I must say it's hard for me not to be deeply offended by your comment. However, we keep our blog unprotected to allow many people to see it and to encourage dialogue, so I would like to respond to your comment. If you read above, you'd see that I did advise the women that any of them, at any time, could suffer adverse effects from using any of the family planning methods offered to them free of charge from the Ministry of Health. I encouraged them to maintain an open dialogue with the health center staff about their dis/satisfaction with the methods they'd chosen to use. That is what personal choice is about. If I went to into detail about the negative effects of every method to the letter as though I'm some disclosure form inside the box--like we have in the US--that would scare these women out of ever trying family planning methods. I think it is misguided to assume that the women here have the reasoning power of an educated woman in the US. Experience has shown me that they do not. That's not a racist comment, or meant to be derogatory. It's a fact--the government ignored them for years on end and they received no education whatsoever. Reasoning is not an inborn ability, it's learned. In fact, reasoning skills are something we are trying to teach our community members, through presenting them with options and presenting things in a manner that encourages them to form opinions about different health topics. That said, I also tell them every single time I give them a health talk, "We're only here to give you information, and to answer your questions. We aren't here to obligate any of you to do anything. It's up to all of you to make decisions about how you will live your life." I feel very strongly that this is where we differ entirely form the conquistadores, and why I found your comparison offensive. Additionally, I have a personal relationship with almost all of the women I work with which gives me a vested interest in their well-being, another significant difference between me and the conquistadores. I answer every question they ask to the best of my ability, and that's my job. I had a woman ask me if Depo-provera was bad for her, and I said it causes many problems in lots of women. I asked her if she had experienced problems. She told me she hadn't had any problems with it; she was in fact happy with it. Her only worry was that people had said very bad things about the shot. I went on to tell her, if people were saying things about this medication that made her uncomfortable, she could stop taking it at any time and decide on a different method of birth control. In spite of my personal opinion regarding Depo-provera, there are still plenty of women in the US who use it and like it. I have to respect their opinion and their right to decide for themselves what to use. My story about counseling women on birth control was to highlight how I have to practice a sensitivity to the situation that I maybe would not have exercised in the US. The readers who know me from home, I hope, would read this as a sign of my personal growth. I feel like it has been an important lesson for me. All women have the right to decide, and it's not my place to hinder that. I don't think you'd find a conquistador who'd ever agree to such a statement.