But instead, I want to blog about a billboard I saw on my way to work today. It features a girl looking at a guy and smiling with the words "I've fallen for him. Now what?" and the address beforeplay.org. I was intrigued, so I went to the site. It's run by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the Colorado Initiative to Reduce Unintended Pregnancy. And it's allllll about your choices in birth control! Yay!!! Finally, something that will tell me about birth control! Lord knows there is just not enough information out there.
One of the things that irritated me the most was this about us:
"Beforeplay.org is the hub for a Colorado statewide effort to reduce unintended pregnancy and help “normalize” conversation around sexual health and well being. About 40% of Colorado pregnancies are unintended, and the rate is even higher among young adults in their twenties. Poor knowledge about effective contraception or how to use it, jobs without health insurance, and ambivalence toward starting a family—If it happens, it happens—all contribute to this situation."
Um. What? I don't really think that "if it happens, it happens" is ambivalence. I mean, in my daily life, I call that "being open to life." But maybe I need to go to confession, I don't know. And I also don't think that a pregnancy that occurs when you have that attitude would really be "unintended" now would it? But then maybe I just have poor knowledge about contraception.
I feel unsettled by this and I think the Holy Spirit is prompting it. I mean, come on, they list FAM as "less effective" right up there with the withdrawl method. Really? Should they even list that as a method?? Because that's less of a method than a superstition. I did write them an email, but maybe we can "spam" them.
Small miracle there's not a bunch of information about how awesome abortions are.
That is extremely unsettling! "I've fallen for him. Now what?" I can't begin to describe why that is so frustrating (sure I can: belittling love to being a pre-cursor for sexual encounters, making the girl sound completely clueless, making orgs like "Before Play" seem omnipotent, grrrr)
ReplyDeleteGreat write up! I guess it is good that they don't focus on abortions, but even my non-math mind knows that the contraception margin of error grows exponentially with each act of intercourse. Get with it, people. You're setting yourself up!
Did you watch the "sucess stories" videos? They were kinda awkward and for the FAM they don't promote "let your man chart"!
ReplyDeleteI had never seen what some of the forms of BC looked like. Man that IUD and Implant isn't very appealing. I was reading about them and thinking, "You want to put that where?!!?"
I was actually just reading this post about someone that basically got married at age 19 b/c they wanted to have sex and sex before marriage wasn't done and so they got married got the "sex" out of their system and were like "now what" so obviously they weren't "in love" ugh this stuff is driving me crazy!