We bien ae Die

Do you worry when your period's late? Have you got a good reason to worry? Is it
because you don't want to have a child when you're not ready to. Of course you don't,
We're speaking to you about what is really your own concern because we'd like to
share some of our own experiences and thoughts with you.

As young women, some of us have had unwanted, unplanned pregnancies, legitmate and
illegitimate. We know you think "but it can't happen to ME!™ but it can and sometimes
does. Even while you're saying it, you're anxiously looking at the calendar.

If you don't have a reason to worry right now, that means that you DO have the free-

dom to think ahead -- to make a choice while you still have one to make. What does

this choice involve? Yous You because it involves an awareness of yourself as a
person who may want to express her feelings in physical intimacy but also an awareness
of yourself as a woman capable of procreation. Too often these two areas of self
awareness - aS a woman and as a mother - are fused into one unforeseen incident:
pregnancy. One usual solution, getting married or marrying earlier than planned, only
brings further problems and doesn't change the situation much (young "shotgun" marriages
have the highest failure rates). We're not concerned with the question of legitmacy

so much as with the need a young woman has to realize herself fully as a woman before

deciding to become a wife and a mother.

Again you could ask "why the bother?" "what business is it of yours?" "Why do you
care?" JI guess we'd just like to offer you an awareness of the freedom we didn't know
we had at the time: the freedom to find out what we were like as sexual adults, to
grow, experience, find ourselves without being crashed into a mother's role before

we had the inner resources and maturity for it. To have a child when you know you're
ready to be a mother is a special kind of freedom which most of us haven't experienced.

Somehow, for some of us, it all came too soon: pregnancy, illegitmacy, abortion,

early marriage (with or without pregnancy). Each of us has experienced some aspect
of one of these situations and we're pretty much like you - not statistics or people
far away in time and place, but young woman with many of the same early pee nt

you've had.

There is so much richness in life that is missed by entering into a marriage before

YOU are ready to or becoming a mother before YOU are ready. And so much waste of oe
human resources if you do this to yourself. We've offered you this booklet on birth
control information to open up the possibility of a creative, self-determined life

that acknowledges the role of sexual relationships in a healthy responsible manner.

We hope you consider yourself carefully, with affection and respect and let yourself

be free by thinking (planning and acting) now. ee

Why don't you visit us in a meeting if you'd like to talk with any of us or have
any questions. il_chambers~ If
you have any further questions of a medical eee or require medical services, the
Health Centre on campus has assurred us that they will gladly provide full medical
services to young women members of the University Community. F(t

Cited goo ka 3 Amro ee,