How to force women out of college

on December 24, 2007 at 2:23 PM, updated December 24, 2007 at 3:32 PM

Last week I addressed my classes at NJCU for the final time this semester. Unfortunately, there is a good chance that as many as half of my students may never attend another college class. The reasons for dropping out of college are as varied as the students, but there are some general reasons that pop up time and again.

Expense, for example, is a problem for almost everyone. Duke and Harvard are trying to make sure that doesn't stop students anymore (at least at those two schools). Another problem is that kids just aren't academically ready to do college-level work. Colleges spend a ton of money on remedial work to address this problem. Yet another problem is overload - students who have never been away from mom and dad just get overwhelmed at the options that come with being on your own. But one reason that has been at mercifully low levels for some time now is unwanted pregnancy. But the hangover from the Republican majority is about to kick in - so that bit of good news is about to change.

An obscure portion of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 forced drug-makers to abandon their program of providing low-cost birth control to college health clinics. Colleges have been trying to fend off the inevitable by stockpiling birth control, but that stash is now running out. The results are sure to follow like clockwork - or, more precisely, like the turning of the calendar.

As many as 39% of women in college use oral contraceptives to prevent pregnancy (see previous links). With the price doubling, tripling, quadrupling, or even more that leaves a lot of women without their preferred means of preventing pregnancy. Sure, condoms are available over the counter - as are the less effective means of foams, creams, and such. But for sheer convenience, nothing yet has matched the oral contraceptive - a factor that most likely contributes to its high rate of effectiveness.

Women can also go to non-college clinics to obtain birth control. But we know that convenience is a major factor in all contraceptive actions. College students are busy - most of them juggling multiple part-time jobs and classes, plus homework, library research, etc. Asking a woman to get on a bus for an hour to wait at a clinic for two hours to ride the bus back for another hour is simply pretending like we actually live in a different world than we do. Spout whatever platitude you like about "teaching responsibility" or that kids should "wait until they are married", but please deal with reality, too.

As far as the vast majority of Americans are concerned, using oral contraceptives is, in fact, being responsible. Unless and until the Constitution is burned and the Ten Commandments place it its stead, objections about pre-marital sex simply don't rise to the level of becoming the basis for law. The primary determination of public health concerns should be that they are effective. There are few programs that have been as effective at preventing unwanted pregnancy - and thus keeping our daughters in school long enough to get a degree and a ticket to a better life - as has been allowing drug companies to provide birth control at college campuses at cut-rate prices.

This is the dark side of the "pro-life movement" - and where it meets the anti-feminist backlash. Afraid of the fact that women are achieving equality and reaching for educational parity, reactionaries see pre-marital sex as being de facto evil - the opposite of God's will - and so they are not concerned so much with preventing abortion (the original purpose of the pro-life movement) as with preventing women from breaking out of their powerless patriarchically-enforced position inside the household. I've had more than one discussion with such reactionaries who opposed even the mention of condoms unless it was "in the most negative terms possible".

It is outgrowth of the "moral cost" school of thinking. Sex, its practitioners believe, should be reserved only to those who are married (and possibly, only for the further creation of life). Using birth control unhitches having sex from its natural consequence - pregnancy. Thus, unwanted pregnancy is the natural consequence - or God's punishment - for disobeying the invective against premarital sex. If a woman didn't want to have a baby, she should have kept her legs closed. Once she decides to have sex, she loses the right to control her own fertility. It's a public policy of which Osama bin Laden and the Taliban would be proud.

I don't think most pro-life supporters adhere to that extreme position. As I said, it is the dark side of that movement, where it overlaps with anti-feminist reactionaries. Unfortunately, these are also the most dedicated and politically active of the pro-life movement. They are the ones who tend to sit on the boards of pro-life organizations and they are the ones who push pro-life politicians to take more and more extreme positions to prove that they are earnestly against abortion (and for imposing God's will on society). Just as Jerry Falwell never spoke for all Christians, but became the public voice of faith in America because he was largely unopposed by other Christians, the silent compliance of moderate pro-lifers with this reactionary fringe allows this to be the public face of their movement.

There is still time for the Democratic majority to act. They could easily restore the ability of drug companies to write-off the cost of providing low-cost birth control to women in college. Every dollar it costs us in tax dollars today is ten dollars worth of tax dollars these women will pay every year after they receive their degree. But even more than the dollars and cents of such a program, it restores the dignity of young women who want to control their own destiny with more than a constant denial of their biology. It's the right call for anyone who believes that women should be fully functioning and first-class members of our society.