Contraception, who decides? (1/30/2007)

January 22 marked the 34th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe versus Wade decision, which legalized abortion under certain circumstances.  Yet several anti-abortion/anti-contraception groups still try to deny women the right to make our own health decisions.  Tragically, some of these so-called pro-lifers have bombed women’s clinics and murdered people who don’t agree with them.

Last September, Joseph Scheidler, head of the Pro-Life Action League, held a convention in Rosemont, Illinois, to attack contraception.  He said, “Contraception is more the root cause of abortion than anything.”  He claims that chemical contraception causes abortion because it might prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s womb.  In fact, scientific evidence shows that the pill works primarily by preventing ovulation. Libby Gray Macke, director of Project Reality, an abstinence program in Illinois, said, “Abstinence is the way to prevent abortion.” She rants that sex is solely for procreation.  Does that mean infertile couples and older people should not marry?

Where are these so-called pro-life groups when it comes to ending the Iraq war, as tens of thousands of people are maimed and killed?  Washington Post staff writer Nancy Trejos, in a January 4 article, documents that Iraq’s woes add major risks to childbirth.  Iraq once had a premier health-care system, but now pregnant women struggle to get pre-natal care due to closed roads, curfews, gun battles and bomb blasts.   Then, if they can reach a hospital, they are unlikely to get adequate care.  Do Iraqi babies matter?

91 Percent of Americans agree that couples should have access to birth control.  96 percent of 15- to 44-year-old women who have sex use contraception.  Who should control this decision?  Women or the state?  But compulsory pregnancy appears to be President Bush’s policy.  He has nominated Eric Keroack to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs.  Keroack believes that women who have sex outside of marriage use up their so-called bonding hormone, ocytocin, and cannot form lasting relationships. Does he know that ocytocin, released during breastfeeding, relaxes the mothers and bonds them with their babies?  Does he think ocytocin runs dry so it’s gone after, say, two pregnancies? He claims that premarital sex is germ warfare and that contraception demeans women, degrades human sexuality and hurts human health.

As individual states restrict access to contraception and abortion, women lose the right to control our own bodies and lives.  William Baude, in a New York Times editorial last year, points out that if a state decrees life begins at conception and makes it illegal to cross state lines to have an abortion, then the state could curtail pregnant women’s movements.  Many states now hold children in protective custody if the state believes the parents will hurt them.  Thus, if the Roe decision is overturned, a state might try to put unborn children into protective custody.  No longer could a woman and her doctor decide what’s best; the state would be in control.

Catholics for a Free Choice have a wise policy; it is:  Nobody wants to need an abortion.  Picture a world where safe, reliable birth control is affordable and everybody uses it.  Where the decision to become parents is made responsibly.  Where parents have easy access to childcare.  Where people have health care whether or not they have jobs. Where sex is both serious and pleasurable.  In this world, abortions aren’t illegal.  They’re prevented.  Isn’t that the best choice of all?

- Judith Kohler

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