Brady Swenson of RHRealityCheck.org nicely summarizes why policies like the Prevention-First Act — intended to help promote the development, distribution, and use of safe (not there yet), effective, reliable, accessible, affordable, and convenient in order to prevent unplanned, unwanted pregnancies — are critical not only to choice and bodily autonomy, and critical not just because it’s a big (wooden) wedge that can be driven between majority fence-sitters and daylight-shunning, blood-drinking anti-contraception/anti-choiceers, but critical for its impact on health, relationship stability, and the economy.
Many Adults Face Unplanned Pregnancies
Iowa newspaper the Quad-City Times features a story on surprisingly common unplanned pregnancies among adults in their 20s and 30s. In Iowa more than half of all births in 2007 were reported as unintended pregnancies. One woman featured in the article successfully planned her first pregnancy when she was 24 but financial turmoil forced her to give up birth control and a second, unplanned, pregnancy took a toll on her marriage:
It’s a reason, incidentally, I don’t believe sex writing has to be in a slump (Or, more accurately, has to be in any more of a slump than the economy at large.) Call me unreasonable but the trick, I think, is to remain relevant to reader’s experience. Right now? For… roughly 60-65% of the sexually expressive audience an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy is as much a credible concern whether it comes about during an elegantly managed and negotiated shibari session or during “it’s Saturday night and the kids are asleep do you wanna” sex between partners both exhausted from working two jobs each.
