Birth Control is a topic that is always coming up whether it be in classes, dinner conversations, or politics. However, it seems more and more the topic of birth control is making it's way into churches which is leading to a lot of misconceptions about the pill.

As someone who grew up Catholic, I was always old that birth control was bad and going against God's Will, but at the age of 14 I was faced with a very difficult choice. I was hospitalized with cysts 4 times the size of my ovary and was leading to excruciating pain. The doctor told me that the best way to prevent them from coming back, as they usually do, and to prevent endometriosis from progressing even more was to take birth control everyday for years, no ovulating meant no cysts. As a leader of the teen program in my church I was told to not tell anyone because I would be severely judged. This hurt me in so many ways because I could not understand why I was going to be judged for taking a medicine that allowed me to have a somewhat normal life instead of one full of cysts, pain, vomiting, and hospital visits.

With Christianity's new wave, many people are getting back into church and are more active than ever which is awesome. Anything that helps make someone a better person should be something we aspire to be a part of, however I want the idea of birth control to stop being such a taboo topic. There are so many young girls out there who have to take this medicine and deal with the horrible side effects even before they begin to think about sex, but we give this reputation to all girls on birth control that they are sexually active and I believe this comes from such a strong urge for all religions to have their members live pure lives, I believe there is nothing wrong with wanting to live a pure live if that is your choice, but we cannot just assume someone on birth control is using it for sexual reason. And if they are, then that is not our place to judge. Doctors are actually recommending women go on birth control for at least 3 years out of their life to help prevent certain types of cancer.

We as a society need to change the stigma we have on birth control because more times than not women will go on birth control at someone point in their life. It can help prevent cysts, and the slow down the growth of endometriosis, a reproductive disease that 1 in 10 women have, yet we know so little about because so many women see the treatments and the medicines are something too shameful or invasive to talk about. Religion needs to be a safe space for us to be able to be our true selves and lay down all our fears and thoughts, but we cannot truly do that if we feel like we will be judged for doing so.