Nikki Haley’s campaign is all about girl power. She launched her presidential campaign by quipping, “May the best woman win,” and she couldn’t resist the opportunity to scold her fellow candidates on the debate stage Wednesday night: “If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman,” she said, recycling a line from Margaret Thatcher.
To her credit, Haley gets some of the gender issues right. She wants to keep men out of women’s sports, for example. But for all her efforts to stand out as the only woman for the job, Haley showed on Wednesday that she doesn’t really understand the most pressing “women’s issue” of our time.
When asked about abortion, Haley immediately responded that she is “unapologetically pro-life.” She then tried to turn the tables, calling out her fellow Republicans for “demonizing” the issue of abortion. She proposed a series of rhetorical questions aimed at underlining points of agreement, not division:
Can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions? Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions? Can’t we all agree that doctors and nurses who don’t believe in abortion shouldn’t have to perform them? Can’t we all agree that contraception should be available?
One of these things is not like the other. Where a ban on late-term abortions, support for adoption, and protections for pro-life healthcare workers all fit within an incrementalist pro-life strategy, Haley’s support for contraception raises red flags. For someone who is “unapologetically pro-life,” Haley is missing the big picture.
Not only is contraception incompatible with the pro-life movement, it has been a disaster for women’s health — something you’d think Haley would note, seeing as she’s played the gender card so liberally throughout her campaign.
When discussing contraception, it’s important to note that it’s an umbrella term composed of two categories: non-abortifacient contraception and abortifacient contraception. The latter category doesn’t actually prevent the creation of a human life; rather, it turns the womb into an inhospitable environment, preventing the newly formed child from surviving. Birth control pills, intrauterine devices (IUDs), hormonal contraception in the forms of patches, shots, or implants, and Plan B are all abortifacients. To promote these forms of contraception as somehow pro-life is to ignore the reality of what these methods actually do: deliberately end the life of an unborn child.
Often prescribed as the “cure-all” for young women seeking medical care, contraception wreaks havoc on the female reproductive organs.
Even with regards to non-abortifacient contraceptives, like condoms, the link between contraception and abortion is undeniable. The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute has reported that more than half of women who receive an abortion had used contraception during the month they became pregnant. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that 1 in 10 women will get pregnant during their first year on the birth control pill, and 1 in 5 women will get pregnant within the first year of relying on a male condom as contraception.
At first glance, Haley’s proposal that contraception can reduce the frequency of abortion might seem logical: more contraception equals fewer unplanned pregnancies equals fewer abortions. But the only thing that contraception reliably accomplishes is the reinforcement of the logic of the sexual revolution: pregnancy is a bug, not a feature, of human sexuality. When contraception fails, abortion becomes the second line of defense for the woman who didn’t want to get pregnant in the first place. (RELATED: Abortion and Contraception Equals Birth Dearth)
In practice, Haley’s thesis that contraception reduces abortion has been tried and found wanting. As Students for Life of America points out, “Planned Parenthood and county health departments have been giving out free condoms and birth control for years. Yet, the unplanned pregnancy, abortion, and STD rates in America have not significantly fallen.”
Additionally, contraception has hugely detrimental effects on women’s health. Often prescribed as the “cure-all” for young women seeking medical care, contraception wreaks havoc on the female reproductive organs. Gender studies professor Abigail Favale explains that “the most widely used and prescribed methods of birth control … work by disrupting the normal functions of a woman’s reproductive system, intentionally making it malfunction, in order to prevent pregnancy.”
Unsurprisingly, this intentional malfunction has repercussions for the rest of the body’s health, too. The National Cancer Institute has reported that oral contraceptives increase the risk of breast cancer by 24 percent, and the New England Journal of Medicine published a paper that demonstrated a risk up to 60 percent, depending on the type of contraception and the duration of use. Contraceptives also sharply increase the risk of cervical cancer. Use of contraceptives has also been linked with increased rates of depression. Contraception is one of the key lies of the sexual revolution, telling women that they can deny their biology and escape the natural consequences of sex. But pathologizing fertility only causes greater harm to women’s health.
When it comes to the pro-life movement today, incrementalism is the name of the game: win what you can where you can, with the goal of gradually eradicating abortion. But promoting contraception, as Haley does, isn’t incrementalism at all. The contraceptive mentality props up the abortion industry, treating pregnancy like an unnatural consequence of sex to be avoided at all costs. If Haley wants to campaign off being the only woman in the race, she’d do well to read up on women’s issues.
Mary Frances Myler is a writer from Traverse City, Michigan. You can follow her on Twitter @mfmyler.
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