Feminism Is For Everyone

Feb 3, 2009,11:08 AM

money for birth control does not stimulate the economy

according to ruben navarette jr, the $200 M originally listed in the stimulus package to defray the rising costs of birth control is a ludicrous sham of how to best stimulate the economy, which channels the eugenics movement.

of course, after evoking images of Margaret Sanger and her well-documented racism as certain by-products of birth control pills, the money going towards the birth control issue was taken out of the stimulus package.

while margaret sanger was unequivocally wrong in her supremacist, eugenicist agenda, this does not mean that birth control is terrible - nor does it mean that the idea of making birth control more available is ridiculous.

during the Nicolae Ceausescu dictatorship in Romania, access to contraceptives was widely banned and women were sometimes using abortions as their primary source of birth control.

in bringing up the example of Romania, I am of course constructing a reductionist, extremist argument. limiting government spending on birth control is not equivocal to constructing a communist regime with widespread abortions to prevent the birth of starving children.

but this ridiculous, offensive tactic is exactly used by mr. navarette, jr. spending government money on birth control does not equate to constructing a widespread eugenics movement.

what is necessary is a dialogue, since it is inescapably true that governmental policy on family planning does have an effect on the nation - socially, politically, and yes, economically.

writes author Gail Kligman, "Analysis of reproductive policies thereby illuminates the strategies employed by the state and by individuals to achieve their respective goals and exposes how intrusions of the former led to conformity, or to evasion or distortion by the latter" (The Politics of Duplicity, link to e-book here, if you are a UVA student).

does this mean that we should include bc money in an economic stimulus package? maybe not. but it is an over-simplified and useless argument to say that spending USD on bc will, by definition, create a new-age eugenics movement.