Pregnant Woman, Crossed Out

 The little pills came in heavily packaged sets of ten, each with a line drawing of a pregnant woman in black, with a red circle and an x through it.

No pregnant women were harmed in the manufacture of these pills? For allergy sufferers, these pills contain no traces of pregnant women?

But no, these were anti-acne medication pills known to cause birth defects.

I didn't really care about my acne in high school. Or most of college. It was bad, and it was a family tradition, lovingly passed down through my mother from her father and generations of people before him. My mom was prescribed the "go out in the sun" prescription, which ended up being the "skin cancer removal many years later" prescription. So I was fastidious about sunscreen.

But by the middle of college, I was getting really tired of constant acne. I wanted it off my face. And none of the usual prescriptions worked. So I ended up with the end of the line vitamin A derivative.

With all that entailed. The blood tests, the food issues, the humiliation. I had to avoid eating sweet potatoes, carrots and orange foods full of vitamin A. I had to sign all kinds of legal forms and participate in a survey.

And I had to sign a paper saying I would use two kinds of birth control.

And the humiliation: for two and a half sessions of anti - acne treatment, lasting several months each time, I had to take regular pregnancy tests.

I was a virgin the entire time. For reasons related to attachments I had at the time and to my religious community and beliefs, I did not have sex until much later in life.

So first, I had to argue with the first dermatologist that I did not need to be on birth control pills.

Then, every month or so, I had to get up early in the morning, take the subway to the hospital, and take a pregnancy test. While I was a virgin.

And every month - surprise! The test came back negative.

My mom said, "you know, there was once a Jewish virgin. She was named Mary."