by PAMELA HAAG
This is a polemic: Access to birth control isn’t really about my “health.” It’s not principally about the management of ovarian cysts or the regulation of periods.
Birth control isn’t about my health unless by health you mean, my capacity to get it on, to have a happy, joyous sex life that involves an actual male partner. The point of birth control is to have sex that’s recreational and non-procreative. It’s to permit women to exercise their desires without the sword of Damocles of unwanted pregnancy hanging gloomily over their heads.
This proposition is radical only by default, because mainstream liberal voices in Congress, especially, have euphemized women’s desires out of the current birth control and abortion disputes.
I understand why they’ve done this, in terms of narrow political expediency. We’ve been on the defensive about reproductive rights and women’s sexual liberty for decades. We’ve used a euphemism of “choice” for years.
The problem with choice is that it pairs the philosophically monumental with the rhetorically puny. On the one hand, “choice” describes the abortion cause that we’ve taken thousands of political casualties to defend; on the other hand, it describes 20 brands of toothpaste.
Rhetorically, liberals have also argued from the exceptional cases to defend reproductive rights, sensing a more sympathetic ear when they do. For example, assaults on abortion rights are often combatted with the anecdote of the tragic but less common abortion-seeker: victims of incest, rape, or life-threatening medical danger.
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