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Are you right about your choice of Contraception?

While celebrating the World Contraceptive Day (Sep 26) more than one popular News media misinforms Indian women on the most crucial issue concerning their Reproductive Health. In their article titled ‘ The Best Birth Control Options for Women above 35’ and ‘ Find out which Birth Control method is safe for you’ the media makes certain suggestions on the birth control options which underplays the effects of Artificial Birth Control on the physical, mental and overall well being of the individual and even the entire nation.

The Article seems to convince women of offering expert advice but fails to cover proven medical facts regarding different Artificial Birth Control (hereafter mentioned as ABC throughout this article) methods and its adverse side effects or even the painful past of Indian history in which ABCc were used as a weapon to attain eugenic goals . It would be a huge disappointment to expect values and practices like shared responsibility being recommended when it comes to the choice of Birth Control  in a relationship since the addressing of the article to “Women” shows how biased and hypocritical the position of the author is in this subject. After all why should men be bothered when it’s effortless to ‘use’ women and dump her so blaming would be easy (as often it happens in situations like unplanned pregnancy and stds) is the hint that reflects through this approach.

Let’s get this straight. None of the methods proposed by the above mentioned articles is proven to be 100% safe. And here’s certain facts that must’ve been mentioned in it’s seriousness since certain artificial contraceptives have been fatal. Women and men have died, suffered side effects and even society as a whole had suffered human rights violations ever since the introduction of ABCs.

Let’s talk about Side Effects

1. Side effects of Artificial Contraception on Individual Person

Whether it’s condoms, pills, IUDs, patches, tubal ligation or sterilization ABCs have profound disastrous effect in the physical, mental and relational aspects of people using them. The range of side effects for pills include dizziness, gall bladder disease, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, endometriosis, migraine, depression, changes in libido, bone loss, cancer, heart attack and several others. There’s indisputable findings on how contraceptive pills affects ‘mate selection’ or simply making bad decisions in choosing the wrong person. Emergency Contraception Pills/abortificients  like Morning After Pill and RU486 cause spontaneous early abortion rather than stopping conception which has much more severe effects on women’s body and mind. Also Pills are not 100% effective in avoiding pregnancy and in fact increases one’s vulnerability to sexually transmitted diseases.

The side effects for IUDs are similar to that of Pills but can be fatal   since inserting IUD is an intrusive procedure. Of course the most brutal effect of these include the intrauterine death of the child who is most of the time treated as trash rather than a living human person. Tubal ligation on the other hand has side effects like ectopic pregnancy, hormonal imbalance and irreversible in most cases. it’s neither proven effective to avoid pregnancy nor safe against stds.  Condoms on the other hand cause rashes, irritation and allergy.

2. Effects of Artificial Contraception on Society 

When people tried to gain Mahatma Gandhi’s support for ABC from outside and within India, Gandhi was firm and unapologetic in his denial of support claiming that ABC’s leads to disintegration of the morals in family and larger society.  Broken relationships due to infidelity, increased premarital sex, fatherlessness, single mother household, using abortion to hide unplanned pregnancy are some of the unconfessed societal effects of ABCs. The most important one would be the use of these ABCs as mechanisms to achieve eugenic goals systematically erasing a race from the face of the earth. How can we forget millions of men and women forced to death in sterilization camps to achieve international AID? More than 78,000 men were sterilized in one such attempts in just 2 months in India in 1970’s. Did they give consent? What’s the impact when choice becomes duty and duty is forced? ABCs have robbed certain societies of it’s cultural values and morale which are the fundamental tenets of a healthy nation.

3. Effects of Artificial Contraception on Ecology

Various studies from west has shown the significant effect of pills and condoms in the destruction of the environment. Condoms are made of rubbers and its often forgotten how the waste is treated and disposed since rubber takes years to decompose. Pills on the other hand both which are flushed in sewage as well as through drains emptied in river by factories manufacturing them drastically alters the entire ecosystem. Considering the major pharmaceuticals in India which manufactures and exports Birth control pills we can imagine the impact of the chemicals in our soil.

Painful Past

Most of us do not know how a fundamentally flawed “Khanna Study” done in remote village in Punjab sponsored by the Rockefeller USA in 1950’s and the infamous “Ernakulam Experiment” in which Indians were used as human subjects for the experiment of Birth Control Pills and Population Control Mechanisms are a part of long forgotten imperialism of post 1947. We weren’t given a choice, we were in fact forced to accept a solution to a non existing problem. ‘Population Management’ thus became ‘Population Control’ legitimizing the use of force and violence to attain specific goals that few of them thought is what independent India required.

While making the important decision about the choice of Birth Control one has to be aware of not just the side effects on one’s own physical health but also consider with the serious responsibility the effects of the same on the partner’s overall well being. After all aren’t we responsible for one another? If this sense of responsibility becomes absent we eventually tend to “Use” each other for selfish purpose and “using” leads to exploitation which is indeed what we find as end result of sexual revolution or in the case where sex is used as sport. It’s time to revisit the troubled and manipulated history of Artificial Contraception especially in India since it has trampled individual rights and personal choice of millions of Indians under the false pretext of sexual liberation and planned parenthood.

Perfect Contraceptive?

A perfect Contraceptive method would be the one which is 100% safe for the individual, family, society and the nation. one which does not let the partner be ‘used’ or ‘degraded’ by the other, which is 100% effective in planning the family according to one’s available resources, which takes into account the aspect of ‘Dignity’ of the human person and fosters respect and trust rather than distrust and exploitation. Now it’s up to us to accept the challenge of identifying the contraceptive that would keep the marriage, family and the nation healthy.