Explaining Why I Wanted to Go on the Pill

BK shares how she advocated for her choice to start taking birth control pills to manage her menstrual periods. She researched different kinds of birth control and created a whole presentation for her mom. BK also addresses her doctor's efforts to combat the religious stigma around birth control as immoral.

Transcript

OBOS Today: So, do you want to tell me a little bit about your experience with the pill and going to the doctor and everything? 

BK: Sure! So, I've been going to the OB-GYN since I was little. And so it wasn't a huge deal and my mom and I had a pretty open relationship. So when it came to my period and my reproductive health, she was always pretty close with me on that. But when it came to the pill and asking to go on the pill, I was super nervous. And I didn't know how to ask her because there was a stigma around me, by me asking to go on the pill was me telling her that I want to have sex when that wasn't the reason um, that I originally went on the pill. 

I remember doing a lot of research, like looking up on the internet, watching YouTube videos of like different women talking about what the pill is, the different types of birth, of contraception that you can take, um, different types of birth control, talking about how it connects back to your body, knowing the side effects, and I created an entire PowerPoint about the pill so that when I asked my mom it would seem like I did my research and I knew what I was talking about, and when I sat her down and I asked her, hey can I go on the pill? I have this whole PowerPoint, blah, blah, blah, she just said yes. There was no -- I didn't have to go through the whole PowerPoint, I didn't have to explain all the research that I did, but I was worried because I remember hearing girls at school talking about how they were on the pill just for sex. 

And so, I was worried that's what my mom would think of me when that wasn't necessarily the case. And she actually told me that she had to go on the pill for the medical reasons that I went on, which was just that my period was irregular, and I had really bad acne. And so I went to the doctor to get on the pill, and he said to me like I know you go to Catholic school and they're gonna tell you it's wrong, they're gonna tell you that you're not supposed to be on the pill, you're, you're a sinner for being on the pill, things like that. Don't listen to that because you're on the pill for medical reasons and even if when you start having sex before marriage that's not a sin, you're not going to hell, please do not listen to anything that they're telling you because it's not true. And he really wanted to make sure that was super important that I knew before even starting to take the pill.