If you’ve never heard of these before, they were an IUD created and pushed onto women in poorer countries, many times forcibly. They had a multiduble of bad side effects, most notably the material used for the strings caused sever infections and the insertion and removal was extremely traumatic. Just brining it up as my heart goes out to all those poor women. We need to remember things like this and fight to make sure nothing like it ever happens again.
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All bad things podcast did a really good episode on this IUD.
It’s just sickening how women had to go through that… you know, when they’re pushing these things for profit, what do they really care about? How could something so dangerous even be made in the first place?
Some fun facts for y’all today! When doctors say something is “traumatic”, they don’t mean it’s scary or stressful, they mean it causes damage, it causes trauma to the area. If these had traumatic insertions and removal, that’s not just pain and fear, that’s actual, chartable damage done to the patient.
Not to say it’s NOT painful or scary, but just know that when they say a patient experienced trauma, they only mean physically. 🙃🙃🙃
Those poor women 💔
Hello fellow IUD remover! I just had mine out two weeks ago after over a decade on them. Im dreading that first red tide 🥲 Hope your transition goes well!
The Dalkon shield was the reason one of the single best forms of female birth control was not used for decades. I wasn’t offered an IUD until 2004, and even then I was skeptical and my OB had to talk me into it.
WHAT THE FUCK
After we had our last child, my wife was gonna get an IUD. I talked her into canceling her appt and I got a vasectomy. Best decision
How does anyone look at that object and go “yeah that should absolutely be shoved through the tiny sphincter of an internal organ.”
I worked on more than 200 Dalkon Shield lawsuits as a paralegal back in the mid-1980s.
Reading those stories was frightening, infuriating and very, very sad.
I have never gotten an IUD as a result, nor did I buy manufacturer A.H. Robins Company products for a long time.
My mom had a Dalcon shield and she did receive a small settlement. I know she experienced complications with it but she never spoke about it in any detail. I suspect PID, but I’m not sure.
She wasn’t forced to get it, though – she was a Nurse Practitioner and basically was trying the new “cutting edge” technology. She never did trust IUDs after that.
She did end up bearing three healthy kids, though, so it went better for her than for a lot of women.
But please don’t let this be a reason not to get an IUD if you have any need for one! Modern IUDs are nothing like the dalkon shield.
Check out the IUB Ballerine – it’s a copper iud that can go in straight and then makes a little globe shape. It is supposed to be easier to insert/remove and be less likely to be improperly placed. I’m still chicken to get one (I somehow have high serum copper and we can’t figure out why), but it’s what I would want if I were doing it!
Hoooooolllleeeee shit I wish I hadn’t been informed of these existing
I’m so angry on behalf of these women. When will women’s pain be taken seriously? I vote the south Korean way until things improve. 4 B.
“A doctor writing to A.H. Robins in 1971 that “I have found the procedure to be the most traumatic manipulation ever perpetrated on womanhood, and I have inserted thousands of other varieties.””
BARBS. IT HAS BARBS. WHYYYY.
Reading this wiki page is infuriating.
I genuinely passed out when my IUD was removed. Placement wasn’t much better, and I’d choose both over and over (HAVE chosen both over and over) for the high level of protection with almost no side effects.
But to encounter this pain without consenting or even understanding the procedure? Actual torture.
Maybe more men need to spend time imagining a match stick shoved into their penis-hole, and as far as they’d be from imagining the reality of being a woman enduring modern healthcare… maybe it would make some sense at least to a few of them.
Yes. That ruined my sister.
i got my first iud put in yesterday 😊 sistersss ✋
I’ll get downvoted to oblivion but 10 years of Mirena and my uterus had enough adhesions and scarring inside that the openings to my fallopian tubes were blocked. And now I’m 2 miscarriages, 3 rounds of IVF, and 4 surgeries to fix the scarring with a 5th required if we want to try another pregnancy. I’m almost 41, Mirena IUD has effectively prevented me from ever having children of my own unless Bayer would like to pay for a surrogate because I sure as heck can’t afford it.
I had two IUDs – never again. First one was perforated and second one migrated upwards and needed to be removed during surgery. There’s Paragard lawsuits as many of them break during removal, causing the pieces to be lost somewhere in there.
The US only has 1 option for copper IUDs, there’s way more options in other countries (their IUDs are smaller/less painful, check out the Gynefix!)