The Important Reason Women Are Sharing Their Birth Control Stories Online

The good, the bad and the ugly of taking the pill.

By opening up about their own experiences, women are emphasizing the importance of having a variety of options when it comes to birth control.

Using the hashtag #MyPillStory, women are sharing their birth control experiences, specifically with the birth control pill. Holly Brockwell, founder of an online magazine targeted at women called Gadgette, inspired the hashtag after she won her four-year battle to be sterilized (in the form of having her "tubes tied") at the age of 30. In a piece for The Telegraph, she wrote that she doesn't want kids and has received backlash from people suggesting that she take the pill instead.

What those people don't know is how her body reacted to oral contraception when she did take it, which she elaborated on in a tweet from March 31.

In response to her tweet, writer Kate Bevan encouraged others to share their birth control pill stories, both positive and negative, with the hashtag #MyPillStory.

Since then, many women (and some men chiming in with their partners' experiences) have shared how the pill led to common side effects like weight gain and mood changes as well as more serious ones like depression and blood clots. Others reported being completely satisfied with the pill and explained they had been using it for years. The wide range of tweets proves that contraception affects different people in different ways and serves as a reminder of how crucial it is that women have access to a wide variety of birth control like the pill, IUDs, condoms and more.

In what may be the most beneficial result of the hashtag, women learned that they weren't alone in their birth control experiences.

Both Brockwell and Bevan have noted that the hashtag wasn't intended as a way to slam the pill. Its true purpose? To show that the pill isn't the right option for everyone and that women equally deserve the resources and respect to explore other methods.

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