Forget It: Reading with an IUD.

Abstract

Exposing the insides of the reproductive body visually and narratively has been a long project that has had positive and negative effects on a person's control over their choice to or not to have a child, as historians of medicine, reproduction, and the body have told us and as feminist health advocates have long insisted. The intrauterine device is a relatively new contraceptive technology that, once inserted, promises the user that they may prevent pregnancy while forgetting about the device. This essay examines how this "forgetting" method of relating to conception bumps up against historical circumstances and narrative structures that aim to expose and make legible the reproductive body. In this case, that exposure is to reveal the acute pain of the shifting political circumstances of birth control access. It ultimately proposes that forgetting, which is figured here as accepting limited knowledge and choosing not to read the reproductive body, produces its own dilemma: at once, the user is exempt from such day-to-day worries and denied certainty over fertility.