak with a doctor as birth control may affect hormone therapy.
• If concerned about hormonal birth control that contains estrogen, there are other options, such as condoms and copper IUDs.
• Birth control is not hormone therapy; the estrogen found in birth control is different than that prescribed for trans women.
• Support is available if birth control triggers dysphoria and other emotions.

The article expands on these points with in-depth medical insight and advice from Dr. Jennifer Clair Villavicencio, MD and Simon Adriane Ellis, a nurse practitioner and midwife, on using birth control as a trans or nonbinary person.

We have all the reproductive choices that are available to any other person. Although there is a rich and terrible history of reproductive coercion against trans and nonbinary people, we are the ones who should be in charge of our own futures and reproductive life plans.

SOURCE: Teen Vogue • AUTHOR: Suzannah Weiss • LAST UPDATED: May 1, 2019