By Holly McCully, Contributing Writer
After reading the Oct. 20 article in The Bona Venture, “Contraception isn’t a right,” I thought it was only logical to add a woman’s voice to the topic, seeing as it is an article about women, their health and their “crumbling self-worth” as noted by author Luke Nolan.
It is worth noting here that the title is inherently a misnomer; the only form of contraception covered in the article by Nolan is birth control – thus, rather than reading this article as a critique of contraception culture, it reads as an attack upon women with the exclusive analysis of birth control.
I could spend my time here writing about the effects of a debilitating, ovarian cyst that sucked the life out of my body, led to a dramatic weight loss and left me in such horrific pain I could often be found doubled over at work with shooting pains in my abdomen.
I could also spend time talking about endometriosis, which made my periods so heavy I was left shaky and dizzy in class due to loss of blood, both of which were healed with birth control.
I could fill this column with details of the mental and physical quality of life before birth control and after, but that’s not the point – it is utterly irrelevant.
It doesn’t matter if a woman is taking it for “cosmetic purposes” to heal her acne, for cycle regulation, for the purpose of hormonal contraception or to heal a major medical condition. There is no such thing as a valid or invalid reason for a woman to take birth control, because birth control is a right.
Birth control is a right guaranteed to women in the 1965 Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut, which ruled that a woman had a right to privacy in her life. This right to privacy extended to her private sexual life, including her choice to take hormonal contraception. Additionally, in Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972, this same “right of privacy” was extended to unmarried women as well.
The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter if a woman is using it to participate in the “pleasure-oriented hookup culture,” if she is using it for “cosmetic purposes” or if she is using it with the “original intention” to “strengthen marriage,” as Nolan stated. It is a right guaranteed to her no matter what, and it is morally abhorrent to try to suppress this right.
A woman can read through the side-effects of taking the pill for herself and with the supervision of her doctor, just like with any other medication, can make the decision for herself if it is right for her, her body and her own personal relationships. And she certainly doesn’t need a man critiquing her for her “crumbling self-worth” and observing imaginary “catastrophic consequences in terms of [her] personal relationships” while she does it.
mccullhp14@bonaventure.edu
