Morality Encoded: The Effects of United States Public Policy On Contraceptive Access
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Authors
DiPonio, Valerie
Issue Date
2010
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
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Abstract
In completing this project, my chief goal was to answer the following
question: How can we characterize the relationship between U.S. public policy and
contraceptive access, and how does this relationship help us to understand the status
of women and their citizenship in the U.S.?
As I have mentioned, U.S. public policy often has the effect of limiting
contraceptive access. In essence, laws and policies that complicate and/or prevent
women's access to birth control are more than concrete examples of what society
regards as women's "proper" sexual and reproductive behavior. By thwarting
women's ability to separate sex from pregnancy, these laws and policies serve as a
check on female sexuality and a limit to reproductive control. In doing so, they
effectively reinforce a patriarchal order that calls for a relegation of women to the
private sphere, primarily through the control of women s fertility. Hence: Legislation
that creates barriers to contraceptive access is a concrete example of the state
enforcing male supremacy and female· subordination.
Answering my research question required that I identify the barriers to birth
control created by the U.S. government, along with any barriers it has helped to
obstruct. Of course, to comprehensively understand any political issue - and birth
control is a political issue- is to understand and explain the underlying causal factors.
It is to investigate the issue at the root and ask: how did things get to be this way? In
order to adequately confront the issue of the effects of U.S. public policy on
contraceptive access, it therefore seemed necessary to also confront the previously
mentioned terror surrounding birth control -the fear that led to the creation of law
that often limits women's ability to obtain contraceptives and therefore their ability to
make decisions regarding reproduction. What is this terror, and how and why did it
arise? What makes it so powerful that we continue to see its effects in today's society
and politics?
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91 p.
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