The War on Contraception

In "Contra-Contraception," Russell Shorto, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, documents the current war on contraception, tracing its roots to the U.S. Supreme Court's recognition of a constitutional right to privacy. "For the past 33 years — since ... the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 — American social conservatives have been on an unyielding campaign against abortion," Shorto writes. "But recently ... this campaign has taken on a broader scope. Its true beginning point may not be Roe but Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that had the effect of legalizing contraception."

The Casualties

The war on contraception is not new. Throughout our nation's history, the same forces that have opposed access to abortion have also opposed access to contraception, seeing a common thread among all forms of reproductive health care that enable a woman to determine whether and when to have children.

"'The linking of abortion and contraception is indicative of a larger agenda, which is putting sex back into the box, as something that happens only within marriage,'" says William Smith, vice president for public policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), in Shorto's article. "'Whether it's emergency contraception, sex education or abortion, anything that might be seen as facilitating sex outside a marital context is what they'd like to see obliterated.'"

What's notable about the war on contraception today is that several anti-contraception hardliners, long on the fringes of mainstream public opinion, are now in positions of great political influence and power. As a result, American society has already embarked on a steady regression to pre-Griswold days, when birth control was largely inaccessible, even for married couples:

• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has continued to drag its feet on the decision to make EC (also known as "morning-after" contraception) available without a prescription — a move that is endorsed by the mainstream scientific community and that could prevent an estimated 800,000 abortions a year.

• Some pharmacies have refused to fill prescriptions for EC and other birth control methods because of the personal biases of their pharmacists. These refusals pose a great obstacle for women trying to prevent unintended pregnancies, particularly in the case of time-sensitive EC. Anti-contraception advocates have fought for laws that give legal protection to such refusals.

• Under the administration of President Bush, the federal government has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into abstinence-only education programs. The effectiveness of these programs, which are forbidden to discuss birth control methods except to stress their failure rates, is unproven.

The list goes on. And the growing number of casualties in the war on contraception often passes under the radar without much fanfare.

But that may be changing. As they grow more confident, anti-contraception advocates are also becoming more open about their intentions. "'We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion,'" Judie Brown, president of the anti-choice group American Life League, tells Shorto in The New York Times Magazine story. "'The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set. ... We oppose all forms of contraception.'"

As the article also notes, Focus on the Family, another prominent anti-choice group, openly opposes the use of contraception on its website: "'Modern contraceptive inventions have given many an exaggerated sense of safety and prompted more people than ever before to move sexual expression outside the marriage boundary.'"

Even President Bush has refused to say that he supports the use of contraception, Shorto notes. At a White House press briefing in May 2005, a reporter asked then-Press Secretary Scott McClellan four times if the president supported contraception. "'I think the president's views are very clear when it comes to building a culture of life,'" McClellan responded. "'If they were clear, I wouldn't have asked,'" the reporter said. McClellan replied: "And if you want to ask those questions, that's fine. I'm just not going to dignify them with a response." Soon after, a group of Democrats in Congress sent a series of four letters to the president asking, "'Mr. President, do you support the right to use contraception?'" They never received a reply.

Punishment v. Prevention

The great irony in the war on contraception is that the same forces who oppose abortion also oppose expanding access to the tools that prevent unintended pregnancies and reduce the need for abortion. Instead of pushing for policies that promote responsibility, these advocates push for policies that punish women who choose to have sex without the intent of getting pregnant.

These policies of punishment often fall hardest on low-income women and minorities, groups that, perhaps unsurprisingly, also have the highest rates of abortion. As a recent study from the Guttmacher Institute, Abortion in Women's Lives, concluded, "... restrictions on abortion access fall hardest on young and poor women and women of color, who are already disadvantaged in a host of other areas, including in their access to the information and services necessary to prevent unplanned pregnancy in the first place."

Cynthia Dailard, a senior public-policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, spoke with Shorto for his story. "'Ten years ago the fight was all about abortion,'" she told him. "'Increasingly, they have moved to attack and denigrate contraception. For those of us who work in the public health field, and respect longstanding public health principles — that condoms reduce S.T.D.'s, that contraception is the most effective way to help people avoid unintended pregnancy — it's extremely disheartening to think we may be set back decades.'"

Ultimately, the war on contraception — whereby access to birth control pills, condoms, EC, and medically accurate sex education is constantly called into question — is not only dangerous, but also logically flawed. As Nicholas D. Kristof said in a recent column for The New York Times, "The administration's philosophy seems to be that the best way to discourage risky behavior is to take away the safety net. Hmmm. I suppose that if we replaced air bags with sharpened spikes on dashboards, people might drive more carefully — but it still doesn't seem like a great idea."

© 2006 Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. All rights reserved.