GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2009

Status

Working

Abstract

This paper traces the history of attempts to restrict contraception, the legal events securing widespread access to contraception and their importance to a generation of college-aged women, the short-lived nature of the consensus that produced them, and the potential of the issue to serve as a rallying point for a revitalized feminism. It explores the hypocrisy of a system that, whatever its values, makes reproductive autonomy readily available for the affluent and the sophisticated and increasingly beyond the reach of the most vulnerable. Finally, it considers the potential of contraception as a reframing device, capable of exposing the hypocrisy of family values advocates whose policies disproportionately hurt the most vulnerable.

GW Paper Series

GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 476; GWU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 476

Download

Included in

Law Commons

Share

COinS