Australia is fortunate to have state-based family planning clinics that offer low-cost and free sexual health services. While focusing on providing sexual healthcare to the most disadvantaged in our communities, the clinics are open to all people, both female and male. The family planning organisations are associated under Sexual Health and Family Planning Australia and also undertake advocacy, research and education services.

When it came time for me to explore the wide world of birth control, growing up with a feminist mother meant that it never occurred to me to go anywhere else but to Planned Parenthood, America’s non-profit sexual and reproductive health service and advocacy organisation. It was important to me not only to support a pro-choice organisation but also to know that I would be guaranteed a female doctor. When my supply of birth control pills began to run out after my move to Australia, the first thing I did was find out if there was a similar thing in Australia. I couldn’t imagine having to go to a normal GP or hospital and face the prospect of having a male doctor examine, poke or prod me. Of course there are family planning clinics down under, and I made an appointment at Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT. The doctor was lovely, the examination room had prints on the ceiling and the pills they sold me were very cheap. Later, when I decided to get Implanon, the contraceptive three-year implant, that was cheap too.

Given that the idea of seeing a gynaecologist outside of the setting of a family planning clinic stresses me out, I find it a shame that more women, especially young ones, don’t know about the Family Planning organisations. Now that I have had the experience of going to a hospital-based clinic, I am even more of a Family Planning zealot. Let me tell you the story of me, Family Planning Victoria (FPV) and the Choices Clinic at Royal Women’s Hospital (RWH).

A couple of months after arriving in Melbourne it was time to get my Implanon changed before its three-year expiration date arrived. I went to the phone book, found FPV and phoned to make an appointment. I live within walking distance of RWH, but with memories of my pleasant experiences with Planned Parenthood and SHFPACT (including the gentle and anaesthetised insertion of my first and second Implanons) swirling around my brain and a not-well-founded aversion to hospitals, I decided to stick with the FPV idea despite the fact that I had to go all the way out to Box Hill in order to do so.

A man answered the phone when I called and he was friendly and lovely, asking me no questions other than when I would like an appointment. Despite my assertion that I did not require one right away, he kept attempting to get me booked ASAP, accommodating my difficult availability. We settled on a date and time and I was flooded with a sense of relief, for though there is not a whole lot in my life that I feel sure about, I am absolutely sure that I do not want to get pregnant.

Upon arriving at FPV fifteen minutes before my appointment time so that I could fill out the new-patient paperwork, I sat down in the small waiting room, lightly spattered with young mothers and waddling babies. As I waited I picked up some pamphlets on IUDs and decided to discuss this possibility with the doctor. I was called in for my appointment on time and a doctor introduced herself and a colleague in training with her. I was asked if I minded having the trainee doctor participate in my consultation, that she would only stay if I was comfortable. I was comfortable. I did indeed ask about IUDs and though I expected to be discouraged from using one because I had not yet been pregnant (a common thing told to young women) the doctor told me that IUDs were indeed a great form of birth control—for women who had not been stretched out by the birthing process as well. Insertion of an IUD is a more convoluted process than other forms of birth control because sterilisation needs to be assured and infection checked for. It requires a few visits. She also warned me that insertion can be quite painful and that if I was to get an IUD inserted at FPV, the clinic would not have the capacity to provide general anaesthetic. She recommended the Choices Clinic, saying that doctors there would be able to put me under anaesthetic if I required and that it was a clinic she felt positive recommending me to. I left the appointment unsure of what to do, so the doctor gave me a prescription for Implanon in case I decided to stick with that option.

Feeling like I did want to try the IUD and experience my own hormones for the first time in ten years, I called Choices to book an appointment. I was on hold for a very long time. When a receptionist finally answered the phone I was asked, amongst other questions, whether the last name I gave her was my married or maiden name and whether I was married, divorced or single. I resisted answering these questions, torn between not wanting to aggrieve the receptionist and my feminist fury that I was being asked. I asked the receptionist if men were asked these questions too and she replied that I was being asked in case the hospital might have any records for me under a different name. Why couldn’t she simply ask me if I had ever been known under a different name? My marital status is not the business of the receptionist or hospital and the asking of these sorts of marital status questions is one thing feminists have been fighting to put an end to. Nevertheless, I made my appointment.

A confirmation letter came in the mail a few days later and informed me that I would not be guaranteed a female doctor. At that moment I knew I would not be trying out an IUD this year. A male doctor can play with my arm all he wants (injecting the Implanon) but not my cervix. I did, in the end, get a female doctor, whom I did not see until an hour after my scheduled appointment and who argued with me when I raised my objections about the questions I was asked on the phone. She felt there were more important things for feminists to worry about than being asked our marital status, though after her initial annoyance with me she told me where I could go to discuss my complaint.

Aside from long waits on the telephone, a long wait in the waiting room and the fact that the tape bandaging the doctor put over the place where my skin was cut open to insert the birth control gave me blisters, the incision took much longer to heal than after my previous two inserts. The questions about my marital status rankle more. I will never again choose to go to a hospital for a procedure that I can get done at a Family Planning clinic and I urge all women to not only make use of their nearest Family Planning clinic, but to also write to the state and federal departments of health, thanking them for their support of such clinics and encouraging them to continue this funding. The quality of life (and healthcare) that comes from seeing a female doctor in a feminist-friendly, non-judgemental, pro-women and pro-choice environment dedicated to the mental and physical sexual wellbeing of all people is a luxury all Australians should work to preserve. Viva la Family Planning!