What do birth control and abortion have in common? A lot. Not that they are the same, but they have the following in common:
1. Shared history
Margaret Sanger was the leading proponent of birth control in the early twentieth century. Although she did not promote abortion, she founded an organization that later would become Planned Parenthood.
2. Shared focus
Abortion and the early birth control movement both share a focus on women’s rights or bodily autonomy. That’s why you hear statements such as, “My body, my choice.”
3. Shifted understanding of sex
Sex was designed by God to fit under the category of marriage, in which pregnancy was at least a theoretical possibility. Along with that possibility comes responsibility. The birth control movement decoupled the pleasure of sex from the responsibility, thus resulting in consequence-free sex. If the contraception didn’t work, abortion could be used as a backup plan.
To understand the birth control movement, we also need to consider the Comstock Act as well as the 1965 Supreme Court ruling known as Griswold vs. Connecticut. In that case, the Supreme Court invented a “right to privacy” that would later be used in Roe vs. Wade.
