Restrictions on Contraception Could Set Women Back Generations
Claudia Goldin, a professor of economics at Harvard and the author of “Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity,” was a college student at Cornell University from 1963 until 1967. Back then, in the days before readily accessible birth-control pills and legal abortions, family-planning services weren’t offered to women who weren’t married. At Cornell, if female students wanted to get birth control of any kind, they had to go to college health services and pretend they were engaged or already married. While doing research on the issue years after she graduated, Goldin learned of women who put rings on their fingers to trick the medical staff; sometimes they would have to do this multiple times, whenever a prescription ran out. They also took other precautions. “In order to have a normal social and sex life as an eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty-year-old in college, or even outside college, you wanted to insure yourself,” Goldin told me. “So, you purchased, essentially, an insurance policy.”
The insurance policy was finding a steady boyfriend and binding yourself tightly to him, like Lois Lane clinging to Superman’s side, ideally becoming engaged to be married as soon as possible. That way, if you accidentally became pregnant, everyone would know who the father was, and the expectation would be that he would marry you. This strategy came with many trade-offs, one of the biggest being that you were locking in a life of early domesticity and childbearing. “Once you do that, even if you don’t get pregnant, you’ve changed the game,” Goldin said. “You’ve changed your mind-set. You’re getting married. Your parents are very pleased. You’re getting your teaching certificate. You’re going to have a kid pretty soon.” Other possible versions of your future quickly faded away.
