What the battle over birth control is really about [View all]

[shraby]

A very good diary examining the question on dailykos. Well worth the read. I saw it last night and saved it for this morning so more would see it.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/17/1065740/-What-the-battle-over-birth-control-is-really-about?via=siderec

(snip)
Robinson argues that biology condemned women to a role organized around childbearing, which allowed men to benefit, including establishing dominance in many areas. As she writes

They got full economic and social control over our bodies, our labor, our affections, and our futures. They got to make the rules, name the gods we would worship, and dictate the terms we would live under. In most cultures, they had the right to sex on demand within the marriage, and also to break their marriage vows with impunity — a luxury that would get women banished or killed. As long as pregnancy remained the defining fact of our lives, they got to run the whole show. The world was their party, and they had a fabulous time.
As I read these words I thought of three Ks - not as applied to American culture, but to the latter part of the first half of the last century in Germany: for the Nazis, the role of women was defined as Kinder, Kirche, Kuche - kids, church and kitchen. For too many patriarchal males today, that phraseology still seems to represent their thinking.
Safe and effective contraception - the IUD as well as the pill, for example - meant that women were no longer defined by their biology:

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