[ExI] abandon all services

[Amara Graps]

Spike:
>Birth control pills were introduced in Italy in 1964.  Clearly they are
>popular with the locals.

Bzzzzt! No. (At least not in my former part of the world.)

Amara

(pasting an old message)


------- May 6, 2006

To: wta-talk at transhumanism.org
From: Amara Graps <amara at amara.com>
Subject: [wta-talk] abortion cannot be ignored


sky marsen sky_marsen at yahoo.com :
>Contraceptives muck up your hormones (as do pregnancies),

thanks for your good message, it was needed. Focusing on only
the above sentence -

In the 'mucking', contraceptives can help in the way you want, but you
have to find a doctor who is willing to prescribe the contraceptive you
need and who understands _how_ it can muck up the hormone system,
because the effect is obviously huge (as is a pregnancy, as you point
out).

I had a gloriously good contraceptive that for 20 years smoothed out all
of the cycle extremes that plagued me earlier in my teenage years. In
the last few years when I entered a technology-backwater country and
needed extra care (because I'm 45 and estrogen took a deep drop), I
faced the range of  inept doctors who refused me what was working well
and instead wanted me to : try several different contraceptives with
radically different hormone quantities, or who didn't want to prescribe
any at all because they said that contraceptives were dangerous, or who
'didn't have experience with contraceptives themselves, so they didn't
feel comfortable prescribing them' (these words came from the premier
obstetrician in my town who is practicing delivering babies 20 years).

And other birth control methods? It depends on the country, the region,
the resources, the government's laws, the economic conditions, and the
doctor's 'willingness'. I have a Rumanian friend who had a terrible time
finding in Baden-Wurtemberg, Germany a doctor who was willing to give
her an IUD, which is extremely common and widespread in her home
country. I have similar stories of other girlfriends in various western
countries facing a variety of difficulties for what we all think 'ought'
to be a simple request, a simple procedure, no complications or shame
attached. That's not the reality though.

Birth control technology is extremely uneven even in so-called western
countries, and even if the technology is there, the _implementation_ is
lacking; it's often implemented by less-than-experienced or
less-than-intelligent people, and unless you're a doctor yourself, you
are at their mercy.

Amara

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
Research Scientist, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado