Someone Please Tell Gov. Nikki Haley That For Some Women, Contraception Is About Raising Families
Yet, when guest Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina made the sweeping statement that women don’t care about contraception, there was another Pandora’s box to consider.
The 40-year-old governor was pressed on a variety of topics with regard to her possible VP selection and her background. But when asked about the whole contraception debacle that continues to dominate our American headlines, she said this:
“Women don’t care about contraception. They care about jobs, the economy, and raising their families, and all of those things…The media wants to talk about contraception.”
The blanket statement is an irksome one, but Haley’s insistence that contraception and raising families are mutually exclusive issues is just as problematic. For many women, controlling their fertility and keeping their families to a size that they can afford and support keeps very much with personal financial and economic circumstances. So much so that if a candidate like Rick Santorum comes along and starts squawking about banning birth control, a broader conversation is triggered in which we’re already talking about women’s career possibilities and women’s economic constraints.
Sandra Fluke raised this issue recently at 92Y, highlighting contraception access as a barrier for low-income women to have a say in public discourse. We also have continued shutdowns of places like Planned Parenthood, which provide birth control to so many mothers trying to keep their not so wealthy families afloat.
Contraception is a very important issue to some women, some of them childless while others are mothers to five. And as Haley evidences, for some women of economic privilege, contraception is hardly an issue at all.
(photo: thepoliticalcarnival.net)