Birth Control

I have never been on birth control.  This maybe an over share for many people but I have mixed feelings about it.  I am by no means against birth control methods at all!  I should have paid more attention to them when I was 21. (sidenote: I say that but could not even imagine who I would be or how life would be without Parker, but still, I should have been smarter).  I think that it is extremely important to teach adolescents about all the different forms out there, whether they are sexually active or not.  I think that teaching abstinence is important but not the only form of sex education.  I think that all young people, regardless of private or public education has the right to know how their bodies work and how the opposite sex works as well.  I was in 4th grade when we started sex ed.  They divided the girls and the boys to minimize the embarrassment that goes along with learning about reproduction.  We learned all about our uteri, fallopian tubes, ovaries, and vaginas.  It was tough because I hadn't started my period yet, I was deathly afraid of puberty and I didn't want to know what was going to happen because I just simply didn't want to grow into a woman yet.  The next year, separately, we learned about the male reproductive system, the actual act of intercourse and the stages of fetal development.  The last year of grade school, collectively we watched The Miracle of Life that had a live birth at the end of it.  That year we learned about contraceptives, their use and STD prevention.  It was later once I was in high school that we learned about contraceptives in detail.  With all of this knowledge, I still never made the decision to be sexually active and on birth control.  There was and is a fear there about what it is doing to a woman's body.  I know that it is safe and can't imagine what the world would be like if Margaret Sanger hadn't started the birth control fight.  I understand the fight and sacrifice that she made to bring birth control to working women who didn't have control over their sexual life....the women that bore children that they didn't want to mother.  But changing the way that my body works hormonally scares me.  I know that there are benefits like less acne, lighter periods, and if I go on I will sound like a commercial.....but it is altering that way that I know my body works.  Since I became pregnant without knowing....without realizing that I had missed a period, I have learned to listen to my body better.  I know my body and changing what I know brings fear.  There is joy as well though....an extra insurance that reduces that possibility of pregnancy is fine by me.  Even saying that I am reminded of all the women I know who have become pregnant while taking birth control so I am looped back to my original thought....should we hormonally change the way our bodies work or listen to our bodies.  Obviously we can't know everything about our bodies with out very expensive research into how often we (individually) ovulate, if both ovaries work in the same month, opposite or even do they skip a month.....is it really independence we are gaining or is it a separation of our brains and our bodies working together or rather....is it a separation from ourselves and our nature.