Yes, I am pro-choice. There, I’ve admitted it. Now you know.
(for Pre-Choice, Part 1 follow this link)
Did I mention being pre-choice, being in favor of choice?
The comparison between dieting and fertilization is not meant to trivialize the consequences of fertilization. This is a “think about it” challenge and not a discussion of equal magnitude of consequences. Yet, both should entail consideration as to consequences and responsibilities. For those who face either long-term obesity or unwanted pregnancy, the magnitude is both different and in the case of pregnancy, more immediate.
As a western society, several factors have become part of the lack of consideration towards consequence of many decisions. Somehow in the mid-twentieth century, sexual activity became more of a recreational activity and not part of familial considerations. The baby boom following WW II was accompanied by advances in medicine for better and more accessible prenatal care. There was also a movement following WW I which was formalized with the founding of the American Birth Control League by Margaret Sanger in 1921 (which became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942). Sanger popularized the term “birth control” which focused on legalizing contraception. She was a nurse as well as activist and educator but drew a strong distinction between contraception prevention and abortion, declining to participate in the latter. Her stated belief in contraception as a means to foster eugenics1 as was popular with socialist politics; she and her husband had become participants in local intellectual circles, left-wing artists, socialists and activists which included Upton Sinclair and for a time her lover H.G. Wells. She was an early feminist and wrote magazine articles on sex education. The federal Comstock law classified the frankness of these articles in the classification of obscenity. In later years (2020) because of her support for negative eugenics, her contributions to ‘birth control’ was disavowed by Planned Parenthood when she was proclaimed to be racist or class-elitist.
Lest I be accused of distorting Margaret Sanger’s contributions, I include the following from Wikipedia, Margaret Sanger article, Sexuality as it appeared in mid-2024 (footnotes no longer accurate to text) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger :
While researching information on contraception, Sanger read treatises on sexuality including The Psychology of Sex by the English psychologist Havelock Ellis and was heavily influenced by it.[107] While traveling in Europe in 1914, Sanger met Ellis.[108] Influenced by Ellis, Sanger adopted his view of sexuality as a powerful, liberating force.[28]: 13–14 This view provided another argument in favor of birth control, because it would enable women to fully enjoy sexual relations without fear of unwanted pregnancy.[28]: 111–117 [109] Sanger also believed that sexuality, along with birth control, should be discussed with more candor,[28]: 13–14 and praised Ellis for his efforts in this direction. She also blamed Christianity for the suppression of such discussions.[110]
Sanger opposed excessive sexual indulgence. She wrote that “every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells thinking deeply, are never sensual.”[111][112] Sanger said that birth control would elevate women away from the position of being objects of lust and elevate sex away from an activity that was purely being engaged in for the purpose of satisfying lust, saying that birth control “denies that sex should be reduced to the position of sensual lust, or that woman should permit herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction.”[113] Sanger wrote that masturbation was dangerous. She stated: “In my personal experience as a trained nurse while attending persons afflicted with various and often revolting diseases, no matter what their ailments, I never found anyone so repulsive as the chronic masturbator. It would not be difficult to fill page upon page of heart-rending confessions made by young girls, whose lives were blighted by this pernicious habit, always begun so innocently.”[114] She believed that women had the ability to control their sexual impulses and should utilize that control to avoid sex outside of relationships marked by “confidence and respect”. She believed that exercising such control would lead to the “strongest and most sacred passion”.[115] Sanger maintained links with affiliates of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (which contained a number of high-profile gay men and sexual reformers as members), and gave a speech to the group on the issue of sexual continence.[116] She later praised Ellis for clarifying “the question of homosexuals … making the thing a—not exactly a perverted thing, but a thing that a person is born with different kinds of eyes, different kinds of structures and so forth … that he didn’t make all homosexuals perverts—and I thought he helped clarify that to the medical profession and to the scientists of the world as perhaps one of the first ones to do that.[110]
Go back to the view of “sexuality as a powerful, liberating force. This view provided another argument in favor of birth control, because it would enable women to fully enjoy sexual relations without fear of unwanted pregnancy.” Now come forward to the Free Love revolution of the 1960s and apply that 1920s concept of powerful, liberating, enjoy… without fear of consequence (substituting consequence for unwanted pregnancy). Somewhere in the discussion, sexuality becomes a force in place of a relationship. As soon as we change the premise, the nature, the intent of the act from relationship to force, we lose the basis of decision.
Sanger also believed that sexuality, along with birth control, should be discussed with more candor and praised Ellis for his efforts in this direction. She also blamed Christianity for the suppression of such discussions.
Sanger opposed excessive sexual indulgence. She wrote that “every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells thinking deeply, are never sensual.”[111][112] Sanger said that birth control would elevate women away from the position of being objects of lust and elevate sex away from an activity that was purely being engaged in for the purpose of satisfying lust, saying that birth control “denies that sex should be reduced to the position of sensual lust, or that woman should permit herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction.”
28 Chesler, Ellen (1992). Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4165-4076-2.
107 Sanger, Margaret, The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications Inc., 2004, p. 94.
108 Cox 2005, p. 55. 109 Kennedy 1970, p. 127. 110 “The Mike Wallace Interview, Guest: Margaret Sanger”. September 21, 1957. Archived from on April 8, 2019. 111 Sanger, Margaret (December 29, 1912), “What Every Girl Should Know: Sexual Impulses—Part II”, New York Call – via The Margaret Sanger Papers Project 112 Bronski, Michael (2011). A Queer History of the United States. Beacon Press. p. 100. 113Sanger, Margaret, The Pivot of Civilization, Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2003, p. 204. 114 Margaret Sanger, “What Every Girl Should Know: Sexual Impulse—Part I”, December 22, 1912. 115 Bronski, Michael, A Queer History of the United States, Beacon Press, 2011.
Quotes from Sanger, “What Every Girl should know: Sexual Impulses Part II”, in New York Call, December 29, 1912; also in the subsequent book What Every Girl Should Know, pp. 40–48; reprinted in Sanger et al. 2003, pp. 41–5 (quotes on p. 45). 116Craig, Layne Parish (2013). When Sex Changed: Birth Control Politics and Literature between the World Wars. Rutgers University Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-8135-6212-4.
FOOTNOTE:
1 Contraception was not the birth control of the mid-1950s when an actual pill was formulated to reduce or prevent the periodic ovulation by use of progesterone. Prior to The Pill, abstinence, withdrawal or a plethora of home remedies was the means of preventing pregnancy. Or sterilization.
Impetus with the thalidomide deformities in the early 1960s which focused ‘women’s reproductive rights’ when Sherri Finkbine unknowingly took sleeping meds containing thalidomide and determined to abort because of the high risk of deformities. Arizona law did not permit aborting unless “a pregnancy posed a threat to the woman’s life.” In August 1962, she traveled to Sweden, received confirmation of fetal deformities and legally aborted the fetus.
