Every story shared through the IWBCA Legacy of Survival™ reveals the human cost of a system that values population statistics over individual lives. Medical guidelines from the CDC, WHO, and ACOG define acceptable risk through averages, estimating 3 to 9 blood clots per 10,000 women using hormonal contraception each year, compared with 1 to 5 among non-users. Those figures may appear small until they become personal, until they represent a woman whose name, face, and future disappear into a sea of statistics.

Survivors are not data points. Their stories illustrate what happens when policy favors efficiency over accuracy and when the phrase “not cost-effective” replaces preventive care that could begin with a simple test at a woman’s first gynecologic appointment or prior. Each voice in this series exposes what those fractions conceal—the missed diagnoses, the dismissal of symptoms, and the preventable crises that lead to critical care. Together, they form a collective record of endurance and a call for medicine to measure risk through humanity, not probability.