It can be controversial to assert in public debate with pro-choicers that abortion is used as birth control. But then there are pro-choicers like this, who just come right out and say it:
Until mass abstinence is feasible or permanent pregnancy is desired, sustainable, or safe, though, the best options women have to control their reproductive health are contraception and abortion.”
by 
I think the article might have a point in arguing that the attempts to restrict abortion by restricting funding to health clinics creates problems for the health clinics. Health units should be able to purchase what is needed most, without worry about what outsider funders permit or not permit. Also, defunding contraceptive funds for people who want to use them sounds like a stupid thing. Sure, not all contraception methods are great, but nothing in life is perfect.
But I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but that first paragraph seems to have a note of cruelty in it. Something about the idea that mass abstinence isn’t an option and thus birth control and abortion is the solution. Well, I can’t help thinking about how control of their reproductive health is not just preventing or ending a pregnancy. It should include more control over one’s own sexual life, the elimination of rape and the building of social support so that women do not feel pressured to have sex. It should be about having the economic and social supports so that a person can raise a child.
In Ontario the government has just cancelled the Community Start Up and Maintence Benefit. This is a fund that was available to people on Ontario Works or Disability Support. Having heard stories of numerous women who used the fund to flee from abusive relationships, I think… if we want to support reproductive freedom, real reproductive freedom, we need to have funds like that. We need to have living wages so that a person working a single full time job can support a family. That would do wonders for the sake of so many people’s marriages, strained as they are currently by financial concerns.
Slut shaming needs to stop. “Keep your legs shut” is nasty and wrong. But so is the implied “open the legs lots but close up that uterus.” Just preventing or ending pregnancy won’t really truely give reproductive and sexual freedom unless women also have the ability to choose to have children, or to be abstinent, or to fool around and do “everything but” or whatever it is. And while not every woman wants to be part of a monogamous long-term relationship, but for those who do want it, being able to maintain such a relationship is part of reproductive health.
I can’t quite explain what I’m wanting to say. Partly, I’m feeling very frusturated these days at the extent to which our culture pushes sex. I don’t believe that “abstinence only” works but I think wow, maybe there’s some middle ground of “responsible sex life without abortion.”
It is absolutely a myth that people can’t live without sex. What is needed is a cultural shift in perspective; if abstinence becomes a more attractive and acceptable option, it will become more feasible on a grander scale (though I agree that, as history affirms, it will be nigh impossible to render ubiquitous). As you mention, Christy, there is far too much pressure (both subtle and overt) on women to have sex.