ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses her experiences of sex and sex education. In her fifth grade, their health class began discussing reproductive health, and they were all excited to learn about what was going to happen to their bodies. The content included infertility, miscarriage, abortion, and homosexuality. The author suffered for the five years after her first period. Her family doctor never asked about it, and she did not see an OB/GYN because she was not supposed to be having sex, as an Irish-Catholic teenager. The author talks about her suffering due to endometriosis and her difficulties in getting pregnant and the eventual delivery, would be difficult because of her endometriosis. She demonstrates how often she was ignored, but that same willful ignorance occurs for women of color at an exponentially higher rate, as a result of implicit or unconscious bias.
