September 26 is marked every year as World Contraception Day, a day to raise awareness about contraception and access to reproductive healthcare. With abortion access under attack in North Carolina and around the country, at Pro-Choice North Carolina we know that access to birth control is not guaranteed, and we must continue to fight for access to medically-approved, quality, affordable, and accessible contraception.
At Pro-Choice North Carolina, our mission is to ensure all people have the resources and support they need, without harassment or judgment, to a comprehensive range of reproductive healthcare options. This includes equitable access to the full range of contraception, as well as abortion and pre- and post-natal care. The ability to safely and conveniently access quality, medically-approved birth control in the communities where we live is a key component of the freedom we need to have control over our futures.
Access to abortion has been quickly decimated across the country in the two years since Roe was overturned, but the foundation for that devastating U.S. Supreme Court decision had been decades in the making. Junk science, false and misogynistic narratives, hyper-political judges, religious ideology mixed up with politics, and brazen and unpopular legislative and political attacks on abortion all chipped away at access. This then led to a consolidation of the anti-abortion, anti-democracy power needed at the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn what was supposed to be “settled law” and nearly 50 years of legal precedent. There is no reason to think that an even older precedent - 1965’s Griswold v. the State of Connecticut - is not also in the crosshairs of the anti-abortion and anti-choice movement.
Just as with abortion, we have witnessed decades of attempts to erode access to contraception. There were women’s health clinics immediately post-Roe in the 1970’s that offered birth control only - no abortion services - that immediately attracted the ire of anti-abortion protesters. Eliminating access to birth control has long been, and remains, a high priority for the conservative movement.
Over the years we have seen anti-abortion centers, abstinence-only sex ed curriculums, anti-choice medical professionals, websites, and now social media influencers spread false and inflammatory information about the efficacy and safety of birth control. False narratives based in misogynistic and racist stereotypes about who accesses birth control have led to Congressional hearings, lawsuits, smear campaigns against young women who speak out, and even U.S Supreme Court decisions that give employers, politicians, and right-wing special interests a say over one’s access to birth control.
When these efforts to shame and intimidate people out of accessing birth control have failed to impact the popularity and usage of contraception, we’ve witnessed political attacks on insurance coverage for birth control, legislative efforts to keep safe contraception away from minors, and even the empowerment of anti-choice pharmacists to block people from accessing birth control. This is the same playbook for attacks on abortion, and the end goal is the same in both instances - to block access to common aspects of reproductive healthcare, in particular women’s healthcare, denying people freedom over their own bodies and futures.
Opposition to birth control, as with abortion, is about control and enforcing a hierarchy that places men above women, and demands all people adhere to rigid gender stereotypes.
That’s why proactive legislation that explicitly protects access to contraception, like what has been introduced at the federal and at state levels, is so important at this moment. We cannot rely on “settled law” with this current U.S. Supreme Court and their extremist Congressional supporters, who tout conservative policy blueprints like “Project 2025”.
Access to contraception is good public health policy, and it is popular. Just as with abortion access, the majority of people in this country support access to birth control, and the vast majority of people will use contraception at some point in their lives. This of course has to include not just GOP voters but also GOP lawmakers. Yet time and again, in North Carolina and in Congress, we are seeing pro-contraception bills put forward that receive little to no GOP lawmaker support.
The freedom to plan and grow our families in ways that work best for ourselves is deeply personal, and it is our business, not the government’s. Whether we want to wait to have children, or want to space our pregnancies out; or we decide to have no children, or to have 10 children, that is all our business. Elected officials and judges don’t get to decide that for us, and voters will absolutely be thinking about this issue when we go to the ballot box this fall.
This emboldened opposition that successfully overturned Roe is not going to stop at attacking abortion. We must act now to protect our bodies, our families, our futures, and our rights.
The November 2024 elections are fast approaching! Find general information on voting on our website here, and information on the connections between down ballot races and reproductive freedom here. You can also find more information on how Project 2025 can harm reproductive freedom here, and the Pro-Choice North Carolina PAC endorsements here.