Content note: Everyone deserves to make their own reproductive decisions, including what kind of birth control to use, without being subjected to coercion or pressure as this storyteller experienced. We urge reproductive health care providers to ensure that this topic is incorporated into conversations with patients when providing counseling on birth control methods.
The first time I made an appointment at Planned Parenthood, I was eighteen years old.
I had started seeing someone almost immediately during my first quarter of freshman year at college. We met in a flurry of college parties, beer pong cups, and new faces, both of us enjoying the newness of getting swept up in everything. Every single aspect of college was remarkably fresh. I found liberation in living away from home, in not having to answer to my parents any longer, and even in the cramped quarters of the dorm.
I had two sexual partners before college, one of them having been my long-time high school ex-boyfriend, and the other a minor hookup the summer before college, so my knowledge and experiences were still very limited in scope.
Growing up, the only sex talk I’d ever had with my mother was her telling me not to get pregnant. The closest I’d ever gotten to a sex talk with my dad was when he told me I wasn’t allowed to date, indefinitely. So, when the topic of protection came up with my high school boyfriend, condoms were the preferred method of protection because frankly, it was the only method I really knew about or had experience in. After all, condoms were the only kind of protection discussed in the subpar sexual education I had received in middle school.
As the months went on and more opportunities arose to slip away with my newfound boyfriend to revel in my exciting newfound sex life, my boyfriend began mentioning what a nuisance condoms were. It started slowly with comments like “Where’d they go?” as he rummaged around his nightstand or whispers in my ear that “it’d feel so much better without the condom.” One day, he asked if we could try sex without the condom. “Just once, just to see how it feels. I promise it’ll be better and I’ll pull out.” I figured once wouldn’t hurt. It felt different, but I liked it. And more than the physical aspect, I liked that I made him feel good.
Over time, our condom usage began to wane. I no longer fought the idea that sex without a condom felt better. The more he told me it felt better without them, that it was nicer to feel closer to me, the less we began to rely on them. I didn’t want to make sex less pleasurable for him. After all, I had no idea what burden they caused.
One night, as I lay on his chest, he asked if I had ever considered going on birth control. It’s easy, he said. Just take one pill a day and we can have sex without condoms all the time. It seemed so painless and effortless. I wanted to make him happy, so I agreed to look into it.
A few weeks later, I nervously sat by myself in the busy waiting room of Santa Monica’s Planned Parenthood location. I was surrounded by all kinds of people—families, couples, women who were expecting, young women (potentially teenagers) who were also alone like me. When the nurse called my name, I followed her to one of the patient rooms. After the slew of standard questions about my health, family history, and sex life, I walked out of the Planned Parenthood with a bag of pills with instructions to take one from the pack per day. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it was almost too easy. There were no tests to determine the best birth control pills for me out of all the brands, no questions about preference, no explanations of the distinctions between each of the ingredients or how they really worked to prevent pregnancy.
From that moment on, I’ve been on birth control, and it all started with a boy. Not a doctor, not a friend, not my parents. Just a boy, his question, and my misplaced desire to please.
