'History's Worst Contraceptives' makes us thankful to live in Canada in 2014

A video from Engender Health’s WTFP?! (Where’s the Family Planning?!) initiative is making us very grateful for the local drug store.

In “History’s Worst Contraceptives,” we learn that having to remember to take a pill at the same time every day isn’t really so bad after all.

Even in frontier Canada, women were subjecting themselves to a pretty strange concoction to avoid unwanted pregnancy: ground beaver testicles mixed with moonshine.

"Which did nothing — except get them drunk."

Ancient Egyptian women used crocodile dung mixed with honey as spermicide, while women in Europe during the Middle Ages resorted to wearing weasel testicles during sex to prevent unwanted pregnancy. (We’re thinking this also prevented sex altogether in some instances.)

While French women drank unappetizing onion juice, ancient Greek women gulped down toxic blacksmith water filled with lead.

Throughout history, women have used metal thimbles as diaphragms, condoms made from pig intestines, and even fizzy cola to wash out sperm. (Hello, yeast infections.)

But the worst of all is what’s happening right now, the video’s narrator states.

"Right now there are 220 million women around the world who want access to contraceptives and family planning, but can’t get them — even though women with access to family planning are more likely to have safer pregnancies, healthier children, stay in school longer and earn more."

"We’re way past weasel testicles, aren’t we?"

Learn more about the WTFP?! campaign here.

In Canada, some — but not all — health plans cover contraceptives.

For Canadian women without health insurance and who can’t afford to pay for contraceptive prescriptions, there are a few options available to them.

Sexual health clinics across Canada provide free condoms and offer low-cost or free birth control pills, as do student health centres on college and university campuses.

According to Toronto’s Planned Parenthood, “our birth control is the cheapest in the city because we believe that affordable birth control is everyone’s right.” They even offer IUD insertions.

The Compassionate Contraceptive Assistance Program (CCAP), run by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, provides contraception to women who cannot otherwise afford it. A licensed physician can create an account with the CCAP, then order from a list of available contraceptives on behalf of his/her patient.

And emergency contraceptive pills are available without a prescription and are available at most pharmacies, walk-in clinics, sexual health clinics and doctors’ offices.

In 2012, a large study concluded that free birth control leads to “dramatically lower rates of adoptions and teen births.” When cost wasn’t an issue, many of the more than 9,000 women in the study opted for implanted contraception, an otherwise more expensive option.

"As a society, we want to reduce unintended pregnancies and abortion rates. This study has demonstrated that having access to no-cost contraception helps us get to that goal," Alina Salganicoff, director of women’s health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told the Associated Press.

"It’s just an amazing improvement," Dr. James T. Breeden, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said of the results. “I would think if you were against abortions, you would be 100 per cent for contraception access.”

What do you think? Should contraception be free?