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The studied correlation between access to birth control and poverty rates has produced verifiable data supporting the conclusion that empowering women with the ability to plan whether or when to have children will invariably increase economic prosperity within both large and small communities. In other words, if women are empowered with the choice of determining their own procreation decisions, their community will possess one of the most effective tools for preventing general economic deprivation.
Unfortunately, the current executive branch has created regulations making it harder for women to obtain and use birth control. For years, in fact, social conservatives have stood in the way of a broader policy of birth control by blocking legislation that would establish over-the-counter access. Recently, however, over-the-counter access failed to pass Congress because neither party seems willing to compromise on the issue.
The reason we have policy deadlock is a testament to the fact that merely discussing the relationship between birth control and poverty generates hysterical claims of “eugenics colonialist shit” from pundits. Indeed, for many on the right, it seems as though no discussion of the ethical costs of denying individuals the ability to control their procreation decision-making is ever acceptable. Instead, the right bases the discussion on inflexible principles such as that life begins at the moment of conception or divine calls to “increase in number.”
For their part, the American left has somehow taken the principle of women’s bodily autonomy to the extreme. A bill passed in Virginia, for example, would permit abortions in the third trimester for virtually any claim of impairment. The result of a political fight between such extremes is that the immensely important issue of birth control access remains frustratingly stagnant. Some might argue that given the seriousness of the issues involved — those involving life and bodily autonomy — these kinds of uncompromising situations that take a lot of time to work through are inevitable, even ideal in a republic such as ours. However, as author Coleman Hughes illustrates, our society regularly adopts arbitrary lines involving such high-stakes issues all the time:
For example, we could lower the speed limit on every road in America to 10 miles per hour and save the 40,000 or so lives we lose each year to car accidents. But we don’t, because doing so would impose costs that probably outweigh 40,000 lost human lives. Suppose that somebody who favored lowering the speed limit made the following argument: a driver’s safety (or a driver’s “right to life/bodily autonomy”) is sacred and therefore cannot be traded off against any competing ethical concern. Not only will such a person fail to be persuaded by a list of ethical costs associated with slowing all traffic to a crawl, but they will also refuse to engage with opponents’ arguments. After all, their ethical imperative is so compelling that it’s impervious to consequentialist objections. That is how both sides of the abortion debate are behaving at the moment.
Accordingly, in order to obtain progress in this debate, we must engage in a more straightforwardly simple ethical cost benefit analysis the same way we do in other important policy decisions.
For example, the standalone benefits to universal birth control access can be found in a variety of studies and programs. The data extracted from the methodology used in the study I cite in the first paragraph of this piece reveals that women who gained access to birth control reported 40 percent higher earnings and lower child-to-mother ratios in the long term. Likewise, many others programs and studies found here, or here, or here, demonstrate that access to birth control has a tremendously positive effect on reducing poverty and increasing individual wealth. The reason for this also appears relatively straightforward: Access to birth control allows families to provide a better quality of life by ensuring available resources are not stretched too thin.
The only “costs” that can be associated with increased or universal access to birth control are what Hughes calls “the prevention of flourishing that would have otherwise have occurred.” Defining this as a negative cost, however, can be highly misleading. For instance, most women who choose to be on birth control are not choosing between having a child and not having a child, “but between having a child now and having a child later when they anticipate being in a better position to provide.” In other words, allowing human beings to control when they will procreate with birth control does not prevent human flourishing; in virtually all cases, it could only delay birth in order to be more certain the desired human flourishing will result.
To be clear, an effective policy of over-the-counter or universal access to birth control does not have to involve grotesque policies of the past such as involuntary sterilization among the poor. Rather, a simple reliance on human self-interest and self-planning when it comes to procreation decision-making is all that is needed. Of course, there exists logical or ethical limits to certain forms of birth control, such as abortion. When it comes to abortion, like Hughes I submit a “fair” line to draw is at 12 weeks. This, as Hughes notes, “seems sensible because it gives women seeking abortions a reasonable amount of time to obtain them without encroaching on the period during which a fetus begins to develop consciousness (around week 20.)” In order to achieve these kinds of sensible policies drawn out of compromise, however, we have to shift from a discussion about principles, to one identifying substantiated solutions.
Tyler Broker’s work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and is forthcoming in the University of Memphis Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.