There are a number of effective birth control methods available to women to control our own bodies without ever interacting with a physician or health provider.  The medical profession prefers the use of drugs and devices to control our fertility, because these are the methods they dispense and oversee.  The foundations set up by wealthy eugenicists, usually white, people like to fund agencies and health providers who dispense drugs and devices to young and poor women because they prefer birth control methods that are under a medical provider’s control.

To encourage women to use the pill, the Intrauterine Device or other combinations of drugs and devices, the device and drug manufacturers lie with statistics by quoting the theoretical effectiveness rate to doctors and nurse-practitioners.  This rate represents the likelihood of becoming pregnant when using the method properly.  They then cite the use effectiveness of the woman-controlled methods, such as barrier methods, spermacides or natural family planning in actual use.  When the methods are compared using the same measure of effectiveness, they are very close.

Besides being in the control of the physician, drugs and devices are not as safe as the methods of birth control that we can obtain over-the-counter.  Here again, the drug and device manufacturers lie with statistics by comparing the risk of complications, including death, from drugs and devices, to the risk of complications and deaths in giving birth.  Birth is dangerous, so almost any method of birth control is far safer than birth.  But, they do not directly compare the safety of drugs and devices to the alternative methods.

Women-controlled methods do involve looking at and touching our own bodies and those of our lovers.  Learning self-examination with a speculum can profoundly change one’s feelings about our genitals.  Viewing our healthy vulva and cervix can turn distaste into comfortable acceptance, even admiration, and make the “messiness” of using the spermicide or the awkwardness of getting our partner to use a condom seem preferable to having to remember to take the pill every day at the same time or the natural resentment at being expected to assume all the responsibility of avoiding pregnancy.