Liberal Logic: Giving Contraception to Low-Income Women Fights Poverty
But I thought we were supposed to leave reproductive decisions to women.
"Want to fight poverty?" asks The Washington Post's Catherine Rampell before answering her own question: "Expand access to contraception."
This "humble suggestion," as she calls it, is an "antipoverty" strategy she believes would promote "economic security, educational attainment, income mobility and more stable environments for American children." In addition to these benefits, Rampell foresees deficit reduction and abortion reduction, but only if low-income women are given better access.
She laments that contraception has been framed in feminism, sexual liberation, and a free pass for casual sex. After all, it is feminists who demand others stay out of their reproductive decisions. That is, of course, until they need solutions like Rampell is calling for. But I digress.
She points to a few figures to make her case. Some of those figures are provided by the Guttmacher Institute, a long-time affiliate of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which claim that poor women are five times as likely to get pregnant accidentally than a wealthier woman. She is also obliged to quickly offer another statistic to ensure no one concludes that poor women are having more sex. Apparently, rich and poor engage in the activity at about the same rates.
But according to Rampell, "Poor women are much less likely to use contraception." So, instead of allowing them to make their own reproductive decisions -- the feminist rallying cry -- Rampell wants the government involved to give those poor women the "same access" to the most effective, and also more expensive, forms of birth control. But that's not how she sees it:
[I]mproving access to birth control doesn’t mean giving government control over poor women’s fertility; it just means giving poor women the exact same (voluntary) options that are already available to their more privileged sisters: more choice over whether, when and with whom they decide to have a baby.
She seems sure that poor women can't make their own decision because apparently they don't have a choice "with whom they decide to have a baby." But Rampell is confident that offering "free access" to the more effective IUDs over just the pill or condoms, will "sharply reduce unplanned pregnancy and abortion rates" among them.
The article ends with her predicted results of such a government-funded program: An increase in high school and college completion rates, people will be discouraged from going on welfare, low-income people’s earning potential will be improved, and will somehow reduce government spending overall.
"For too long we’ve let fears of 'casual sex' get in the way of the very real economic challenge of casual childbearing," Rampell states. |
