Popular Posts: What I Didn't Know About the Pill

This week I am featuring some of the most popular posts from the last few months.  I was BLOWN away by your response to this post.  So many of you were in the same place I was ... clueless!  Others were a huge encouragement in my journey!

As I read the words in front of me, I felt myself getting sick at my stomach. How could I not have known this? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me? Could this have happened to me? My mind was racing. I picked up the phone and called Hal. I read him the words, and he said: “Well, I guess that makes our decision.”

We had been talking and praying about what to do about/for birth control for several months. During my pregnancy with B, I had read an article online from a source I trust that had begun my questions about whether or not I should be taking a birth control pill. Since I was pregnant at that time, we didn’t have to make the decision right away. At my 6-week post-partum check up, my doctor and I discussed the different options that were available to me since I was nursing. She wrote me a prescription for a pill that I would be able to take while I was nursing. After the appointment, I filled the prescription and, for probably the first time ever, I read the drug information the pharmacy gives you when you fill a prescription. 

“This medication is used to prevent pregnancy. It is often referred to as the “mini-pill” because it does not contain any estrogen.” Norethindrone (a form of progestin) is a hormone that prevents pregnancy by changing the womb and cervical mucus to make it more difficult for the egg to meet sperm (fertilization) or for the fertilized egg to attach to the wall of the womb (implantation). Regular use of this pill prevents the release of an egg (ovulation) in about half of the women who use it. While the “mini-pill” is more effective than certain other methods of birth control (e.g. condoms, cervical cap, diaphragm), it is less effective than estrogen/progestin birth control because it does not consistently prevent ovulation.”

Those words shocked, sickened, and saddened me all at the same time. I had always just assumed that the pill prevented ovulation 100% of the time. Until reading the article mentioned above, it never even crossed my mind that it was possible for ovulation, fertilization, and conception to occur, but implantation to be prevented due to the effects of the hormones in the birth control pill. I just naively took the pills and believed that it was preventing ovulation, but as I read the drug pamphlet, I was completely aware of how this birth control pill worked.

I won’t ever know if the pills I took for years prevented ovulation or if they prevented implantation. There is nothing I can do about a decision I made in the past. I can only confess the sin before the LORD and ask for His forgiveness, and then I have to leave it there. In God’s infinite mercy, He forgives the sin a believer confesses before Him. I don’t believe I will be held accountable for something that I didn’t know, but that once I have the knowledge I can’t continue on in the same behavior. Now that I know how the pill works, I am responsible for this knowledge.

Those of you who have been reading “Rubies and Rewards” know that one of the reasons I started this blog is to encourage women in their pursuit of becoming the kind of woman that God desires us to be and that He talks about in His Word. I am not writing this to condemn or judge anyone. I am writing this because I didn’t know these facts, and maybe you don’t either. Take this information, research it further, talk with your doctor, and pray about it. I am not a medical doctor, and I don’t pretend to be. I have been told that some pills work differently than others. Research the pill you take. 

For me, it was written in black and white in front of me. I also understand that in some people’s eyes this is a gray area. But for Hal and I, this was not a gray area. We felt that if conception occurred and that if something I was taking (birth control pill) purposely prevented the pregnancy from progressing, then we were not comfortable with that option or any hormonal birth control that couldn’t 100% guarantee us that ovulation wouldn’t occur.

13 For you created my inmost being; 

   you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; 

   your works are wonderful, 

   I know that full well. 

15 My frame was not hidden from you 

   when I was made in the secret place, 

   when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 

16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; 

   all the days ordained for me were written in your book 

   before one of them came to be. 

17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God! 

   How vast is the sum of them!

          Psalm 139:13-17