There is so, so, so much more to know about The Pill and we only had time to skim the surface! Please read through the following sites and then donate some dollaz so they (Planned Parenthood and Scarleteen) can continue to be free, accessible, comprehensive sex education resources on the internet :)

Birth Control Bingo: Minipills on Scarleteen
Birth Control Bingo: The Combination Pill on Scarleteen
Birth Control Pill on Planned Parenthood

Not sure where to even start when it comes to picking the birth control that’s right for you? Scarleteen has JUST the choose-your-own-adventure-er-I-mean-birth-control game for you over at their Birth Control Bingo resource.

We’ve also covered a few other birth control options here on ol’ OJST!
The Paraguard IUD (this is the BC I’m on!), Emergency Contraception, The Implant by Lucy Knisley, Condom Basics, The Internal (Female) Condom, aaaaaand in order to understand how contraception works you should prolly brush up on how folks get pregnant in the first place.

A newly pregnant person has three options from which to choose: Parenting, Adoption, Abortion. They are all equally valid and only the pregnant person can make the final call on what is the right one for them. For more information on all your choices, please check out Planned Parenthood’s Pregnancy Options page. If you’re overwhelmed at the potential that you might be pregnant and you don’t even know where to start, Scarleteen’s here for you with their article “Pregnancy Scared?”

Of course there is so much more to learn about abortion than we had room to fit in one brief comic. I very heartily encourage you to do some more research on your own! Some excellent resources are:

Comic Updated 3/25/15:
Medical abortion is administered up to 9 weeks of pregnancy, not 10, and at 8-9 weeks it is possible to see the embryo pass out of the body, although earlier than that and it is much more unlikely. I apologize for these initial mistakes.

Comic Updated 12/19/23:
Corrected some language on page 2, to reflect the current understanding that the embryo would have developed cardiac activity, but not a fully formed heart/heart-beat.

I footnoted a bunch of URLs in the comic, here they are in clickable form:

The 13th-century manuscript of Pseudo-Apuleius’s Herbarium from Wikipedia’s article on Abortifacient
* PROTECT SAFE AND LEGAL ABORTION fact sheet from Planned Parenthood and The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
** The comparative safety of legal induced abortion and childbirth in the United States from the National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health
† Miscarriage on Planned Parenthood
‡ Induced Abortion in the United States by The Guttmacher Institute
§ Thinking About Abortion on Planned Parenthood

We’ve also done two previous comics on Pregnancy and Emergency Contraception

Meanwhile, In Seattle…

Heeeey!!! This weekend, March 27-29th, Matthew and I’ll be at the Emerald City Comicon! Here’s the deets:

Emerald City Comicon
March 27-29, Booth 1318
Panels:
♥ Strip Tease: Adult Comics and the Perverts Who Draw Them with Spike, Leia Weathington & Blue Delliquanti. Friday, March 27th at 6:50PM in Hall E (TCC 303).

♥ Being Non-Compliant moderated by Patrick Reed. Friday, March 27th at 5pm in Hall E (TCC 303)

♥ ComiXology Submit: The Future of Self-Publishing Saturday, March 28 at 2:50pm.

Like it says above, this comic just covers the basics of how emergency contraception pills work (and if you need a refresher, I explained how conception and pregnancy work earlier!). I encourage you to read up more on this method of emergency birth control over at Planned Parenthood!

You can read the full interview with Saundra below!

Interview with Saundra

What made you think you may be at risk of pregnancy (unprotected sex, birth control failure, etc?)

I’ve taken it three times, at an embarrassingly advanced age (probably should have known better). The first/third time it was unprotected, and when I did the math, I realized my birth control was too risky a back-up. The second time was condom failure.

What was your process of getting the pills (Specifically, did you have any drugstore employees refusing to sell it to you)

I went to Planned Parenthood (comparison shopping — luckily, I live near one and I knew they were much cheaper there).

While I never had to deal with drugstore employees being jerks to me, I took up the issue several years ago when Plan B became available over the counter. I was working at an altweekly in Ventura, California, and we printed a handy cut-out sheet of area drugstores that would be stocking Plan B over-the-counter.

I’ve also been sure to know which drugstores I live near that carry it (I’m not saying the 24-hour Walgreens was the ONLY reason I moved to 37th & Belmont a few years back, but it was a plus).

What were the side effects like?

Emotionally draining, but definitely physically draining. I am always much more tired. The first time, I got nauseated for a couple hours, and crampy.

The first time, I got my period a couple days later. This was fine and expected, but it did throw off my cycle considerably. I still have little to no idea what’s going on with it.

But each time I’ve taken EC, I’m genuinely sad and a little depressed. It caused some friction with my partner (in his defense, he’s always extremely grateful when I elect to take EC just to be safe). But for whatever reason, he couldn’t quite understand how carpet-bombing one’s system with extra hormones makes a person a bit more delicate, emotionally. (It was also early in the relationship, which started out rocky. Kind of a double-edged sword: I wasn’t myself, and then I was doubly upset he couldn’t understand where I was coming from. I once sat at work and forwarded him links to forums of women talking about how batshit insane they felt after taking EC. For, like, an hour.)

Communication has improved exponentially with him, and I think we’re just so much kinder to each other in general. Still, It occurs to me that if I ever take EC again, I would ask for him to give me a couple days by myself, just to avoid conflict. I’m only half-serious about that, but it’s tempting.

To illustrate the hormonal blues: the last time I took EC was the weekend the new Arrested Development episodes came out. There were probably other external issues stressing me out, on the periphery, but I remember sitting in my apartment on a beautiful warm Sunday and just feeling down and in a funk. And I thought, “Not even new, long-awaited episodes of one of my all-time favorite shows can save me? What is WRONG with me!?”

When I remembered I’d taken Next Choice the day before, I felt relieved. Much in the way I’ll sometimes find myself feeling sad and reflective, then get my period soon after, and think, “Oh, thank God! Something to explain feelings!”

How did you feel about the experience once the side effects were over?

Complaints aside, the side effects were surprisingly minor and relatively painless. And feeling a bit off was reassuring — I equated it with the pills’ efficacy. EC just felt like a safeguard.

I’m still functional on the stuff, and I feel a sort of gratitude toward the product. I now have a couple packs I keep around just in case. The brand is Ella, and by virtue of the package design and the name, the whole thing strikes me as actually quite positive. (I was a huge Ella Fitzgerald fan in high school, so the box really puts me at ease — someone in marketing knew what they were doing.)

This is probably outside the focus of the article, but there’s a political issue in all this I struggle with — sexual politics, really. In my experience, anyone who hasn’t taken EC can’t quite appreciate how rough EC is on the body. Even with a supportive partner, it’s a strangely isolating experience, I guess? It’s all consistent with the uneven nature of birth control and family planning in general, of course — women tend to shoulder an inordinate physical burden.

Another side, not necessarily relevant, story: I was once on the phone with my best friend from middle/high school, and we were talking about how her first pregnancy was going. I, meanwhile, was walking to Planned Parenthood to get EC. It struck me as a funny illustration of how we were in somewhat different stages of our lives. I found it kind of novel, rather than upsetting.

Would you use EC again?

Yes. I’m even more careful with birth control now, since I’m loathe to subject myself to a day or day and a half of generalized sadness. But as I’ve said, EC is a great safeguard, and I have two packs of it in my bathroom drawer.