What if I told you there was a thing that is small-in-size, easily accessible, reliable, and relatively safe and affordable, and that this thing has been proven to save lives, promote health, expand education, and create prosperity in your family, community, country? Who doesn’t want life, health, education, prosperity for their family, community, country? Isn’t that something you would get behind 100%?
Well, I’ve got additional great news. This thing is not a complex government program nor a non-profit organization run by eager, well-trained volunteers. It’s birth control. Or better stated, it’s letting women have access to birth control, be in charge of their own conception decisions, and then the families, communities, and countries in which they live supporting their ability to claim that power and make those choices for their bodies.
As Melinda Gates repeats both ad nauseam and also not often enough in her book The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World:
“When women can decide whether and when to have children, it saves lives. promotes health, expands education, and creates prosperity– no matter what country in the world you’re talking about.”
Conversations of anti-abortion and pro-life abound. But what about contra-conception? Why aren’t we having more conversations about contraceptives? Literally, the etymology of the word is contra-conception. Against conception/impregnation.
I am not catholic, so I do not see contraceptives at odds with my religious beliefs but Gates is. She dedicates ample time in her book to walk us through her personal faith journey working through her own catholic beliefs and how they affect, shape, and are in conflict with her vision of birth control as the first step in the solution to empower women and improve life for all.
I couldn’t agree more with Gates’ statement. As someone who in the last 3 years has had her life and body rocked by and then fully revolved around conception, birthing, and then supporting the lives of infants and toddlers, I am hyper-aware of how my life has been affected by the fact that I conceived, birthed, and now support the lives of said infants and toddlers. I am also acutely aware of and thankful for the fact that I could choose when to have my life and body rocked. Subsequently, I could also choose to not continue having my life and body rocked by preventing the conceiving, birthing, and supporting the lives of additional infants and toddlers. I can simply, affordably, safely use birth control to do so. And in doing so, I can improve my own life, health, and wealth as well as that of my family and, hopefully, as a byproduct additionally that of my community and country. I can also focus fully on the children I do have to ensure they eat enough, receive an education, and do not end up situational victims of a cycle of poverty. Because I am pro-contra-conception, I can also focus on my personal health, educating myself, working, and adding to the wealth of my family and the greater economy of my community and country.
If I lived in a family, community, or country where I did not have the ability to make the choice of when and whether to have children, then my life would likely be only that– having and then caring for children. And, while being a mother adds unquantifiable value to a family, community, country, I for one, know that I, and most women, have other things of value to bring to the table. And we deserve the chance to choose.
Gates goes on to detail diverse communities around the globe in which she has worked and developed relationships with women who, from a very young age and then throughout the rest of their lives, cannot decide whether or when to have children. Each one articulates both an incredible love for her children AND an incredible sadness/sense of frustration that she and they are stuck in a cycle of poverty because of being denied this choice.
At the basic, if we want children to move out of poverty, we ALL have to be given the ability to choose when and whether to have kids. As Gates puts it very clearly and succinctly:
“In fact, no country in the last fifty years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.”
Gates’ book is about so much more than simply birth control. It’s about how when we empower women to improve their own lives (by deciding when and whether to have children) that simple (but not easy as she shows us in her book) fact, in turn, improves the reality and future for everyone else, too. It’s about the fact that when families, communities, countries do not grant women the ability to chose when and whether to have children, then women don’t even have the ability to live out any other identity beyond child-birther and child-rearer. Women ARE birthers/mothers AND WOMEN ARE MORE. If a family, community, country denies birth control to women, it shows that these families, communities, and countries do not value women beyond their one identity as a birther/mother.
The sad, truthful irony is that the research shows that our families, communities, and countries are healthier, stronger, and richer when women are able to live out identities beyond and in conjunction with birther/mother. Therefore by restricting a women’s chance to choose whether and when to have children, a family, community, or country is essentially handicapping itself.
I think that my all-girls school primary and secondary education tried to teach us this, but I don’t think I fully understood it at the time– probably because I didn’t have to consider birthing and mothering in conjunction with puberty. Hockaday never tried to sell me on the lie that you “can have it all,” but they did, looking back on it now as a mother and a professional, work endlessly to imbue each female student with the vision that women have much value to contribute to the world AND women have the power to procreate the next generation into the world, too. You don’t have to just be one identity nor accept the one identity that your gender reveals biologically to you. You can and should make the choice to live out a variety of identities: teacher, engineer, daughter, artist, professional athlete, wife, politician, writer, doctor, lawyer, scientist, mother, astronaut, sister, physicist, researcher, friend, librarian, etc. etc. etc. Ask any pregnant lady or new mom, it’s exponentially harder at this moment to exercise your identity as anything other than birther/mother regardless of how important the other identities may be to you. Women deserve the chance to prioritize other identities too or to at least the chance to CHOOSE the mother identity as priority. That’s a wonderful choice too, provided it’s a choice.
So, to sum up… pretty much, women are super-humans and the LEAST we can do for them is to let them choose when and whether to have children. EVERYONE will be better off if we do. Having children is awesome. Don’t worry, World. Enough of us will still choose to live the birther/mother identity as central to who we are, but not necessarily at the expense of all others.
So, families, communities, countries, join me in the contra-conception movement!
It’s really the best way forward for us all.
La Principiante 