Hello and welcome to you all

I’m Melanie, a 27-year-old ‘human with a womb’, here to discuss what I like to call “sex logistics”. The stuff we need for sex. The tangible stuff that costs money, time, knowledge, privilege. The less sexy part of sex, requires planning, thought, and communication. We like to think of sex as this spontaneous event of passion, but as we grow, we discover that a lot more is needed to lead a healthy sex life. In other words: contraception, pregnancy prevention, and sexual health.

The year is 2019, the location is Tel Aviv, Israel, and acquiring natural contraception methods is a frustrating and torturous journey. Perhaps it is too much to ask for? Am I destined for a life of abstinence or constant anxiety about getting pregnant? No, I am certain that other women feel like me: we want to have safe sex while not compromising our hormonal balance or subjecting ourselves to invasive procedures.

I am not a gynecologist, a sexologist, a scientist, or anything of the sort. I don’t have the

medical authority to provide health advice. The information I have gathered, which I am still researching to this day, is solely from the internet, conversations with gynecologists,

pediatricians, and fertility advisors, and the personal experiences of my friends. I am here to investigate the alternative options that exist for us (women and men). I want to raise awareness about alternative methods and share my experience. And: I want to save you the time and energy I had to devote to my mission, encountering countless “dead-ends” in the Israeli health system.

So, how did I get here?

I am the one percent. On the Maccabi website (the Israeli healthcare company), it says that condoms are 98% effective in preventing pregnancy. I suppose one of those two remaining percentages is for ripped or faulty condoms. And then the last percent is for women like me who, god knows how, got pregnant even though the condom was used correctly. I’ll tell you now that it is not a myth, it is something that happens, and it is something that happened to me.

After a very unexpected pregnancy and an unsuccessful abortion by pill, where a nice doctor had to manually extract my dead fetus from between my legs (not a very fun Sunday morning), I think we can all agree that just having sex with a condemn and praying for it to be all right isn’t a good enough option for me. In addition, I have never taken The Pill, and I don’t plan to, the reasons for which can be discussed in another post. For now, you’ll just have to take it as a given that it isn’t a solution for me either.

I started to investigate. What options are out there for me? What is important for me, and what am I willing to compromise? What do the doctors recommend, and what ideologies do their recommendations promote? Why are some methods known to all of us, whereas others with similar success rates are less known and harder to acquire?

What surprised me the most was that even when I made a conscious decision about the

contraception methods I am interested in and set out to get them, I encountered a lot of

pushback from doctors and advisors. “It’s outdated, I haven’t recommended those for 30

years”, “It’s a lot of effort to get a hold of those, are you sure you want them?”, “It doesn’t

have a 100% success rate, I wouldn’t recommend that to you.” I started to feel like an

insignificant pawn, a victim of the system, seen as a guinea pig for medications that who

knows what will do to me over the course of a decade or two. That I don’t have a voice.

Through this blog, I hope we discover that there is another way. That the options exist and that you can find them and use them if you just know how. I’ll save you the long wait in lines at doctors that don’t have an answer for you, the heart-to-hearts with the pharmacists, and the frustration of bringing the wrong forms. You’ll get firsthand user experience of all the methods I find.

Thanks for joining me, and I wish us all a good, safe, journey.