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"        If you&amp;#039;re a Marie Claire reader, you know how hardcore I am about safe sex and contraception. In our September issue, I wrote a story called &amp;quot;Am I the Last Woman Using Condoms?,&amp;quot; about the surprising lack of safe sex among women in their 30s. (Fun side note: after that story, Trojan sent me multiple boxes of condoms, some of which I took home\u2014thanks, Trojan!\u2014and some of which I stashed in my desk, making me feel like the school nurse here in the office. You need &amp;#039;em, I got &amp;#039;em.)  That&amp;#039;s why I&amp;#039;m so excited about a new public awareness campaign the fabulous people at The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy have cooked up. Today, November 12, they&amp;#039;re asking everyone to say #ThxBirthControl\u2014to tell us on Twitter and Facebook and other social media channels how birth control has changed your life. After all, 99% of women have used birth control at some point. Without it, we couldn&amp;#039;t thoughtfully be in control of our own lives; we couldn&amp;#039;t plan our educations, our careers, our families. We wouldn&amp;#039;t be able to travel the world, to go after our dreams, to make serious and educated choices and decisions. Yet contraception is still a controversial topic in cultural and political debates; it&amp;#039;s still something we don&amp;#039;t talk about openly and honestly, and it&amp;#039;s still something that men and women don&amp;#039;t use regularly. Nine out of 10 single women and men ages 18-29 say they don&amp;#039;t want a pregnancy right now\u2014but 40% of them don&amp;#039;t use contraception consistently, says the National Campaign. And more than half of sexually active women ages 18-22 say they would be more likely to use birth control if more people talked about it in a positive way. You have the power to change that\u2014starting today. Tweet @bedsider and @marieclaire using the hashtag #thxbirthcontrol, or tell us in the comments below: What has birth control done for you? How might your life be different without it? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/news/a4653/thanks-birth-control/>