I’ve been at DKos since 2005. My first diary, written 6 ½ years ago, was on abortion and contraception in the context of the 2006 elections—and why we desperately needed to fight for pro-choice democrats in the primary, instead of supporting lukewarm “it’s icky, but I’ll let women have birth control” types like Bob Casey. Yes, I agreed that ridding the Senate of Santorum was an urgent necessity, but why couldn’t we find a more enthusiastically pro-choice candidate to do so? I was called the Dread Single Issue Voter by a lot of people, mostly men, when I said that I didn’t trust him to be a strong advocate for women’s reproductive rights. Well, I got proven right when he joined Republicans to vote for the Blunt bill.
Why did I feel so strongly about this?
I am 62 years old. I went to college from 67-71. I remember what it was like pre-Roe when your choices were carrying a pregnancy to term and putting the child up for adoption or seeking out a back alley abortionist and putting your life at risk. I also attended a Catholic college which did not provide birth control (Griswald was still a year away, but that didn’t change anything; they still weren’t providing birth control when I graduated) and likely still doesn’t. I saw the results of a lack of access to contraception up close and personal.
When I went off to college at age 17, I was housed in a dorm that was usually reserved for juniors and seniors. It had suites which shared a bathroom and a small study area, much nicer than the communal showers in the other dorms. Twelve of us freshman were assigned to that dorm, apparently because the college wanted to follow our progress. We were all ether scholarship students or women who had scored high enough on SATs to be in advanced placement classes (I, for example, was exempt from any freshman English classes, including the Advanced ones, and placed in a sophomore English Literature survey class). We were the best and the brightest.
By senior year, two of those womenhad dropped out because they were pregnant. They got married, but getting married violated their scholarship agreement. Morals clauses were common back then, especially id the scholarship is given by a religious group like the Knights of Columbus. The third was able to marry and stay in school because her scholarship wasn’t a religious one. That’s 25% of the women who were considered among the most promising students who got pregnant. Two of the original group of 12 transferred so I don’t know what happened to them—that makes it three out of the ten who made it to senior year.
I had two other good friends who faced similar decisions. One took a leave of absence and had the baby and gave it up for adoption. She was the only one who could have gotten a legal abortion. Her dad was a wealthy opthamologist, and he could easily have convinced the board at the hospital that she needed an abortion for mental health reasons. She refused the option. She told me later that she wished she’d taken his offer, because every time she heard a story about the abuse of an adopted child, she worried that it was her son. The second was a year younger than me, a drama major, who missed a period. She was lucky that the father (married and older and rather a louse in my opinion) had enough money for her to afford to a gynie and get the primitive version of Plan B. I accompanied her on that doctor’s visit, and held her hand in the waiting room. At least he paid for it and provided transportation.
That’s 14 women, and 5 unplanned pregnancies. That’s ONE in Three.
Why did it happen? I tend to blame lack of access to reliable contraception. They’d used condoms, but probably not with the rigor they should have—the result was a baby none of them had planned for or wanted. I don’t know what happened to them. I suspect some of them stayed college dropouts. It’s damned hard to go back when you’re working to support yourself and your child. Three DID graduate.
But that’s the cost of not providing easy and cheap access to contraception: very smart, talented women are lost to early child-bearing and early marriages which often fail.
If Catholic U had had health insurance, instead of an incompetent doctor who showed up for two hours daily and who was forbidden to prescribe contraception, these women could have chosen a doctor and gotten the Pill—and two of them would have stayed in school and gotten heir degrees. We’d have likely gained a couple of lawyers or state department people. Instead, they left school and had to get jobs and face the disgust of society. They lucky enough to marry because in 1970, being a single mother who’d never been married was not acceptable, though no one ever complained about the morals of the men who got them pregnant.
This is why we cannot afford to lose the war on women. We have to fight for contraception and abortion. Obama was dead right about the necessity of institutions that are NOT churches or church-run schools (colleges are hardly the same as parochial schools) must provide insurance which covers contraception for employees and student. His compromise means churches don’t have to pay for contraception and are free to bemoan and condemn its use, but allows women access to the healthcare they need.
Added to that is access to necessary information about sexuality and birth control. The same people who want to limit access to contraception (including banning the most reliable forms along with abortion because they don’t see a difference, even if scientists say their beliefs are BS) also want to ban comprehensive sex education. In most areas that teach comprehensive sex ed, parents with religious objections can opt out of it completely or from sections which discuss homosexuality, birth control, abortion and STI prevention—but that isn’t enough for these zealots. They want to decide for other parents what their children will elarn, because they know best since God told them so. They want young women to grow up ignorant of the facts and thus be unable to make intelligent choices about sexuality which can make their leives better or destroy their lives. They believe that ignorance is innocence. It isn’t. It’s simply ignorance.
Women should not have to drop out of college or lose scholarships because of an unplanned pregnancy—because reliable contraception makes it easy not to get pregnant. That is what this war is all about really: keeping women barefoot and pregnant, stuck in marriages that are miserable because the low-paying jobs they’re qualified for won’t allow them to leave and support their kids. Without access to contraception, women can’t get an education, which means they are dependent on fathers and husbands. Which is precisely what the Religious Right wants.
Along with this is the notion that people like Rush and the Republicans like to push: women who need contraception are Bad Girls, because Good Girls don’t have sex. They are virgins until they marry. If Good Girls learn about sex and birth control and abortion, they’ll have sex and become Bad Girls. Even worse, there won’t be any consequences for women whoa re sexually active before marriage (or who have sex within marriage for anything but pro-creation), there will be no reason for girls to stay Good. They will become Sluts, the worst thing you can call a women, in their eyes. Because a Slut controls her own body, decides for herself with whom she will have sex and when, if or when she will have children, whether she works or becomes a SaH Mom. She can have sex without being punished for it, and without being under the control of some man. She can get an education, and vie for jobs with (gasp) MEN.
Of course they forget that it takes two to tango—in other words, for straight women (lesbians are lumped in with the gay, except in the girl/girl porn which men like Rush adore) to become Sluts, it takes a man. But oddly, the men who change Good Girls into Sluts are never vilified. Even women buy into this—men like George Clooney with multiple partners are admired, but women like Cameron Diaz who state they don’t believe in marriage and prefer to have serial relationships, including several men at the same time, are greeted with open-mouthed shock if not downright disapproval (even more so if they say they don’t want children)
Classic example was a conversation one of my best friends had with her daughter and her daughter’s friends from college. They were ragging on a friend who was known for short-lived relationships, who didn’t want to get seriously involved or even date the same guy for any length of time, who had been known to have more than the occasional one-night stand. They were laughing and calling her a slut, and they half-meant it in a disapproving way. They went on to a male pal who was the King of the One Night Stand and never dated a girl more than three times because he had no desire to be “trapped” into a relationship. He often dated four women at a time. They called him a stud and a player. Oh, yeah, and both were using birth control.
My friend chimed in, “Hey wait, didn’t your friend X do the exact same thing? Not date the same guy for very long? Occasionally have a one night stand? How come she’s a slut and he’s a player? Why the double standard?”
They discussed it an agreed that if she was a Slut, so was he.
Personally, I don’t think either the girl or the guy were sluts in the pejorative sense. They knew themselves well enough to realize they weren’t ready for any heavy duty relationships, but they enjoyed sex. They made no promises, were utterly honest with their partners, and practiced safe sex. But they were Sluts the way we mean it: people who had enough sense to be sexually responsible.
I want more Dems, but I also want better Dems. Dems who are truly pro-choice and won’t get sucked in by the claims of the Religious Right that just having insurance for students and employees that covers birth control even though they are not paying for the contraception somehow destroys their religious liberty. Dems who realize that if a woman cannot control her body, equality is worthless, Without contraception and abortion, we cannot get an education, cannot hold down a decent job, cannot leave unhappy or abusive relationships. Reproductive rights for women are the key to every other right. and the Religious Right knows it. This is why they condemn women who have sex outside marriage as sluts, but never men.
I don’t know about you, but I refuse to let them turn the clock back. I stopped being a Good Catholic Girl a long time ago, and am now a Slightly Wicked Wiccan Woman—and a proud Slut. Time to fight back. The Way We Were stank.