Passing the Baton: Birth Control - Precondition of the Liberation of Women*

Before birth control, women * (people who could be impregnated, including gender non-conforming individuals and transmen) were, overwhelmingly, excluded from higher education and from the pursuit of fulfilling careers. Women* were routinely fired at marriage or pregnancy, and pressured to marry men* (persons who could impregnate, including gender non-conforming and transwomen) as their primary means of economic subsistence. The ability to control whether or not - or when - YOU have a child (either as an individual or a couple) is paramount to your ability to plan, and execute some level of control over, your life’s trajectory. Thus, birth control has, and continues to, function as a precondition of the liberation of women.* Without access to reliable birth control, and the right to terminate a pregnancy in the pre-embryonic and embryonic stages (first 13 weeks or first trimester), women* as a class are not viewed by societies as self-sustaining economic units, and become, overall, the property - and liability - of men, * and marriage becomes a primarily economic arrangement - with husbands as the employers of their wives, enforcing the submission of those wives.