[On October 16,
1916, Margaret
Sanger opened her first birth control clinic in New York City. So this
week, on the 100th anniversary of that moment, I’ll AmericanStudy
Sanger and other histories and images connected to this still-controversial
subject, leading up a special weekend post highlighting a great scholarly book
on the topic!]
Two ways the Georgetown law student’s 2012 rise to fame extended my
week’s themes and reflect their continued presence in our society and culture.
1)
Medical contexts: Details in every post this
week, from Esther’s need for a prescription in The Bell-Jar to the debates over the Pill’s side effects, have
illustrated that birth control conversations are at least as much as about
medicine and health as they are about sexuality and family. But because Fluke’s
activism and Congressional testimony were focused
on why birth control should be included in health insurance plans and
coverage, the medical issues became even more central to this moment and
debate. For example, Fluke and her supporters (of which I was and remain one)
argued at length that the Pill and birth control are used by women for a number
of medical
and health purposes, at least as often as they are for sexuality and
reproductive control. Such arguments unquestionably risk stereotyping or
demonizing women who do use birth control solely for sex (as exemplified by
item #2 below), but they nonetheless also help us better engage with the range
of issues to which birth control connects.
2)
Moral contexts: In his critiques of Fluke’s
cause and testimony, right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh laid bare, as he so
often does, the narratives at the core of an extremist conservative position (in
this case, opposition to birth control). On a February 29th
broadcast, Rush argued (among many other things, as that video captures), “Fluke
essentially says that she must be paid to have sex—what does that make her? It
makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute.” Leaving aside the entire
misrepresentation of Fluke’s position, Limbaugh’s comments reflect an element
that’s been central to the debates over birth control from Sanger’s and Esther’s
eras down to our own: a connection of birth control to not just sex but
promiscuous sex, sex that exists outside of moral frameworks such as those of religion
or the traditional family. It was precisely that narrative, after all, which
the 1975 Trojan ad was trying to combat. As Limbaugh and many subsequent
controversies indicate, that narrative remains very much with us in the 21st
century, making it all the more important that we better remember the histories
of birth control on which I’ve focused this week.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other histories or images you’d highlight?
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