https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-the-oral-contraceptive-is-just-known-as-the-pill-4337831/
The ability to reproduce the species is an enormous power. That is why radical Republican conservatives want to take it away from those who can get pregnant. Republicans just voted down a bill in the Senate to codify legal access to contraception.
If you are someone who can get pregnant, as I have been, control of your own body’s reproductive power is essential.
Make no mistake. The modern women’s liberation movement is rooted in access to contraception. A contraceptive measure that women alone controlled was not only pivotal for women’s bodily integrity, but their economic integrity as well. They could enter the workforce and choose to plan their fertility accordingly.
I was able to exercise my own reproductive power because of the development of oral contraceptives (1960).
I had my first child while completing my Masters, my second after my Ph.D., and the third after my first book. My life as I have chosen to live it came about because it was possible to reliably plan giving birth.
Since 1960, much progress for women has been made in terms of workplace equality, legal equality, and social equality. The terms “domestic violence” and “sexual harassment” were created and defined. Laws and practices have been developed to combat these kinds of violence that suppressed, harmed, and even killed women, often with impunity.
These achievements and many more can disappear in a New York minute if contraception is banned.
More gains need to be made, of course, but if we don’t want to see what we have achieved so far disappear, we must have control of our own bodies.
And it goes beyond that. Capturing women’s reproductive power is part of a larger effort to radically transform this society.
In my field of liberation theology, we have an insight we call the “hermeneutic of suspicion.” This means my theological analysis starts with my deep suspicion that something else, in addition to what we see on the surface, is going on.
What is actually going on as I see it is an acceleration of the attempts to establish fascism in the U.S.
American fascism was born out of American slavery and the rise of Jim and Jane Crow. The separate, unequal, and oppressive laws of that period denying equality to some were confronted by the Civil Rights Movement, but they are scarcely gone.
In addition, historically speaking, fascists have argued that women's primary function was domestic and reproductive. Whether in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere, they expected women to produce the future citizens, workers and above all, soldiers and be absent from public life.
The now infamous graduation address at Benedictine University by the football player, Harrison Butker, is the playbook for what fascists want for women. Butker especially addressed the female graduates when he said, “I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you,” he said. “Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”
The key word is “diabolic.” That is, of the devil. Like all fascism both historic and contemporary, this drive to take away reproductive freedom from women and force them to have many children and be subservient to men is framed as “God’s plan.” Opposition to this is the work of the devil.
No, it’s not. I know Her, and I know that all human beings, women and men, are created in God’s image.
Free and equal. (Genesis 1:27)