File this under the “obnoxiously insensitive” category.
The L.A. Times published an article yesterday in which the author claimed that the majority of unintended pregnancies are not accidents.
Before I go into why I find this incorrect, let’s go over her reasoning. She says that most women get pregnant because they are not using contraception, or not using it properly. She also includes this lovely quote:
“It doesn’t seem to make sense that women who don’t want to get pregnant wouldn’t use a form of birth control,” says Dr. Mary Nettleman, chair of the department of medicine at Michigan State University and a women’s health researcher. “But women are making decisions that seem logical to them at the time.”
Therefore, she reasons, the term accident does not apply. Essentially because these unintended pregnancies didn’t occur because a condom broke, or a birth control pill wasn’t taken at 10 AM every day on the dot.
I apologize in advance about how harsh I am going to be on this article. But I have to comment on how uninformed this is. It is true that many unintended pregnancies are a result of misuse of contraceptives, or not using them at all. But how, I have to ask, does this make these pregnancies not accidents? Think about it – what is the reason that people don’t use contraception properly? Because they don’t know how. Or they are not educated about the risks. Or they aren’t confident enough in themselves to say no to a partner pressuring them to have unprotected sex.
So, I ask, does it really not make sense that women aren’t using contraception even if they aren’t intending to get pregnant? Think about all of the teenagers who have not received proper sex education and have no idea what they’re doing; about all of the women who are having an extremely hectic week and don’t realize that they have missed a pill. As a college student, I can attest to the fact that this happens ALL OF THE TIME. These things are accidents. Most people do not intend to miss a pill. Nor do they intend to put themselves in a situation where there is a high risk of them getting pregnant.
It feels extremely insensitive to me for the author of this article to be claiming that the word accident does not apply to these types of unintended pregnancies. I have not personally experienced an unintended pregnancy, but I certainly know how precarious sexual situations can be, and to have someone tell me that I was being intentionally irresponsible would be very hurtful.
I will end by saying that the author does make a few valid points. She mentions that there are a number of reasons that women do not use birth control effectively, including accessibility issues like expensive costs (she limits this to hormonal birth control, however, which is not the only contraceptive/birth control method that has these issues)/ She mentions an ‘expert’ saying that “telling women to straighten up and fly right” will not be effective. But she prefaces the article by saying that the term accident is used too loosely, and that when her son breaks a window with a soccer ball, it is not one. And neither, apparently, are unintended pregnancies. Reading this article, I felt attacked, like every time I missed a pill I was asking to get pregnant. Which makes me extremely uncomfortable, and in my opinion is unfair.
But maybe I’m alone in that.
Thoughts?