Griswold

On June 7, 1965, the Supreme Court ruled that Connecticut’s ban of contraceptive violated marital privacy.  The lawsuit occurred after Estelle Griswold of Planned Parenthood and Dr C Lee Buxton were found guilty of handing out contraceptives.  It was a 7-2 decision that also gave/acknowledge women privacy under the Constitution.

Source Pinterest

                Of course, the case didn’t really solve the birth control issue.  After in America, it is common for little blue pills of the get it up variety to be covered by insurance but not birth control.  Planned Parenthood is being defunded in various states, and if the Medicare cuts go into existence, women will be greatly affected. 

                It’s strange how one gender is encouraged to have sex, and the other not so much.  Jessica Valenti does write about this in terms of young girls in her excellent book The Purity Myth. 

Source Pinterest

                The issue of birth control and women is usually framed as one about the morality of having sex and the life of the fetus.  What the question ignores, as many writers before me have pointed out, is that half that equation is left out.  Sperm is needed to make a baby, to start life.  So why aren’t men encouraged to forego sex?

                Because it is really about control. 

                But you knew this.

                Other political commenters have asked why they should pay for something that doesn’t affect them.  But birth control does, doesn’t it?  Population rates affect everyone in the world regardless of where they live, don’t they? 

                It’s really about control and money.  If we see the name of a family being passed on from one generation to another, the man’s name, then knowing who the father of the kid is important.  Birth control in the hands of women challenges that, at least it appears to.  A man and his penis not so much. 

Doug Cox speaking in 2014.  Source Pinterst.  Many such bills are still being debated.

                Yet, this aspect is overlooked by many.  If it were really about the morality of sex, then the Texas bill that would penalize men for masturbating would be seriously debated and put into effect. 

                So, it is about control, of knowing that a child is yours if you are guy.  The thing is that enforcing child support isn’t nearly as good as it could be, and the weight of child rearing is never even, at least in how the media portrays it.  The woman is seen as responsible for the child – the child is owned by the man, provided he wants to claim ownership.

                It’s about control and ownership.

                It is also about sex, but not in the way that most people think.  Sex, too, falls under the question of ownership.  Look at the recent story of a man who sued his date for the cost of the ticket to the movie because she was texting.  Sure, she was rude, but that does not excuse his behavior of stalking and complaining.  It was a date, it didn’t work.  So, if a woman does not behavior how a man wants, he gets to sue.  She drove, why doesn’t he pay for her wasted gas?

                But no, his cost is considered and portrayed as the more important.

                Ownership.

                The question of ownership and responsibility runs deeper than that.  Women are monitored when they are pregnant, and there are good reasons for this.  Yet, how many times has a stranger felt a right to ask (or even just) touch a pregnant woman’s belly?  It isn’t just birth control.

                In her book Boundaries of Her Body, Debra Rowland writes “Through the eyes of America’s early lawmakers, women were meant - by God, Darwinian invention, or man-made interpretation – to serve mankind” (5).  Not much seems to have changed.

                Later in her book, Rowland points out the number of times that judges have used a woman’s past abortion against her in sentencing (see page 95).  Additionally, she notes, “because women bear children, laws intended to protect women ‘and their unborn children’ were permissible even where protective legislation curtailed a woman’s individual ‘liberty’ interests” (55).

                Again, it hasn’t changed much.  There are seven states that have 1 abortion clinic (Vicenews), in July there will be no Planned Parenthood in Wyoming (Right to Life), Kentucky may become a state with no abortion clinics.  Texas' Senate passed a bill that makes requires fetal burial and bans D&E procedures (which aren't always used for abortion)

                It’s not all bad.  In California and Oregon, a woman can get birth control without a doctor (Huffington Post).  But every so often, a state tries to make condoms prescription only. 

                Women’s bodies are scary things.  Bleeding and stuff.  Good thing we have the government wanting to take ownership.