Both abortion and contraception take place in a semi-public manner because they must be procured in public. Even contraception, which is used in the privacy of one's own home, must be purchased in public and is advertised in public. The public aspects cause the involvement of others in a public manner, making control and even restrictions easier. What if this could all change? Abortion and contraception are defended on the basis of privacy, so what if they really were completely private?
In theory, if contraception and abortion were completely private acts which occurred outside the notice of anyone but those immediately involved, then it should be impossible or at least more obviously immoral for anyone else — be it church or state — to interfere. In theory, greater privacy should expand the freedom of women to make choices about sexuality and reproduction without priests, ministers, or other self-appointed representatives of an alleged god trying to control women's behavior. That's the theory, at least.
Katha Pollitt explores this idea in the Fall 2000 issue of Free Inquiry:
What if someone came up with a recipe using already available common household items that could safely and simply prevent pregnancy or even cause an early abortion, at a stage when the fetus is no bigger than a grain of rice? A daily cup of strong green tea with a sprinkling of tarragon to prevent conception, say, or, for a late period, a vaginal spritz of lemon juice and Tide?
Would priests and pastors declare tea drinking murder and urge parents to lock up their kitchen cabinets lest their daughters get into the seasonings? Would anti-choice zealots set fire to the citrus bins at the grocery store and shoot the Proctor and Gamble distributor when he showed up to stock the the shelves? Hard to imagine.
Actually, I don’t think that it’s all that hard to imagine — after all, a person can in theory grow marijuana on their own property or in their own basements but the government prosecutes that just as vigorously as any other violation of drug laws. If tarragon could help prevent conception or if Tide could help cause an abortion, then I would bet good money on the prospect of their being regulated.
If the War on Drugs has taught us anything, it should be that nothing is so private or personal that the government won't try to interfere on the basis of traditional moral notions about what is and is not appropriate recreational pursuits. Moreover, if there is one recreational pursuit which is opposed even more by the arbiters of traditional morality than drugs, it's sex — in particular, sex that occurs outside of marriage and without any intention of having children. Sex for fun or intimacy and nothing more is utterly condemned in traditional, orthodox Christianity.
Preventing pregnancy and unwanted births would be too easy and too private for anyone to control, except for women themselves. And that’s the way it should be.
Yes, that’s the way it should be — but those who seek to regulate or ban both contraception and abortion aren’t interested in protecting the rights or privacy of women. That’s why they would regulate or ban anything that might be used in contraception and abortion.
Consider the fundamental contradictions in South Dakota’s anti-abortion law, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle:
The South Dakota law declares “that life begins at the time of conception” and “that to fully protect the rights, interests, and health of the pregnant mother, the rights, interest, and life of her unborn child, and the mother’s fundamental natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child, abortions in South Dakota should be prohibited.”
The bill further defines “unborn human being” as an “individual living member of the species, homo sapiens, throughout the entire embryonic and fetal ages of the unborn child from fertilization to full gestation and childbirth” and “fertilization” as “that point in time when a male human sperm penetrates the zona pellucida of a female human ovum.”
The law specifically denies that contraception is being banned, but the above definitions cover fertilized eggs which may be kept from implanting by most standard contraceptive methods — including IUDs and oral contraceptives. Therefore, the law may be read as protecting a limited window during which contraceptives may be used or it may be read as banning most forms of contraception. The law could also be used to outlaw in vitro fertilization, not to mention various aspects of biomedical research.
Both contraception and abortion should be safe, private matters outside the powers of the government to prevent simply because some religious dogmas forbid them. Unfortunately, too many religious believers refuse to accept any restrictions on the authority of their religious dogmas — they are convinced that because their dogmas are divinely ordained rather than human created (like the law), then their dogmas take precedent over everything else.
