The Purity Myth

by Jessica Valenti

  IN LATE 2006, Ohio-based blogger Biting Beaver wrote about being denied emergency contraception. Her partner’s condom had broken late that Friday night, so she called doctors, hospitals, and local clinics looking for the pill that could stop her from getting pregnant. Everyone turned her down.

  I was told by every urgent care I called and every emergency room that I was shit out of luck . I was asked my age. My marital status. How many children I had. If I had been raped and when I became uncomfortable with the questions I was told, “ Well Ma’am , try to understand that you will be interviewed and the doctor has ‘criteria’ that you need to meet before he will prescribe it for you .”1

  Already a mother of three children, Biting Beaver did not want to get pregnant again. But because she hadn’t been raped (and wouldn’t say that she had), she couldn’t find a provider to give her this over-the-counter, legal contraceptive. It took her until early the following week to find someone who would give her the morning-after pill, and as it turned out, it was too late. Biting Beaver later informed her readers that she had indeed gotten pregnant and would now be scheduling an appointment to obtain an abortion.bi

  Her experience struck a chord, and soon news outlets were picking up the story. Other women writers and bloggers across the country started to share their stories of being denied contraception. Biting Beaver’s experience, it seemed, was not uncommon.

  Because of “refusal clause” laws (also called “conscience clause” laws)—which exist in some form in forty-seven states—healthcare providers, including doctors, pharmacists, and nurses, can deny women access to medication, procedures, or even referrals if the providers object morally to what’s being asked of them.2bj The laws are a tremendous win for the virginity movement, which believes that any form of contraception is wrong. After all, why should women be able to obtain prescriptions that make it easier for them to have premarital sex—something the movement believes women shouldn’t be doing in the first place?

  But this push to legislate chastity is much broader than just denying women birth control—there are laws that provide only married women with access to reproductive technology (such as in vitro fertilization), laws mandating that women take “marriage promotion” classes in order to receive their welfare benefits, and even laws that ban the sale of vibrators. While these issues may seem unrelated, they’re all part of a larger agenda to control women’s reproductive and sexual lives—reinforcing the idea that women must be chaste, even if that requires government intervention.

  Recent rollbacks of women’s political rights—especially reproductive rights—stem directly from the belief that women shouldn’t have control over their own bodies. More and more, policy that affects women’s bodies and rights is being formulated with the myth of sexual purity in mind. That’s why rape victims are routinely treated more compassionately in abortion-rights conversations than women who have sex consensually are, and why legislation doesn’t target women who fit into the perfect-virgin mold to the same degree as it does women who don’t fulfill the stereotype—like low-income women and women of color. This is where the purity myth gets truly dangerous, because it’s encroaching on our lives not just through social influences, but directly through legislation—legislation that’s mired in fear of young women’s sexuality, in paternalism, and in a need to punish women who aren’t “pure.”

  OUR BODIES, THEIR LAWS

  Over the last decade—thanks in no small part to the Bush administration—women’s reproductive rights have decreased significantly. Not only has their right to obtain an abortion been endangered on both the state and the federal level, but there have also been continued assaults on birth control, and even on women’s right to have children.

  Cristina Page, author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex, told me, “You don’t have to search too deeply on anti-abortion websites to find that the broad agenda entails stopping people from having sex outside of marriage or even within marriage if not for the purpose of procreation.”

  The Pro -Life Activist’s Encyclopedia explains that just the notion of planning a pregnancy is heresy. It is their belief that attempting to plan a pregnancy is basically admitting you don’t believe that God will provide. If you don’t believe God will provide, well then you just don’t believe. As Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, explained, “If you are using birth control, stop. Let the number of children you have be decided by God.” The goal of the pro-life movement is to strip us of the ability to prevent pregnancy and let the chips fall where they may.3

  While many Americans believe that women’s reproductive health and rights are safe because of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, nothing could be further from the truth.

  Between 1995 and 2007, states enacted 557 anti-choice measures—forty-three in 2007 alone. During George W. Bush’s presidency, state legislatures considered more than 3,700 anti-choice measures in total.4 These include parental notification and consent laws (legislation mandating that teenage girls get permission from their parents before they’re permitted to obtain an abortionbk), waiting periods, and even outright bans on the procedure. If Roe were overturned—not unlikely, given the Supreme Court justices’ current leanings—thirty states would be ready to make abortion illegal within a year from that decision.5

  In addition to the active danger of Roe’s being repealed, American women have a whole host of other legislative problems on their plate. A study by the Guttmacher Institute showed that as of 2008, 87 percent of U.S. counties had no abortion provider.6 There are even some states, like Mississippi, that have only one abortion provider to serve the entire state.7 This means that many women, especially those in rural areas, have to travel long distances to get to the nearest provider. Add mandatory waiting periods and misleading counseling about how abortion can cause breast cancer (and other false information), and all of a sudden, procuring an abortion doesn’t seem like such an easily accessed right.

  A woman in South Dakota who wants to get an abortion, for example, is subject to so many hurdles—geographic, financial, and legal—that getting an abortion is near impossible. Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, says that in her region, the obstacles make some women so desperate that they take matters into their own hands.

  Stoesz tells me the story of an eighteen-year-old living in western South Dakota who had an unplanned pregnancy. Because of financial constraints that prevented her from traveling across the state to the Planned Parenthood clinic in eastern South Dakota, this young woman inserted a toothpick into her cervix in desperation, hoping it would induce an abortion. After several days, she became afraid and called a local doctor to help her. The doctor informed her that removing the toothpick from her cervix might cause an abortion, so he refused to see her.

  “There are many, many stories,” says Stoesz. “Every week we hear another one.”

  Given all these stories, even calling abortion a “right” seems overly optimistic. After all, a right that can’t be exercised is not very useful to anyone.

  As Page points out, the anti-choice movement (whose agenda is so similar to the virginity movement’s that the two seem inextricably linked) is hell-bent not only on stopping women from using any form of contraception, but also on stopping them from having sex before marriage. Abortion is just one small part of a much larger goal.

  For example, the virginity/anti-choice movements have recently moved beyond simply advocating for stricter abortion laws and limiting access to birth control—that would be too narrow-minded! Now they also want to tell pregnant women how to have their children.

  In 2006, a Virginia lawmaker sponsored a bill to forbid unmarried women from using reproductive technology, such as in vitro fertilization, to get pregnant. The bill would have denied women without husbands access to “certain intervening medical technology” that “completely or partially replaces sexual intercourse as the
means of conception.”bl

  For women who already have children, the legislation is downright dangerous. In 2004, a Utah woman was charged with murder when one of her twin babies was stillborn after she refused to have a cesarean section. In South Carolina, Regina McKnight was convicted of homicide and sentenced to twelve years in prison after delivering a stillborn baby, because jurors believed the court’s claim that her cocaine use had killed the child.bm In 2006, lawmakers in Arkansas were considering making it a crime for pregnant women to smoke.8

  This new crop of “fetal protection” laws has created a slippery slope for pregnant women, who are being thrown in prison simply for failing to give birth to a healthy baby.

  Lynn Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, was quoted in a piece by Rick Montgomery as having said that this type of punishment is part of a larger trend. “I think thirty years of anti-abortion rhetoric—‘women killing their babies’—has led to a moral vilification that doesn’t just stick to those who seek to terminate a pregnancy. It’s spreading to all pregnant women.”9

  Now, clearly, no one is arguing that pregnant women should be doing drugs, drinking, or smoking—but there’s no question that these types of laws set a dangerous precedent. How long will it be before women are faulted for delivering stillborn babies because they didn’t take prenatal vitamins, or because they drank the occasional glass of wine?

  In 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released federal guidelines asking all women capable of conceiving to treat themselves as “pre-pregnant,” even if they had no immediate plans to get pregnant. So if the above-mentioned hypothetical questions seem like a stretch, think again. If the CDC had its way, all women of reproductive age would “take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight, and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.”10bn

  I’m all for staying healthy, but that’s because I believe in taking care of myself—not in treating my body as a potential incubator at all times.

  If you take some time to sift through the rhetoric of caring for women, “life,” and concern for young women’s sexual health, what you’ll find in this type of legislation is actually quite simple: an underlying fear of women’s sexuality, an overwhelming need to control it, and an undercurrent of paternalism suggesting that women need protection from themselves—even if that means enforcing punitive measures to drive the point home.

  YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT SEX ITSELF

  While many—if not most—laws and policies concerning women’s bodies reveal a fear of female sexuality, several stand out in the crowd.

  Few examples demonstrate policymakers’ far-reaching panic over young women’s sexuality better than the three-year-long process the FDA underwent to approve emergency contraception (EC) for over-the-counter status (available without a prescription from a pharmacist) and the debates that surrounded it. The whole undertaking had all the intrigue of a mystery novel (or perhaps a bad made-for-TV movie): political deceit, resignations, arrests, and, most important, lots and lots of talk about teenage girls having sex.

  The FDA approved EC—better known as the morning-after pill or by its brand name, Plan B—prescription use in 1998. The drug, which keeps women from getting pregnant by preventing or delaying ovulation,bo started being pushed for over-the-counter availability by major medical associations in 2000, but the FDA didn’t consider making the switch until June 2003.11

  The FDA spent the next three years doing a bureaucratic dance in which it repeatedly delayed its decision and ignored expert after expert who supported EC’s over-the-counter status. The biggest giveaway that politics trumped science happened in late 2003, when the FDA recommended that EC not be available for sale without a prescription, despite a recommendation from an independent joint advisory committee to the FDA to do so. (The committee recommended over-the-counter status in a 23-4 vote; the vote was 27-1 that the drug could be used safely by women of any age.12) The concerns that members of the FDA raised were mired in worries about women’s sexuality—namely, that young women would become out of control if given the chance to have sex “without consequences.”

  Dr. W. David Hager, one of the FDA committee members who voted against EC’s over-the-counter approval, told The New York Times: “What we heard today was frequently about individuals who did not want to take responsibility for their actions and wanted a medication to relieve those consequences.” 13 This same man, an ob-gyn and published author who made waves when he suggested prayer as a cure for PMS, was one of the key players in making sure that the FDA rejected the committee’s recommendation.14bp

  It later came to light that FDA medical official Janet Woodcock wrote in an internal memo that over-the-counter status could cause “extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an ‘urban legend’ status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B.” That’s right—sex-based cults.bq

  This line of reasoning may sound familiar. That’s because it’s the exact “concern” that was cited when the HPV vaccine was up for FDA approval, and the same excuse that legislators use to attempt to limit women’s access to birth control.

  For example, when a bill prohibiting University of Wisconsin campuses to provide students with any form of contraception passed in 2005, state representative Dan LeMahieu, who had introduced the legislation, told The Capital Times that he was “outraged that our public institutions are giving young college women the tools for having promiscuous sexual relations, whether on campus or thousands of miles away on spring break.”br15 I find it telling that Rep. LeMahieu sees access to contraception only as a means to a slutty end, rather than as young women’s taking responsibility for their sexual health.

  Ultimately, the FDA/EC debacle became a real crisis. In 2005, Susan Wood, director of the Office of Women’s Health and assistant commissioner for women’s health, resigned in protest. In an email sent to friends and colleagues, she wrote:I have spent the last fifteen years working to ensure that science informs good health policy deci sion s . . . .

  I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled. I therefore have submitted my resignation effective today.

  Not until July 2006—after protests were launched and complaints lodged from female legislators and local activists (nine of whom got arrested in front of FDA headquarters), and the Government Accountability Office issued a report about how politicized and “unusual” the process was—did the FDA approve EC for over-the-counter sale.16

  Unfortunately, the drug was made available only to women aged eighteen and older, so the very people who need EC most—young women—were deprived. Once again, this restriction was conceived because of the FDA’s fear that young women would misuse the drug and become “promiscuous.”bs Outside of being discriminatory, the age limit also made little sense. In many states, teen girls can obtain abortions without parental permission, but can’t access a drug that can stop them from getting pregnant. So in New York, for example, if a teen girl has a broken-condom incident with her partner, she can’t prevent a pregnancy using emergency contraception, but she can get an abortion should she become pregnant.

  The FDA’s approval process in this case is hardly the first (or the last, I imagine) time that the government’s interference in women’s health decisions has revealed the degree to which it’s so fully entangled in fears about young females’ sexuality. Deriding young women for having sex is a tradition with a long history, but when socially restrictive double standards about sex make their way into policy, we have an issue that isn’t just women’s problem—it’s the country’s problem.

  DADDY KNOWS BEST

  Another disturbing legislative theme hurting women—again, young women especially—is the widespread notion that women can’t be trusted to make their own decisions.

 
One of the most infuriating policy examples as far as this kind of paternalism is concerned is “informed consent” laws (also called Woman’s Right to Knowbt laws), which, to date, thirty-three states implement to varying degrees. The premise of these laws is essentially that when a woman goes to get an abortion, she doesn’t really know that she’ll be . . . well, getting an abortion. Best that someone let her know—and in the most shaming way possible!17

  Informed consent laws, as they’re supposed to, exist to ensure that people get accurate and unbiased information before receiving medical care so that they can make the decision that’s best for them. But when it comes to abortion, the principles of informed consent go out the window. Laws that “inform” women about abortion often contain false, misleading, and/or biased information that seeks to shame and scare, rather than inform.

  In South Dakota,bu for example, the informed consent law requires doctors to tell women seeking abortions that the procedure “ends a human life,” and “that the pregnant woman has an existing relationship with that unborn human being and that the relationship enjoys protection under the United States Constitution and under the laws of South Dakota.”18

  Sarah Blustain, who wrote about these laws for The American Prospect, notes just how condescending the legislation is:This line of thinking makes clear that women are too ignorant to realize that they are carrying some sort of nascent life in them, and too weak to possibly decide for themselves whether to have an abortion. Even worse, drafters of the South Dakota law do not think women are competent to state whether they have absorbed all of this helpful state information properly: The law would require the doctor to certify, in writing, that he “believes she [the pregnant woman] understands the information imparted.”19