Reproductive rights have been a really hot topic in the news lately. Between the unending dispute over President Obama’s healthcare plan, and the race for presidential candidates to earn female voters, it seems like everyone and their uncle has an opinion on reproductive rights.
And yet, all the opinions, all the voices you hear are from older Americans, such as senators and presidential candidates. This strikes me as odd, and quite frankly, a little bit counterintuitive. A majority of these people will never be impacted by the issues they’re debating, as they’re past their reproductive years. The average age of a senator, for instance, is sixty-two.
So where does this leave the people that all this controversy will actually affect? I’m talking about the young men and women whose entire sexual lives will be determined by the thoughts and morals of the previous generation. How do they feel about the issues? How do they fit into this?
I set out to shed a little light on this question by creating a survey and offering it to my peers (my friends do have a tendency to swing more to the left, but I don’t think this stance is strong enough to make my findings wholly unrepresentative of the larger population.) Thirteen participants answered four questions based on subjects ranging from abortion to sex education to contraception. The anonymous answers I received yielded some encouraging, and often surprising, results.
1. Are you pro-choice or pro-life? Why?
Ten out of my thirteen participants responded that they are pro-choice. Most of the responses were conditional, which implies a certain level of moderation. One pro-choice participant stated “I honestly don’t like the idea of abortions if one can use other forms of contraception, but I also don’t believe that anyone should be deprived of the right to choose for themselves if the situation would be healthy for both the parents and the child.”
The pro-life participants had similar conditions in their responses. “I believe abortion is wrong unless the woman’s health is severely threatened,” one pro-life participant replied. Another stated that while they personally believe that abortion is wrong, it’s not their business to tell other people what they can and cannot do with their bodies, restating the sentiments of many of my pro-choice participants.
Both sides displayed a certain level of moderation and compliance. I think this shows some real potential for reconciliation and progress in the future.
2. Did you have sex education in high school? Do you feel it was useful?
Out of my thirteen participants, only one said that they found sex education useful. The other twelve reported that they had never had sex education due to an alternative program, or that they had sex education but they did not find it useful. Many participants reported being taught “abstinence only” (This policy was overturned in 2009, after many of my participants had already taken my school’s only health class.)
It seems apparent from the content and brevity of my participants’ answers that they really did desire comprehensive sex education, but most were disappointed by what they got.. One participant, in a response to a later question, sums up the sentiment quite nicely:
“Bleh, sex ed should be more than abstinence. They don’t give us any info about the choices that we have and what we can do to be safe, and they wonder why there are so many teen pregnancies, because people want to do it but they haven’t had the education to do so safely.”
Well said participant, well said.
3. What are your thoughts on contraception? This includes male and female condoms, oral contraceptives, diaphragms, etc.
The responses to this question were not at all surprising to me, but they have helped confirm something that’s been puzzling me for a while. Aside from a little mistrust over the efficacy of oral contraceptives, contraception was universally thought of as a good thing, even a necessity. As one participant aptly puts it, “Contraception is really freaking important. It prevents the spread of STIs and unwanted pregnancies.”
This still brings up an interesting question. If contraception is universally accepted by the people that will and do use them most, why have there been so many attacks on oral contraceptives lately? It continues to baffle me.
4. What role do you think legislature has in reproductive healthcare? Does the government have the right to determine what people can and cannot do with their bodies? Should the government be paying for reproductive healthcare?
I got some really interesting results for this one. Generally my participants believed that the government should not have the right to limit what a person can do with their bodies, which reflects some of the sentiments expressed in question one. But the question about whether or not the government should pay for reproductive healthcare yielded varied and contrasting results. One participant believed that the government had an obligation to educate people (as education is the best defense) but was undecided on whether or not it should provide actual contraceptives and other services. Another believed that the government should pay for it all, no questions asked. A third believed that the government should play no role whatsoever, including paying for it.
I guess the biggest thing to glean from these results is that when you bring in the issues of money and duty, things get complicated really quickly. It’s also a reminder that there is no simple fix for all of the restrictions on reproductive healthcare, and that to reach a solid decision, we’re going to need to compromise.
Alright, so what does all of this mean?
Well, if my sample at all represents the views of the larger demographic, I’d say that this conservative backlash we’re facing is not an end-all to the fight for reproductive rights. I’d prefer to call it a speed bump. In another forty years my generation is going to be the people in office, making all these important decisions that will almost exclusively impact the succeeding generation. I can only hope that we retain the opinions we’ve developed here: that abortion is a personal decision, not a political one; that contraception is a positive thing and a necessity; and that nobody has the right to govern what you choose to do with your body.
So keep your heads up, my friends. Though we may suffer at the hands of our predecessors, we still carry the potential for change.
- Written by NC Public Policy Intern, Anna Sorenson (Age 18)
Thank you, Katrina Wood, our Advocate of the Month, for all that you do to support Planned Parenthood! Katrina has been instrumental in not only phonebanking, writing letters, and rallying, but also recruiting her personal network to help support our efforts. Learn more about her below:
Planned Parenthood Health Systems
Sloane Whelan
Patty Dillon
Kira Miskimmin
Jessica
