Why I Owe Birth Control for My Entire Life

We just came off a season of giving thanks for our loving families, supportive friends, fulfilling jobs, cornbread stuffing, Portlandia, Tom Hiddleston, etc. But Bedsider.org, a birth control support network, is reminding women everywhere to say "Thanks, Birth Control" too, with an ad campaign (in partnership with The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy) that focuses on the things that women are able to accomplish and enjoy because of contraceptives. Per the campaign's website:

Birth control gives you the freedom to plan a family on your own terms. It allows you to work or travel or pursue your dreams before you're ready to have a baby. It's there when you want to have smokin' hot sex and not get pregnant. It makes so much possible. No wonder 99% of US women have used it.

I'd like to personally thank birth control for the fact that, in the years since I've been sexually active, I've still been free to build a career that I love, live in a city that I feel so strongly about it might make me an objectum sexual, travel to 30 countries, cultivate meaningful relationships and extricate myself from those that weren't working without the added responsibility of having a child to consider, and shape myself into the type of person that I think, sometime in the next decade (yes, dad, I said decade, I love you!), would make a pretty great mother. Thanks, birth control.