It's pretty much a cliche. A friend of mine even has a joke about it. A girl who tells you she got pregnant on birth control is a liar. Because she was never on birth control.
Only, sometimes, she's not. I'm not.
I got pregnant on birth control. Twice.
The birth control pill is not foolproof. For all the things written about how the sexual revolution would never have occurred without access to easy contraceptive methods, I think it's high time that it's acknowledged that the birth control pill is not a goddamn silver bullet.
For starters, you have to take the pill every day, at the same time, to get those 95% effective rates. I suspect that's probably the source of the joke: telling a guy you're on the pill but neglecting to mention that you've forgotten to take it for the last three days.
However, the other issue is exactly what the pill does. The pill is not a condom or a spermicide or a diaphragm or an IUD. It does not physically prevent sperm from entering your uterus and possibly meeting a nice egg that it would be nice to settle down with. The pill messes with a woman's hormones, tricking the body into thinking that the woman is already pregnant, thus preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus and becoming a pregnancy.
Sidenote: this is the reason for Catholic condemnation of birth control. Morally speaking, the Church holds that a fertilized egg is life, since it contains all the genetic material. Stopping the egg from implanting in the uterus, thus causing the "life" that is the fertilized egg to be discarded, is tantamount to murder. While I find this position untenable in terms of actual living, it is a morally principled and logically sound position.
But it's universally acknowledged that most biology is not exact. Particularly when it comes to biochemistry, there is massive and statistically significant variation across the population. So trying to artificially alter that biochemistry is going to be a hit-and-miss proposition. Think anti-depressants: they don't work the same for everyone. Not even close.
Birth control pills are not much different.
I happen to be one of those people who's hormones fall waaaaay outside the norm. I should have known this, considering all the trouble I had getting through puberty and the ways in which my reproductive system still decides to punish me every month.
But I was a teenager and I bought into everything.
And I got pregnant at the ripe old age of 18. While I was on birth control. I had an abortion. And for those of you keeping score at home, my Catholic upbringing still asserts itself over that decision. I still sometimes cry for no particular reason and then realize I'm still processing a lifetime's worth of guilt and shame over having killed someone. But I do not doubt that it was the right decision, regardless. If I'd had that child, I'd still be married to an unmedicated, obsessive-compulsive control freak that liked to tell me I was worthless, didn't like me leaving the house, and had a penchant for trying to kill me. And there'd be a child in the household to worry about.
So, good decision. Even if it kills me now and again.
I put that experience out of my head. I told myself that I must not have been vigilant enough about taking my pill at exactly the same time every day. I set up a system with alarms and carrying extra packs of pills in all my purses and all manner of elaborate schema to ensure that it didn't happen again.
Well, I've got a two-and-a-half-year-old, so obviously that didn't work out as intended.
I love my daughter. I love her fiercely, dearly and unconditionally. But she was an accident, and I do wonder what my life would look like right now if I'd had the emotional wherewithal to go through a second abortion. Looking back, I think that her father wanted that, which may explain his current absence from our lives. No matter. No one should be forced to have a child they don't want, and men aren't an exception to that.
But these days, I put no stock in the pill. I don't even take it. I don't want to risk the temptation to fall back into the idea that I'm immune from pregnancy because I've got a silver bullet called Orthrotricyclen or Seasonique or what-have-you. Because obviously, it doesn't work for me.
