If you haven't seen The License yet, check it out - it's the best marriage equality PSA I've seen yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntC0PNHFR…

Why are the only birth control options people are told about are the ones that fuck with your body. Anything with hormones is going to effect a lot of different things from your mood to your sex drive to your acne. IUDs have a chance of seriously messing up your uterus, permanently.

I have been using FAM (fertility awareness method) for over a year now. No pregnancy, no hormones, no condoms except when having casual sex or sex when I am fertile and lots of non-penetration sex acts when I am fertile. It works perfectly, you learn a lot about your body and after buying a thermometer it is free. It's seriously something people should mention to young women as a way to connect to their bodies if nothing else. I wish I had known how easy it could be to not get pregnant when I was 16. It would have saved me many year of depression and mood swings from the pill.

@Lyra
I think it is great that FAM is working for you. And I agree that it would be nice if more people were aware of it. I just don't see it as being practical for most teens. On top of that I still think someone so young really needs to be cutting back their risks for STIs.

soon enough, we will also be discussing male contraceptive pros and cons, as this birth control will be available to all you men out there in injection, pill, or implant form in just a little while!

i can't wait until we start talking about male contraceptive pros in cons in injection, implant, or pill form. what a hullabaloo that may turn out to be.

i can't wait until we start talking about male contraceptive pros in cons in injection, implant, or pill form. what a hullabaloo that may turn out to be.

Re: Depo-Provera

Depo can cause problems for two reasons: a)it is a strong dose of hormonal (progesterone only) BC and b) it can cause irreversible loss of bone-density ONLY IF used for longer than two years.

Some people get their mood, weight, etc. screwed up by hormonal birth control, and some do not. I've been on it for 10 years with no problems. My mother has been on it for roughly 30 with no problems. My college friend tried every type in the book and became a raving eternal-PMS cloud, complete with vivid and terrifying nightmares.

Personally I loved Depo and was miserable when I had to find something else after the two years. It was quick and easy, only every three months, and entirely stopped my periods with no spotting.

Everybody's different.

Why is no one talking about the diaphragm and the cervical cap? Non-hormonal, much easier to find & deploy than a female condom, and when used with spermicide very effective at preventing pregnancy. Granted they don't do anything to prevent STDs but it's a decent option esp for people who wonk out with hormones.

Hormonal birth control should be avoided, especially depo-provera which is made by Pfizer (was formerly Upjohn which merged with Monsanto and is now Pfizer).

Depo's side effects are legendary. Took it once myself heavy bleeding for 2 straight months then spotting for 10 months. My complaint was the least serious. However, intensive marketing to consumers around the world in spite of knowledge of the dangerous and wide-spread side-effects has been going on since the 1970's. See this article: http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/is…

Speaking of sex and birth control:

Pro-choice physician Dr. Tiller has been SHOT DEAD by the religious right; probably OPERATION RESCUE which has been harassing and vandalizing Dr. Tiller for approximately 10 years. For more info see:

http://community.babycenter.com/post/a83…

And:

http://thecurvature.com/2007/08/06/the-a…

BTDT needs to realize that PILL is a TEENAGER. If she has questions about birth control she should be asking her doctor and parents. If PILL needs advice on how to give good blowjobs, Savage Love is perfect. I applaud BTDT's attempt at educating the youth on alternative contraceptives, but she seemed really confused as to whether or not these methods are healthy or affordable...which I'm sure are two factors that should be important for a girl to understand before running out and demanding high doses of hormones and medicated vagina barriers...even if it's in the name of safe sex.

One last comment about birth control pills. Many people don't realize how they can affect the libido, I am sure it's different for every woman. I think it's accummulative and over time, can make some women a bit non-sexual. For me, when I got off all that (had coils inserted in my tubes)I feel WAY more sexual. Sometimes even a bit disturbing how much! YAY

I got a copper IUD a year ago. It's super convenient, I never worry about being pregnant, and there are no hormone-related side effects.

That being said, I actually kind of miss condoms. The ribbed ones felt nice and it was way, way, way less messy. Nothing worse than having to wear pantyliners all the time because goo is constantly dripping out the day after sex. Not to mention I've become a lot more susceptible to BV.

The husband, on the other hand, thinks that this is the single greatest health decision I have ever made.

How "high functioning" is this heriod user, I wonder? High enough to work? High enough to DRIVE to work? What sort of effect does his shooting up have on his ability to drive safely? I am not anti-legalizing drugs, but with all the assholes on the road driving drunk, while I'm trying to get my sober ass home safely, the last thing I want is this douchebag out on the road, smiling under the effects of his now-legal drug, while he careens out of his lane into mine! It seems if we're going to legalize anything else, we need damned harsh jail sentences for anybody who's fucked up and causes an accident. If not, then it's a no-go for me. And yes, I feel the same about alcohol - I'm for mandatory first-offense jail time. grrr! This notion that "my X only effects me" is largely bullshit.

"When we date, ANB, we're telling people that we're in a place where we're ready for love, romance, and sex."

Thanks for the laugh, Dan, I needed that.

Heroin vs. Homos. They are the same. People are and do both (i.e. drugs and sex); some people do opposite sex, some do beer; some do same sex, some do heroin; some do children/animals and/or pcp/meth. Dan doesn't use heroin so he doesn't understand the issue any better than some inveterate pussy-eater waxing wise about what it means to be gay. Lesbians excluded, or course.

Don't come down on us high-functioning (hehe) heroin partakers when the world is packed with child-raping crackheads.

A lot of people here seem to think that recreational drug use is always a dangerous slippery slope. But far more gays are out of the closet than drug users, due to the stigma and the illegality of drug use. You'd be surprised how many of the vanilla, got-it-together people you know are regular drug users behind closed doors, so I don't think it's fair to stereotype.

These people that are claiming drug users will go to monstrous lengths to get their fix are fixating on the most extreme examples. The thing is, all the high-functioning examples aren't getting factored in because they're not as easily recognizable as the addicts.

It's called an availability heuristic: The most extreme examples are considered typical. Most vegans won't throw red paint on you and screech that meat is murder. Most gays don't run down the street greased up in nothing but a G-string. Most heroin users will NOT rob a 7-Eleven to support their habit. Most Muslims won't strap a bomb to their chest and blow up a children's hospital. But the most shocking examples are the ones that get recognized and remembered, and give people unrepresentative impressions of an entire group.

All you people saying that heroin users will inevitably end up stooping to the lowest levels to get their fix sound every bit as ignorant as the person that says a gay man won't be able to keep his hands off all the little boys if he's allowed to be in charge of Boy Scouts. You really have no idea what you're talking about. You're brainwashed by the media and you don't recognize all the high-functioning drug users who are sitting right under your nose.

Why didn't Dan rip DRUGS a new hole? Habitual opiate users--we used to call them junkies--are people who willfully take their minds and bodies, the most wonderful and luckiest asset they could ever have, and dump them full of shit like a sewer. It's a wretched shame and is no more an individual choice than the choice to pour toxic chemicals into a beautiful lake on privately owned land. It's a cruel mockery of everyone who has invested any care in such an individual's life. Drug habits are also a general slap in the face of anyone who values beauty and goodness and truth in the world: it's an ungracious refusal of all those things in favor of chemical narcosis. What gives druggies the right to give up on the world when so many people devote their lives to righting the wrongs of that world? And what makes them exempt from contributing their share?

Love between or among people--of any gender--is a basic affirmation of life. Poisoning oneself and mentally disengaging is the exact opposite. Rerouting the brain's reward system to a toxic, artificial chemical is not a basic right, it's a snub of the most precious right of all.

@ 30 - Are you on planet Earth? They're TEENAGERS. Teenagers who are already wanting to behave as an "old, married couple." Instead of saying, ok, we'll have sex but we have to use a condom because there is the risk of STDs and pregnancy, both of them are behaving as if they're in a monogamous relationship AND one that's been established FOR YEARS.
Aside from what you've described is just "gross," do you really think it is "ok" to advise a teenage boy to "just come inside another girl" so he can have "a relationship" with another? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha...
Sometimes, one DOES have to wonder if the folks who post some of these comments actually leave their basements.
I am, right now, imagining a teenage boy with that set up and then I am imagining TWO teenage girls who would be "ok" with that set up and the only image that comes to mind is a group of teenagers in a HUGE FIGHT with one of them full of STDs AND pregnant with some dickhead's baby.
Geesh! The boy needs to use a condom because they AREN'T married or in a monogamous sexual relationship where they both know the other's sexual history AND this piddly "relationship" most likely won't be their last. If the kids are writing to Dan, then they're clued up enough to know about Chlamydia, Herpes, Syphyllis, HPV AND the future Cervical Cancer which women are suspectible to after being exposed to venereal warts, Gonorrhea, various bacterial infections, HIV and any other bodily fluid transmitted infections and they're clued up enough to know that SAFE SEX is the ONLY sex at their ages AND because they ARE just learning about their bodies.
Why ruin things for themselves BEFORE they've even had a chance to savour full sex lives?

Folks, it is a fact of life: "life isn't complicated, people MAKE it complicated."

Wanting a free pass to do drugs is not the same as wanting the right to love who you love. Drugs are not love, no matter how much your addicted brain tries to tell you they are.

Oh, and as a 25 year old female, I had to fight and fight my way to get an IUD. I sincerely doubt they'll be handing those out like candy to teenage girls, especially ones who haven't yet been pregnant.