The battle to ban birth control

For those on the pro-choice side of the question, restricted access to birth control doesn't just mean an increase in the number of abortions; it means the loss of other benefits as well. Contraception has given women the freedom to put off marriage, to go to college in greater numbers, to bring more wanted children into the world, and to find good jobs and thus bring more wealth into their families. Asked how he responded to the charge that banning contraception would turn back the clock on these advances, Ruben Obregon, Worthington's co-founder in NRFC, responded: "Do you think a woman who has had an abortion feels that killing her unwanted child is an advance? My friends who have had abortions don't exactly feel this way." Obregon added, "It's interesting how you fail to mention the high divorce rate, children of broken families, the spread of HIV and other STDs, all of which could arguably be linked [to] the impact of contraception on society."

Obregon, who would only respond to questions via e-mail, and who refused to divulge his age, religion, location or line of work "out of respect for my family and my next of kin," and because "it just opens things to ad hominem attacks," also added, "And then there is the potential problem of not having enough gainfully employed workers to support those on social security." Asked to clarify whether he meant that Americans needed to procreate more to create more workers, he replied, "No, you are saying that. Nice attempt to put words into my mouth."

Any attempt to clarify Worthington or Obregon's position, or to get them to back up their claims, led to more misdirection, fuzzy arguments, or, at best, questionable and clearly biased studies. To the suggestion that the problem with condom failure rates had to do with a lack of sex education, that distributing condoms without education was like throwing someone a deflated life jacket and not teaching them how to inflate it, Worthington responded, "What we're talking about here is the difference between something that is morally wrong and something that is morally indifferent. What is morally wrong is having sex before marriage."

Ultimately, Worthington and Obregon's fight isn't about birth control or abortion then, but about changing the way people live. Worthington admitted that she thought "sexuality is a gift from god," and that she believes in "abstinence until marriage"; asked why she didn't state that explicitly on the site, she hesitated before replying that it was "something we didn't feel was important to mention, because what we felt was important to point out was the dangers of contraceptive use."

According to Page, there's no way to distinguish the anti-choice and religious arguments anymore. "The anti-choice movement has become a religious movement, and because of that, their interest isn't in reducing abortion. In fact, reducing abortion has become problematic for them, because they want to strip Americans of using birth control, in effect to change the entire family structure."

Page says she has noticed, too, that some anti-choice groups tend not only to oppose birth control, they also oppose child care. In her book she points to some troubling statistics and anecdotes: Ninety percent of senators who opposed the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act are anti-choice; in the 2004 Children's Defense Fund ranking of the legislators best and worst for children, the 113 worst senators and Congress members are all anti-choice; Web sites like Lifesite and that of the Illinois Right to Life Committee post reports linking child care and aggression; Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America stress the damage that day care can have on a child. (Most of their information comes from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Early Child Care Report, which has been debunked again and again and again.) "The trifecta is ban contraception, ban abortion, make child care impossible," says Page.

Frances Kissling agrees that the ultimate message is that "mommy should stay home and take care of the kiddies. This is bound up in this notion of men at the head of a family, of women's identity as linked to their biological capacity, that men and women are complementary and different, that a woman's primary function is motherhood."

The site's inconsistencies and seemingly pro-feminist viewpoint support that view. "If this was 1885, people reading this site would see it as very internally consistent," says Chip Berlet. "It's implicitly patriarchical, but it's the Victorian patriarchical position -- it's not just pre-Vatican II, it's pre- the last century: Put women on a pedestal; protect them from the dangers of the outside world."

So why does it still resonate with some people? "For a lot of people it hasn't been real good here in the post-Enlightenment -- people have lost a connection to family and community, and they're confused," says Berlet. "The mythical reconstruction of the past where men were men and women were protected by the men is a cozy idea."

But if the post-Enlightenment comes with its collateral damage, there's collateral damage to pushing the ideals of traditional marriage as well. Martha Kempner, director for public information at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), points out that "for many young people, this completely ignores the reality they're living in now. There's no [room for an] alternative family structure. Say if your grandparents are raising you: You're not as good, your family is not as good."

Kempner thinks that, in the face of the anti-birth-control movement and Web sites like NRFC, the pro-choice side has to have "as many, if not more, places where [people] can get real information. And we have to teach critical thinking skills -- one of the most important things a comprehensive sexuality education can do is teach you how to look at information and understand what makes it scientific, what makes it biased, and what makes it opinion."

Kempner also thinks that, often, pro-choicers may be too quick to dismiss the importance of seemingly absurd claims. She points to a quote from Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, criticizing a study that correlated the increased availability of birth control with the decrease in abortion rate: "An 'unintended pregnancy' could be a wonderful surprise, not planned but welcome. Why should the government be in the business of 'preventing' a surprising but welcome pregnancy?" "Sometimes we look at statements like that and see them as completely ridiculous," says Kempner, "and possibly wrongly assume that other people will see how ridiculous they are."

Gloria Feldt says that the pro-choice movement needs to go even further. "Merely responding to attacks or even fighting back won't do; in fact, it will make things even worse," she wrote in an e-mail. Indeed, Feldt believes that even with its sly rhetoric and legislative victories, the anti-choice movement may finally have crossed the line, and given pro-choicers something to rally around. The pro-choice movement, she says, "must come roaring forward with a strong message, stirring policy agenda, and bold expansion of direct services. Motherhood in freedom is an ideal that is steeped in our highest values as a society. We own that ground, and if we claim it, it will not erode."

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