The Republicans (in the US) have been trying to fiddle around again with women’s reproductive rights. It makes my blood boil.
When I was in my teens (early 1960s), considering my own sexuality, being tempted by my own body and that of my boyfriend, there was no reliable birth control. My parents, who were very gentle and kind, reminded me occasionally of the dangers of unplanned pregnancy. These included the physical dangers of early childbearing, the strong emotions engendered by sex. But I found the other implications they mentioned more frightening. For some reason I was particularly put off by the idea of being forced into marriage. I feared that forced marriage would mean a big, lifelong question mark for me: Did the father truly love me or did he simply marry me out of duty. And of course—if the father should refuse to marry me—single motherhood, without job skills, was another unappealing possibility. I was also reminded that early childbearing would mean the loss of many of my dreams for the future (an education, travel, interesting work). Abortion, never desirable, was illegal and dangerous. All these factors contributed to my maintaining my chastity for several years longer than I would have under current conditions.
Only a few years later, with the advent of effective birth control, there was a serious discontinuity, a shift in the ‘geography’ of women’s lives. Suddenly, sexuality was possible without several of these once-realistic fears. One immediate and obvious change was a shift in attitude about unmarried people living together. I remember the suddenness of the change in my own social network. In 1964, I illicitly (though with some considerable enthusiasm), obtained birth control so that I could engage in unmarried sex (I had to lie to the doctor, pretending I was about to marry). But a year later, I still rejected outright, and with some outrage, my lover’s suggestion that we simply live together; another woman in my social circle was shunned by some (though not by me) because she lived with a man. By 1966, my own parents suggested I first live unmarried with the man I actually did marry. And my friends were suddenly moving in together right and left. A huge cultural shift had occurred, and very quickly.
I recognize and retain some uncertainty about the appropriate age at which to begin engaging in sex; and I’m uncertain how parents should deal with the issue. How does one know when one’s children are ‘ready’ for meaningful sex? How does one protect those who are not yet ‘old enough’ somehow? And HIV/AIDS has added a dimension that complicates all sexuality. Ultimately, in my own children’s case, I concluded that I simply had to rely on their own good sense—but questions do remain in my mind. Still, overall, my own take on this historical reality is a decidedly positive one.
Despite these uncertainties—there are so many uncertainties about parenting—I wholeheartedly approve of the increase in women’s reproductive freedom that has occurred over the course of my own life. I am grateful that my daughter and (eventually) I were free to explore our sexuality before marrying, without the serious adverse social and health repercussions that had existed previously. I feel that it allowed us to consider other important issues, beyond simple sexual curiosity and desire, more fully than would have been possible previously, in selecting our marriage partners. The pleasures and knowledge gained from sexual experimentation, which had been available to men all along, became a possibility for women, expanding gender equality, making life fuller for both sexes.
So…to return to the Republicans…I deplore their attempts to regulate women’s sexuality with all my heart. The most damning element, in my mind, is one that doesn’t even affect those in my ‘socio-economic class’. I and my offspring could afford an abortion, even an illegal one, if we had so desired. In my youth, we all knew about women who’d died in alleyways from illegal abortions performed with coat hangers, by unlicensed abortionists. Roe vs. Wade changed that; it, along with the availability of the various preferred and reliable methods of birth control, truly liberated women, as few things had done before. George W. Bush’s policies that took away whatever access many poor women had to birth control brought tears to my eyes; and I shudder to think that current politics in the US may take these rights away from the women of this nation as well.
Going back to back alley abortions and old style, rigid sex roles is a bad idea. So is forcing women to bear children they do not want. No one wins under such circumstances.