Power to Decide Staff Shares How Reproductive Choices Affected Their Lives
Being able to make your own decisions when it comes to your sexual and reproductive health (SRH) journey allows you to explore opportunities and live your life as you see fit. Access to reliable SRH information, birth control, abortion services, and more is the reason why so many people can take control of their lives and make the best decisions for themselves.
As part of Ms. Magazine’s ‘The Life I Built’ campaign, some members of the Power to Decide team shared how access to reproductive choices affected their experience and lives:
Cat
My grandmother Ruth wasn't who I expected to teach me about reproductive rights. As my career began, she was scandalized, convinced birth control "pushed teenagers to have sex." Then one day: "So what you're saying is that if I didn't want 7 kids, I shouldn't have had to?"
By 1963, Ruth had 7 live births and multiple miscarriages. After her 6th and 7th, she begged her doctor to tie her tubes. He refused. Mapping my aunts' and uncles' birth years, the gaps are clearly when she miscarried. Two years later, the Supreme Court ruled married couples had a right to contraception. Until then, her adult life was pregnancy and postpartum, on repeat.
She died June 27, 2022, three days after Roe fell. She was also a nurse, a gardener, a painter, a woman who loved deeply. I don't know what Ruth would have chosen. Maybe seven kids, maybe two and more time in the garden. We'll never know, because it wasn't her choice. Mine is. That's the life reproductive access built. The least I owe her.
Chelsey
I was able to take the morning-after pill after an assault; to take birth control and get an abortion when I didn’t want to be pregnant; and to get pregnant when it was the right time for me. This access meant I have been in control of my destiny and have had the education, career, family, and community I’ve dreamed of. Without this access, none of it would have been possible.
Emma
I started using birth control as a teenager, long before I had the chance to fully grow into myself. Avoiding pregnancy when I was younger by using birth control gave me many opportunities — an education, a meaningful career, and most importantly, the chance to understand and embrace my identity as a queer woman. Birth control gave me the freedom to step into my beautiful queer life, and then assisted reproduction gave me the chance to build a family with the love of my life. When we were ready to become parents, I was able to get pregnant through IUI.
Access to a wide range of reproductive health services meant I could build a family that felt unattainable to me as a young queer person--one filled with more joy than I could dream up.
Monica
Access to reproductive choices, including low cost/no cost sexual and reproductive health care, allowed me to make a conscious decision about if, when, and under what circumstances I may want to have children. Because of access to contraception, annual visits, and other reproductive care, I was able to go through college, law school, and build the career and life I want on my own terms.
Maria
Growing up attending catholic school, birth control, reproductive and sexual health, and bodily autonomy weren’t taught or talked about. So, when it came to learning about not only my options, but also the importance of taking care of my health and pleasure, it was a long and frustrating road. I felt like I was behind on all the information I needed to know to make the best decisions for myself and my future. Because of access to contraception (in my case, an IUD), I was able to go to work as a journalist, attend grad school, work on research in the sexual health field, focus on my career, and continue to focus on spreading factual and reliable information so others don’t feel like they are alone in their own education journey.
Find more information on the full range of birth control methods or locate a provider on Bedsider, and find abortion resources on AbortionFinder. And, if you want to continue supporting organizations working to create reproductive well-being and access for all, learn how you can support Power to Decide.
Everyone’s story is different, and we want to hear all of them. To share what access to SRH health care has done for you, visit Ms. Magazine.
