I was able to walk into a pharmacy in 19fucking72
and purchase birth control pills with a simple prescription from our family doctor.
That is fifty fucking years ago. Seriously- what the fuck is going on in 2022?
= new reply since forum marked as read
I was pretty tired and I wasn't very clear, I recall struggling for the right way to put it and it didn't work I see.
I meant that protection from the cult of morans was what everyone else needs protecting from.
Sumpthin like that! 
They gave me birth control pills (after a thorough examination).
I did not have to buy them.
I hid them from my parents.
What fun days those were!
I too come from a Catholic background.
My mother became pregnant with a high-risk pregnancy in 1959. My father was one of the first men in America that had a vasectomy. After the procedure, he never went back to get checked to see if it had worked. Well surprise! It didn't. My mother wanted an abortion and begged my father to find money for one. He went to my very Catholic grandmother and all she did was cry and cry and cry.
Hence, my younger brother (who is now deceased due to cancer) was born. He had a myriad of problems that haunted him his entire life. It took all of the money the family had to care for him.
He died the year after my mother did in 2004. I was so glad she went first as I know she would have thought that she had jeopardized the entire livelihood of the family for one person that was now dying/dead.
As for birth control, I remember her saying, "We use the "don't touch me" approach". That didn't work very well did it?
As for taking the pill, she acted as if she was against it due to her Catholicism. What a huge joke!
I became pregnant accidentally in the late '70's. Yes, it happens all of the time even with birth control! I had to list a relative to get an abortion at that time and all I had was my older Republican brother. For years he told my parents he had the "dirt" on me. They wondered what I had done. I finally told them before they died that I had an abortion. I never told them who the father was (it was my late husband). I remember my mother said, "Oh is that all it is? I thought you'd committed a crime or something!". She was not shocked and both of my parents thought I made the right decision being I was only 22 years old and in very poor health at that time and had no way to care or support a child and my boyfriend (who became my husband) wanted nothing to do with it. So the pregnancy was terminated and I was greatly relieved! Today I have very little to do with this same brother. He is a despicable fool and I hate him for what he did to me, to shame me when I needed support.
I couldn't take pill as it gave me high blood pressure so I had to result to draconian measures like using a diaphragm. God do those things ever suck! Do they still exist? Do women still use this method today? 
Not everyone could nor can take the pill. I guess there really aren't many new birth control methods out there today some 40+ years later.
You've come a long way baby is really a huge pile o'crap IMO!
As for my alleged "forgiveness" for the abortion I had I realized all I needed to know when my father died. He had a picture of me he carried in his wallet and I was pregnant at that time (very early on, like six weeks). After he died my mother gave me his wallet for some reason. That picture was no longer in his wallet. Where did it go? Why did she throw it away? Was she not being truthful with me? Did she really understand? To this day, I still do not know.
What a sad life I have had in retrospect. I have no regrets about having an abortion but damn my late husband for not being willing to get a vasectomy. He refused to get one and said, "They do not work". What a selfish man he was in too many ways! We had one too many huge arguments about this whole thing over the years. At the end of his very long life, he refused to accept responsibility for this and this plague on our relationship. "Don't touch me" indeed. 
Thank you.
I can use that right now.
The grief over the recent death of my husband has many facets to it.
This is GOOD for me to realize that even though he was a good man, he had his faults. This was certainly one of them!
Take care!
I hope you have people in your life who can carry you through the sad times and bring you the warmth you need and desire. You've certainly earned the compassion.
Peace. 
When my husband died 2 months ago, he left me with nothing. Zero.
Given the very nature of that relationship, I was very isolated. He wanted to own me but he didn't.
I remember not long before he died I'd been out late one night with an old friend and he said to me the next day, "I thought you you were never coming home".
I replied, "Of course I was going to come home. Where else was I going to go?".
I'm trying to meet new people and make friends but it is difficult.
Life is one day at a time for me.
I feel lucky to have my three cats. I am never alone as long as they are around. I never thought I'd end up in this situation, never.
I often wonder how he would feel had he known I'd end up with nothing after 44 years of me taking care of him.
I think he was sick for a very long time, much longer than I had realized or cared to recognize.
Its over now and definitely time to move on no doubt.
I have no idea what I will do but I've managed to make a few decisions.
One of the biggest ones is that being none of his relatives that have stepped up to help during or after his sickness and death are almost nil; many of them are millionaires. Some family! Do I really want anything at all to do with any of them? Answer: Hell no!
Thanks for your compliment. I do appreciate it more than you'll ever know!
Your posts touched me. Truly, they did. Too bad you don't live up here in Michigan. We could get together over coffee, tea, wine, beer, or even apple juice, and talk the day away
But since you live so far away, here's a heartfelt hug to you from me.
You survived - you are alive
That is intense! Fifteen!
I know a man from a family of nineteen. He is a friend of my late husband. All were live births best I know. Another Catholic family as well.
I've never been big on Catholicism.
At my husband's funeral (which was in a Catholic Church) the priest opened up with a sermon on love and that being there was love, it is love between two people that causes babies to be born. Sometimes that is true, other times it is not!
I almost lost it after that but luckily the whole thing did not last long.
Its a shame that we are even having this discussion in the year 2022 isn't it?
It was not my intent to bring you to tears but I've had some sad shit happen to me in my too long of a life.
I guess what really did it was seeing how it was in the end.
No help nor support at all from his very large family with millionaires in it.
I'd be ashamed frankly if it was own child in the position I was in, relying on a totally disabled woman with MS trying to pay for and deal with the entire thing with no help at all. My disability check is just over $1000 a month. I cannot collect his being he got less than I do (he received $660 a month). At least I know where the cards lay now. As I wrote earlier, they can all fuck off!
It was a hell of a way to learn this lesson that I needed to learn.
Thank you for your kind words and I thank everyone else that replied as well.
May the Force Be With all of us!
I'm right there with you!
Many thanks again!!! 
back then
The white supremacist fundies want more white babies.
That’s the word
I'm grateful for what I've got.
Peace.