The topic from this week was a continuation of race and medicine with a focus on black women. What struck me most in Dorothy Roberts’ “The dark side of birth control,” were the conflicting views of the birth control movement. In the article, Roberts refers to birth control being a “right” for the privileged women and being a “duty” for poor women. Stemming from this is the interpretation that birth control can be seen as reproductive emancipation or, on the other hand, as a continuation of the sterilization movement and there are strong arguments for each.
Providing birth control for women was indeed a form of liberating their sexuality and put took the choice of having children from the hands of men and put it into women’s. It also gave an alternative to unsafe abortions and other long-lasting contraceptives that can, according to the Hampshire College population and development program brochure, “threaten women’s health.” There are certainly side effects and other negative aspects of taking birth control, but what the liberation movement stresses is that is gives women a right to choose and embrace their sexuality in a responsible way. That is, as long as it is a choice….
The other side of the birth control movement takes eugenics into account and questions the discourse behind it. For example, is birth control geared more towards poor or minority populations? Are there ulterior motives behind putting family planning centers in areas known to be worse off socioeconomically? The Roberts article mentions the relation between birth control and racial genocide, and although I believe this to be an extrapolation of the truth, there are definite stigmas in our society that give way to this view.
Something we talked about at the end of last week was stigma management and the struggle for the poor in our society to see a future outside of where they come from and may even place racial blame as an outlet for frustration. I wonder if maybe there was better education about the socioeconomics in our country if it could help to deconstruct stigmas and prove that the problems in this country are universal and should be treated as such.
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I think you make a couple really good points. Before this class, I hadn't really thought about the "dark side" of birth control. The idea that it found a good deal of support in such a negative manner is quite disturbing. While there are some negative side effects to birth control today, I agree with you statement that as long as it's the choice of the women than the positives seem to outweigh the negatives. You lead this very smoothly into the question of whether birth control and family planning is more commonly targeted to and placed in low income areas. At the very end of your post you suggest that better education about the socioeconomics of our country could help break down some of the negative class and racial stigmas. I completely agree and I'm glad that you brought this point up again. In my experience people don't look at the socioeconomic factor nearly as much as they look at the racial factor. While it's important to not forget about race, sometimes it makes more sense to look at socioeconomics, and most of the time people generalize and assume that the discussion is about race; this not only doesn't address the topic at hand, but it furthers negative stigmas and stereotypes about race.
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