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Anna Shamory

Womens Studies 100U

Critical Essay

5/2/17

Reproductive Rights of All the Single Ladies

One huge issue that disproportionately impacts single women in the US is reproductive

rights. These rights include access to birth control, abortion, and sexual education. In order to

fully understand this issue, first the overview of the history of this issue in the US must be taken

into consideration. Then the scope of intersectionality, specifically the intersections of race,

sexuality, and class, must be analyzed for its impact. And lastly, the room for change in current

policies of reproductive rights will be discussed.

Why is this issue important?

The issue of reproductive rights is extremely important for unmarried women to move

forward in the world. Women, now more than ever, are delaying marriage in order to move

forward in the world by gaining higher education such as college, and focusing on their careers

and financial stableness and independence. In order to be focused on moving themselves

forward, women need to have good reproductive health and rights to birth control, abortion, and

sex education.

These reproductive rights help to prevent women from falling into dependent

relationships when they experience an unplanned pregnancy. For example, in All the Single

Ladies by Rebecca Traister, Wong Ulrich recounts the life of her mother, who got pregnant and

married at 19, and then spent her life dependent on her husband. Her mother emphasized that its
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better to not be financially dependent on a man because you can get stuck and not keep the

freedom of having your own money (Traister p. 162).

In order for women to be able to succeed on their own, they need to be in control of their

reproductive lives. First of all, single women in the public school system need to be taught

medically accurate and comprehensive sexual education, so they know how to care for their

reproductive health, and know how to prevent pregnancy and STDs. In fact, the National Survey

of Family Growth found that teens who received comprehensive sexual education were 50% less

likely to experience a pregnancy between the ages of 15-19, than those who received abstinence-

only education. (Kohler)

Tying into knowledge about sexual health, is the reproductive right to birth control.

Single women need to know about contraceptives and be able to obtain them. Birth control

allows single women to worry less about falling pregnant when they are not ready to have a

child, or contraceptives that help reduce the likelihood of undergoing the draining experience of

STDs. Consequently, if a woman does become pregnant, it is important she has the option and

availability to obtain an abortion.

History and Intersectionality

To understand the reproductive rights issues still impacting single/unmarried women

today, it is important to look back on the history of this issue in the US, from political debates to

laws and Supreme Court cases to activism. And, the issue of reproductive rights is not one-

dimensional, the intersections of race, sexuality, and class impact the issue for single/unmarried

women.

The cinch on reproductive rights in the US began when women were beginning to gain

too much autonomy from men in the 1800s. The Comstock Act of 1873, along with state laws,
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made distribution of any obscene materials, such as birth control and educational information

about contraception. And by the 1880s, states had increasingly harsh laws on abortion. (Traister

p. 53) It took until the later half of the 20th century for women to start gaining back their

reproductive rights, with three main Supreme Court cases between 1965 and 1973.

The first was Griswold v Connecticut (1965), which made birth control legal for married

couples, on the grounds of the ban violated marital privacy. In 1972, Eisenstadt v Baird allowed

unmarried, single women to buy contraceptives. This affirmed the right that all individuals to be

free from governmental intrusion about personal matters such as decisions of whether one

wanted to have a child or not. Then a year later came the more famous landmark decision of Roe

v Wade, that made abortion legal in all states, married or unmarried women. Legal abortion

provided another tool for women to be able to live outside of the bounds of marriage.Women

could now have the right to choose to end a pregnancy, and not feel the pressure to marry if an

unplanned pregnancy were to occur. (Traister p. 26-27)

In more contemporary history, activism of women all over the world came to a head with

the Womens Marches of 2017. What started as a simple Facebook event Womens March on

Washington, the day after Donald Trumps inauguration to the presidency, soon turned into

millions of womens rights supporters taking to the streets in places all around the globe in sister

marches. Just to name a few of the 673: Washington, Atlanta, Boston, New York City, Chicago,

my small hometown of Selinsgrove, PA, Australia, Canada, India, and even in the Antarctic

peninsula! (Sister Marches 2016)

One of the main rallying points for the march was reproductive rights, and the threat

posed by a Republican Congress and Presidency that wants to defund important reproductive

health providers such as Planned Parenthood. Slate write Michelle Goldberg even wrote that
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Trump wont say whether hes ever paid for an abortion, but still believes in an anti-abortion

America (Goldberg 2016). Even though federal law already prohibits federal funding for

abortions (except in cases of incest, rape, or to save a womans life).

The marches of January 21st 2017 were intersectional in their unifying power of women

demonstrators all over. Women from all economic classes participated, prominent women such as

Gloria Steinem, Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Warren, Whoopi Goldberg, and more spoke at and

attended the marches. Actress Ashley Judd referenced Trumps grab her by the pussy remarks,

during her speech, showing how even educated persons can be ignorant about reproductive rights

and misogyny.

Scarlett Johansson told a story about a compassionate Planned Parenthood doctor when

she just started her acting career, when she was not rich or famous yet. Intersectionality of race

can be shown in the example of Ellen Ferreira and friends who had participated in past protests

like the march where civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous I Have

A Dream Speech. (Alcindor et al, 2017) In order to better fight for reproductive rights in the

future, we need to understand and learn from other womens intersectional experiences with

reproductive issues.

Three Changes We Need

Change needs to be made in the area of reproductive rights, in order to help unmarried

women at intersections of race, sexuality, and class be able to move forward in the world. Three

major problems under the issue of reproductive rights need to be changed and readjusted to help

unmarried women of different identities move forward in the world. The Hyde Amendment

disproportionately affects women of poorer economic class, lack of LGBT sexual education in
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public schools negatively impacts sexuality representation, and lingering reality of sterilization

laws of racial prejudice.

In 1976, the Hyde Amendment was passed, that blocks federal Medicaid funding for

abortions. Since 1994, there are only three narrow exceptions for when the federally funded

insurance will cover abortions: when the womans life is in danger, or a pregnancy from rape or

incest. But it still does not cover for when a woman's health is at risk and she is recommended to

have an abortion. Low-income women, who are already struggling to make ends meet, cannot

obtain funding for safe abortions. Abortion rights advocates state that the Hyde Amendment is

dangerous and unfair, because it allows politicians to interfere with womens personal healthcare

decisions (Hyde Amendment 2017).

The Hyde Amendment affects women on Medicaid and those with federally funded jobs.

When a woman on Medicaid is faced with an unwanted pregnancy, she cannot have monetary

help to obtain an abortion unless it is one of the few exceptions, as discussed earlier. Women may

have to resort to self-induced abortion or getting an abortion from unsafe or untrained

practitioner, especially if they are unmarried and likely have less financial support to pay for the

needed abortion. Illegal abortion is not a new occurrence- in fact, 50,000 per year happened in

NYC prior to legalization, 80% through self-inducement by oral ingestion (Sable). This is a

problem that could be solved by the repeal of the Hyde Amendment.

With one in five women of reproductive age being covered by Medicaid, this issue is

pertinent. Additionally, women of color comprise the majority of Medicaid covered persons,

30% of black women and 24% of Hispanic women are enrolled in Medicaid, compared to 14%

of white women. (Hyde Amendment 2017) The amendment disproportionately affects women
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across the intersections of race and class, because the right to abortion doesnt mean much if not

everyone has that choice and availability to obtain one.

Next, reproductive rights include the right to sexual education. The overwhelming

majority of teenage women are unmarried, sex education in high school directly affects single

women. Yet in the US, abstinence and abstinence-only approaches to sexual education are still

rampant, even though they have been proven to not decrease sexual risk-taking behavior. Only

comprehensive sexual education in schools helps to decrease sexual-risk. In fact, declining

pregnancy rates in teens was found to be primarily the result of increased use of contraceptives in

the years 1995-2002. (Santelli) States like North Carolina and Vermont with laws mandating sex

education fair better with less teenage pregnancy and HIV rates than states such as Texas which

rely heavily on abstinence programs. (SIECUS) Our state of Pennsylvania, along with many

others, needs to mandate sexual education, so all of our young women can have access to

accurate knowledge about sex to make better decisions to move forward in their lives, no matter

their race or class.

Additionally, LGBTQ inclusion in sexual education is an issue that needs to be

addressed. When I went through sex ed in school, the act of sex and sexuality were cut off from

each other, there was no discussion of sexuality. Sex was between a man with a penis and a

woman with a vagina. Gay sex was only mentioned vaguely, that two guys should use a condom,

as well. Many LGBTQ youth encounter this problem as well, because if sex education is poorly

mandated across states, sexuality inclusive knowledge is even more limited. In fact, the GLSEN

2013 National School Climate Survey found that less than five percent of LGBT students had

health classes that included positive representations of sexuality inclusive topics (A Call to

Action) Mandated sexual education needs to include the experiences of non-hetero sex.
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Representation is extremely important for LGBTQ youth who already encounter outside

pressures that shame and try to repress their sexual identity.

Lastly, Buck v Bell was never actually overturned by the US. Skinner v Oklahoma only

outlawed sterilization as a punishment to criminals. The problem with this eugenics-based case is

that while the sterilization zeal is not around in the US, it is all too easy for doctors to sterilize

patients who go in for another surgery. While there is the possibility of racist backlash to a

similar eugenics movement in the future, I believe the larger problem is the lack of knowledge

about sterilization practices in our American history. We often learn only the good side of our

countrys history, but it is important to learn from our mistakes as well. It would benefit the US

to officially overturn Buck v Bell, and acknowledge the racist and ableist history of sterilization.

(Wolfe 2017)

Little known to the populace is the history of sterilization in the US, that targeted the

birthrates of people of color. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt spoke in warning about

race suicide from the falling birth rate of white European-descent women, and the rising birth

rate of immigrants. During the ensuing Eugenics movement, the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck

v Bell upheld that states could continue compulsory sterilization of the unfit and mentally

retarded. And in the 1960s, African American, Latina, and white women who were in poverty

were subject to forced or uninformed sterilization. (Joffe et al.) Shockingly, Nazi defendants at

the Nuremberg Trials cited Buck v Bell in defense of themselves.

To conclude, the issue of reproductive rights is a long-seeded issue in the United States.

Unmarried women have a large stake in reproductive rights, in regards to access to birth control,

abortion, and sexual education. Through the intersections of race, sexuality, and class there can
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be seen a need for change in current reproductive rights policies, so that unmarried women can

further their lives in a more positive way.

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Sources:

A Call to Action: LGBTQ Youth Need Inclusive Sex Education. Advocates for Youth, Answer,

Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood, and SIECUS,

http://answer.rutgers.edu/file/A%20Call%20to%20Action%20LGBTQ%20Youth

%20Need%20Inclusive%20Sex%20Education%20FINAL.pdf . Accessed 29 April 2017.

Alcindor, Yamiche and Hartocollis, Anemona. Womens March Highlights as Huge Crowds

Protest Trump: Were Not Going Away. New York Times, 21 Jan. 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/womens-march.html . Accessed 2 May 2017

Goldberg, Michelle. The Empire Strikes Back. Slate, 27 December 2016.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/12/_2016_was_the_year_the_femi

nist_bubble_burst.html Accessed 30 April 2017.

Hyde Amendment. Planned Parenthood Action Fund, 2017,

https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/hyde-amendment . Accessed 3

May 2017.

Joffe, Carole and Parker, Willie J. Race, Reproductive Politics and Reproductive Health Care in

the Contemporary United States. Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. July

2012. http://www.arhp.org/publications-and-resources/contraception-journal/july-2012 .

Accessed 2 May 2017.

Kohler et al. Abstinence-only and Comprehensive Sex Education and the Initiation of Sexual

Activity and Teen Pregnancy. Journal of Adolescent Health, 42(4): 344-351.

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Sable (1982) "The Hyde Amendment: Its Impact on Low Income Women with Unwanted

Pregnancies," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 9: Iss. 3, Article 10.

Available at: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol9/iss3/10 . Accessed 1 May 2017

Santelli, JS et al. Explaining recent declines in adolescent pregnancy in the United States: the

contribution of abstinence and improved contraceptive use. American Journal of Public

Health 2007; 97(1).

Sister Marches. Womens March on Washington. 2017. https://www.womensmarch.com/sisters

. Accessed 1 May 2017.

State Profiles Fiscal Year 2015: Vermont. SIECUS, 2015, siecus.org/index.cfm?

fuseaction=document.viewDocument&documentid=648&documentFormatId=756&CFI

D=3281389&CFTOKEN=8e74d4c41a164611-7F36EE41-1C23-C8EB-

80F7DF71EF9F13C8. Accessed 12 April 2017.

Traister, Rebecca. All the Single Ladies. Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, October 2016

Wolfe, Brendan. "Buck v. Bell (1927)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the

Humanities, 4 Nov. 2015.

http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Buck_v_Bell_1927#start_entry Accessed 3 May

2017.