Birds on the Brain

When the Democrats and other pro-choicers argue for preserving and expanding access to birth control, they talk about pregnant rape survivors and mothers of three who want to ensure they can provide for the children they already have. They talk about Planned Parenthood’s life-saving cancer screenings. They don’t talk about the millions of American women who aren’t mothers and don’t intend to be mothers, and just want to have sex. Lots of it. Purely for pleasure. Those millions of women get left out of this crucial conversation: their experiences obscured and stigmatized. Of course, we need to ensure that pregnant rape survivors can get the morning after pill or abortions if they want them. It is true that 61% of women who have abortions are already mothers and are terminating pregnancies because they cannot provide the emotional and/or financial support that another child would need from them. And Planned Parenthood does, of course, provide life-saving cancer screenings and STI testing. That is all true, and it should all be a part of the discussion about keeping contraception and abortion legal, accessible and affordable. But those can’t be the only stories we tell about birth control.