April 4, 2012
Times Writers Group: Birth control access is vital
Big changes in society, biology support its use
The idea that birth control would become a key issue in the GOP primary race would have seemed preposterous last summer, but Rick Santorum’s unexpected rise to become the last obstacle in Mitt Romney’s preordained path to the nomination changed everything this winter.
Now, thanks largely to the arch-conservative from Pennsylvania, a debate that was effectively ended by the Supreme Court a half-century ago has been reopened, and again Americans are arguing about whether women should have access to birth control.
Birth control was a controversial topic in the 19th century, and several states had banned the sale of birth control devices and medications by 1900. These laws were collectively struck down with the Supreme Court’s 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which found an 1879 state law prohibiting the use of birth control and banning doctors from discussing the issue with their patients to be unconstitutional. Writing for the 7-2 majority, Justice William O. Douglas identified a “right to privacy” in the Constitution that invalidated Connecticut’s attempt to legislate morality.
Santorum disagrees, however, claiming the court erred and claiming “the state has the right to pass whatever statues” it wishes.
Legal arguments aside, the truth is that Santorum’s campaign against birth control is as quixotic as his run against Romney. What hasn’t been said often enough is that arguments against birth control are not only political losers, but that scientific and sociological observations alone should convince rational observers that America will never go back to its pre-Griswold stance.
Modern necessity
Our bodies and our society have changed enough since the 19th century that it simply wouldn’t work.
Consider Santorum’s favorite alternative to birth control for unmarried people: abstinence.
Avoiding sexual intercourse before marriage may well have been a rational idea in the late 19th century, when social morés strictly limited unchaperoned contact during courtship.
The age of consent then was 10 to 12 years in most states, and marriages in the early teens were not uncommon.
The average age of menarche – onset of puberty in girls – was slightly older than 14 in 1900. The odds were good then that the gap between sexual maturity and marriage was quite small, perhaps three to five years on average and often less.
In a culture that outwardly condemned premarital sex and lacked widespread access to birth control, abstinence may have been viable for some percentage of teens, especially if they were only expected to rely on it for a short time between puberty and marriage.
Fast forward to 2012. Today, the age of consent ranges from 16 to 18 in all states. The median age of first marriage has climbed to 28 for men and 26 for women. And most significantly, biological changes ascribed to a range of factors have driven the age of menarche down to 12, with many girls entering puberty as young as 10.
Do the math. Now the average span from sexual maturity to marriage is 14 years, often longer.
Abstinence that sometimes worked for about three years in 1900 is simply unrealistic when applied to the 14 year gap young people face today in a dramatically more sexualized culture.
Changing norms
Even if one ignores the evidence, abstinence is not only unrealistic, it simply doesn’t work because most people fail to abstain.
The investment of more than $1 billion in federal funds to support abstinence-based sex education the past decade has not impacted our changing bodies and social norms at all. A 2007 study published in Public Health Reports found that the vast majority — 95 percent — of Americans have sex before marriage, 75 percent of them before 20.
Those are the facts and regardless of what Santorum thinks, we need to maintain access to birth control and comprehensive sex education for everyone if we’re even remotely serious about reducing the numbers of unintended or unplanned pregnancies among American youth.
