Fairness demands birth control access
In 1970, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court established a woman’s right to medical privacy in Roe vs. Wade, New York State legalized abortion. That was the same year my parents got married and a year before my mother's IUD failed.
They were poor, while my mother finished college and my dad worked as a research assistant sweeping animal excrement in a lab. It was the first year my father would apply to medical school; he finally got in three years later after being rejected by every school but one.
In 1971, my mom and dad simply could not start a family, and so they went to Planned Parenthood to terminate the pregnancy. It took them another 11 years to lift themselves out of poverty and complete their educations, before deciding it was time.
On Friday, the Trump administration gave employers free rein to deny their employees birth control coverage if they have a “religious or moral objection” — a move that will not only force many couples into unwanted pregnancies, but one that seriously restricts a woman’s ability to have recreational sex for pleasure as opposed to reproduction.
Men like Tim Murphy, the vehemently “prolife” congressman who urged his mistress to abort her inconvenient believed-to-be pregnancy and resigned Thursday as a result, will be free to continue business as usual.
Aside from abject hypocrisy, this is unequivocally about controlling women and defining the kind of sex they’re expected to have. As the rules explain, access to affordable contraception could lead to “risky sexual behavior” among teenagers and young women, like sex with multiple partners.
Men don’t even factor into the equation, making exactly two appearances in the 163-page document justifying the new rules — first in a footnote, then quoting a 2014 Health and Human Services report. To this administration, pregnancy and “women’s preventative services” are women’s problems, period.
Republicans have been pursuing this double standard for decades, most recently in March, when the all-male House Freedom Caucus met with the President to talk about exempting maternal health care from the GOP Obamacare repeal bill.
They hate taxes, but apparently, taxing women for their fertility is fine. And freedom is apparently only for “people of conscience,” which does not include couples who might want to prevent a pregnancy.
A 2016 Gallup Poll found that 89% of Americans consider birth control morally acceptable, and extramarital affairs like the ones members of Congress and our President have had the least acceptable. Yet somehow a supposed moral minority gets to impose its will on the majority. That’s not religious freedom; it’s tyranny.
It’s also sex discrimination. The American Civil Liberties Union promptly filed a lawsuit on the ground that the government is violating the equal protection clause of the Constitution by “forcing women to pay for their boss’ religious beliefs.” Although the ACLU is not explicitly making a Title VII argument, the famous clause, “because of sex,” added to the list of protected classes included in the 1964 Civil Rights Act could apply insofar as the act of sex itself is exactly what’s at issue.
My parents had an abortion because they couldn’t afford to have a child, but they also wanted to “live as normal people who could have a sexual life separate from having a family,” as my mother put it. They were both direct beneficiaries of that decision, and partners in the life they planned together.
This administration is setting up men to have the upper hand. Just like Harvey Weinstein, who used his power to make women vulnerable and then silenced them further into submission with nondisclosure agreements, women are now being sexually harassed by their government. Unsurprising, considering that the man at the top feels entitled to “grab ’em by the pussy,” and threatened to sue the 13 women who accused him of harassment.
When I called my mother to ask if I could interview her and my dad about their abortion, she said, “Of course, we have nothing to be ashamed of,” and offered to wake up my father from a nap. I asked him why abortion and birth control were “men’s issues,” to which he immediately responded, “Because women don’t get pregnant by themselves.”
In the America Donald Trump and his Republican allies want to create, reproductive rights are only a women’s issue when it comes to who pays.