March 02, 2012 05:26 PM UTC

One woman's perspective on contraception as a women's health issue

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• by: Awen

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

There’s one aspect to the Republican war on women, as they try to deny contraception as part of the health care law, that I’d like to bring up.

It’s about birth control as medicine, rather than contraception.

I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. I was diagnosed with it at the age of 15 (although it was called something else back then).

At that time, and until I was in my 40s, I didn’t ovulate without birth control pills.

I took them for 30 years, on the advice of every doctor and gynecologist I had during that time, as a way to prevent ovarian cancer.

PCOS, as it’s known, affects one in every 10 women of reproductive age -it’s the number one cause of infertility in the United States.

Left untreated, women with PCOS run the risk of ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, endometriosis, lifelong infertility and a host of other problems.

For Republicans and the religious right to claim birth control is only to prevent pregnancy (or as Limbaugh implies, to have unfettered sex) ignores the millions of women who have been helped by birth control pills to prevent horrible diseases.

During the 1980s, I had to get a note for my pharmacy from my doctor, stating that I had PCOS and that birth control pills were a medical necessity. I can’t believe I’m having to make that argument again, on behalf of women who need those pills as a life-saving measure.

I’m alive and healthy today because of birth control pills.

And for the record, I have one daughter who is now a college professor, and I believe that without birth control pills I would not have lived to see her grow up to be the success she is.