Free Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters by Jessica Valenti Page B

about being allowed to have children. Unfortunately, these seemingly reasonable things are a lot more complicated than they should be. Especially for young women.

    We don’t hear that much about how reproductive rights is a young women’s issue. I mean, we are the fertile ones, right? Not only are young women more likely to get pregnant, we’re also more likely to have restrictions on our contraceptive choices and pregnancy options. That’s why it’s so important that we be on top of this shit. Repro rights is the one issue that mainstream U.S. women’s organizations have been focusing on for a long time—but younger women are at the center of the battle, so we have to take our rightful place in it.
    There’s something else about women’s repro rights that isn’t talked about that much—the real reason behind the anti-abortion, anti-contraception nonsense. At the heart of it all, it’s truly about just hating sex, or at least hating that women have sex. There’s a lot of talk about life and morals, but it’s nonsense. To the people who want to limit your choices, it’s about slut-punishing. They are completely terrified of girls having The Sex. So much so that they’d rather see us pregnant or with an STD than give us the tools to have The Sex safely. Shit, they’re even making up bizarre stories about birth control-based teen sex cults (I’m not joking).
    If we want anything to change, we can’t forget this. Plus, we can make fun of them for being all prudey.

Contraception Misconception
    Nothing exemplifies the real motives of the anti-sexers as much as their stance on birth control. They talk a big game about how bad abortion is, but most of them don’t say much about contraception. That’s because they don’t want you to
know what they really think—that birth control is bad. They don’t want you to use it. Ever. Now why in the world would the people who hate abortion so much want you to forgo the one thing that keeps you from getting pregnant?
HAVING ALL THE GOODIES AND NOT PAYING THE PRICE
    Because it’s for sluts. Seriously. According to Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis (who tried to remove a state requirement that sex ed classes teach contraception), birth control is “a way to have all the goodies and not pay the price,” the “price” being pregnancy, of course. That’s your punishment for being a big ol’ whore.
    The idea is that only sluts use contraception, because only sluts would have premarital sex. And when you have sex while you’re married, you should be trying to pop out babies, so no birth control for you, either.
    Basically, it’s more of the same “sex is bad and shameful” crap. Sex isn’t supposed to be fun, so they’re not about to make it easy.
    The bottom line? They don’t care about our health. They don’t care about increasing the number of abortions (which will inevitably happen if we don’t have birth control access). All they care about is making sure that women aren’t having sex, and that if we are, we’re “punished.” Period. But of course, most of them won’t admit that.
    I mean, even President Bush refuses to say whether he is for or against birth control. In 2005, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan refused to give Bush’s stance
on birth control. Since then, members of Congress have sent him four different letters asking him point blank whether he is for or against birth control—they’ve gotten no answer. Bush and the other anti-sexers know that if they let out how they really feel about contraception, too many people will catch on to their true agenda.
    They know that the majority of Americans support birth control. Using contraception isn’t some radical idea—it’s pretty frigging normal. In fact, 99 percent of women will use birth control at one point in their lives.
    That’s why anti-choicers are so disturbing. Despite the fact that the majority of us think birth control is fine and dandy, lawmakers,