Should minors be allowed to buy birth control without parental consent?

Should minors be allowed to buy birth control without parental consent?

I had to convince my mother to the positive side of minors and birth controls. I have been through peer pressure about sex and everyone around me at some point started to visualize sexual interaction as a normality. And the fact that people around me were engaging in it didn’t drive me to rush straight to it but neither did I judge them for what they were doing as long as what they wanted to do. However what was more of a worry to me was that all my friends didn’t want their parents knowing they were sexually active at a young age and neither did they involve them in getting birth control. When I talked to them and tried to find out why it was a bad idea to talk to their parents especially “the mothers” about the sex life and birth controls most of them said that the parent won’t do more than overreacting and give them pep talks about sex.

As I talked to one of my friends she told me her mother didn’t want to hear her second statement about her sexual experience. But rather she had an entire week of cautions against sex and her mother strictly forbid her to try it again and even said she wasn’t going to talk to her anything about birth controls or protections because that was something way above her age.

Therefore knowing the fact that parents rather have their kids stick around to the “middle ages rules” of sex after marriage and birth control for married ones I was eager to know where my mother stands and if she was on the negative side how to change her perception.

So I asked my mother if she would be okay if I were to have sex and afterward purchase birth control without telling her. My friends were right, my mother literally gave me a scary five minutes look. That would have been the end of the talk if I dared mumble but instead, I smiled then told her “relax am not sexually active yet” and at this point, I could tell she was ready to preach to me how wrong it was. I choose not to give a chance before I told her what I thought about it all because I knew the scenario could have ended with her being the leader of the conversation.

Sex is naturally an awkward topic to present in public for a debate especially if the discussion has to be with your own parents. Telling parents of your sex life it’s like reaping off your innocent mask before them. But even if we don’t tell them about it at some point parents are bound to know what is going on in our lives. My mother and I were close and I knew even if chose to go for birth controls and have sex without telling her in one way or another she was going to know. So getting her to understand that times have changed and sex no longer has to look like a communal sin when a teenager was engaged in it was my best choice.

Firstly, I  had to make her understand that it was so much better for her to know that I have been smart enough to get on birth control than to help me raise a kid when am 16 years old. My mother’s idea was that girls who start engaging in sex at a young age and have no idea who to protect themselves can easily get pregnant and mess up their lives. Okay, she is right but when I asked her if it was possible for her to stop me from having sex she wasn’t sure about that. She can talk to me and caution me for all she wants but if I wanted to have sex I would definitely go ahead and have it and even hid it for a long time. So I told my mother the idea wasn’t supposed to protect me but how to teach me how to protect myself and if I wanted to start being sexually active as a parent her ideas should be telling me I was allowed to purchase birth control without her consent if that meant for me to be on the safer side.

Secondly, I brought to the table the risk situations condoms have put teenagers in. Being realistic teenagers want what they can’t handle. Hypothetically, if my 17-year-old sister or relatively wanted to have sex they would know nothing about using a condom and that’s when condom leakages happen and the risk changes from sex to the fear of pregnancy. So argued with my mother that it was really a nice decision me avoiding an awkward talk about how I should put on a condom and opt for birth controls.

I was able to shake my mother’s stand with the logical reasons. Finally, she was convinced that birth control for the young ones wasn’t so much of a bad idea after all if it meant protecting them from getting pregnant. She even was able to tell me that I could take birth control if I wanted to even if I was a virgin to control my hormones and reduce the times that I get periods