Once upon a time, abortion was no big deal. Sure, it was about as safe as any medical intervention performed before we started using anesthesia and before we realized that doctors should wash their hands with soap prior to surgery, but even in those dark days abortion was not controversial. It wasn't just a non-issue; historically, advances in contraception were about as unwelcome as a feast.
Then birth control suffered a series of baffling misfortunes. In the US, our contraceptive woes began when a group of powerful men imagined a potential threat to their incomes, gained momentum by piggy-backing onto growing anti-immigrant sentiment, and continue to trouble us today, with powerful men threatening to forcibly penetrate women's genitals in order to – of all things – prevent abortions. The situation has degenerated to the point that legislatures must seriously consider the suggestion that an organism which cannot survive outside the body of its host is due more respect and protection under the law than its human habitat. What's next? Civil rights for tape worms?
This ridiculous gridlock at the intersection of biology and politics feeds and is fed upon by a number of significant failures in the US education system, not the least of which is the failure to outright dismiss abstinence-only sex-ed as bunk. Beyond the dearth of quality, sensible self-care taught in science and P.E. classes, the topics of pregnancy and STD-prevention are curiously absent from another curriculum: Civics.
Reproduction has been subjected to controversial legislation in the United States since the 1800s, but how many American high-schoolers discuss in class the existing and proposed laws that affect their health? How many even know what Roe v. Wade is, beyond being an applause line for one side or another of virtually every major political debate since the 1970s? And how many kids who are aware of that most famous of women's rights cases learned anything about it in school?
Never mind the entirety of reproductive history, during most of which, abortion was a commonplace, legal part of a balanced family plan*. *
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqIh77UuFsA[/youtube]
*Read **more by the GeekMoms about sex-ed and women's health! *
