The Baby Trap.

Two men I know are in the same situation: their relationships were starting to break up, so the women they were dating secretly stopped using birth control. Two pregnancies, two sudden conversions to strict anti-abortion beliefs... two upcoming weddings. Congratulations, ladies, your gambit worked, you did make him love you forever!

It's unbelievably disgusting. These girls, both still teenagers (17 and 19) used human life to control their boyfriends. How self-centered and short-sighted can you be? Those poor kids. Can you really devote 18 years of your life to something you did to keep your high school boyfriend from taking someone else to the prom? Maybe you can, maybe once it's born you lose sight of the reasons and just focus on raising your child... but it's definitely not giving your kid the best start in life.

And sometimes I worry that my guys worry that I'd do something like that. Brandon and I don't use condoms much anymore. If I were a conniving skank, it would be very easy for me to get a Brandon Jr. going. Brandon would be on the hook for either child support or marriage, and there'd be absolutely nothing he could do about it. That, not some fuzzy "guys hate intimacy!" thing, could be the real reason they get the heebiee jeebiees when I seem a little too affectionate. I have to admit, if I were a man, it would scare the hell out of me.

(I'm sure it goes without saying, but I have no interest in getting pregnant; I can't take a baby with me to med school and I don't want to mix genes with a man who thinks putting the toilet paper roll vertically on the counter instead of using the freakin' holder is an okay thing to do. He actually whined when I fixed it. Slob.)

I'm pro-choice and I think it cuts both ways: everyone should get the right to decide whether or not they want to reproduce. We badly need a male birth control pill.


(Yes, Our Fucked-Up Society is partly responsible for this, by perpetuating the idea that women are supposed to demand permanent and exclusive love in exchange for sex. But these girls are still responsible for their own actions and that's why I feel okay using words like "skank.")