April 16, 1993

Fertility control can empower today's women

Robert L. Steinback, Herald Columnist

The pope just doesn't get it. For 12 years, the president didn't get it.

But increasingly, women are learning they don't have to wait until men figure it out. More and more women, particularly poor women, are ready to take control of their own fertility.

It's a fledgling trend, a small countercurrent in a stream of disturbing statistics. But according to a study by reporter Pamela Ferdinand in Tuesday's Miami Herald, a growing number of low-income young women in Florida are choosing sterilization to prevent having children they can't afford to rear.

It's the latest of several developments giving more women more ways to control fertility than ever before. Long-acting contraceptives like Depo-Provera and Norplant are now available here. Orval, an emergency morning-after contraceptive, is gaining acceptance. The U.S. government is studying RU-486, the so-called abortion pill. And President Clinton appears ready to provide more of these options to the low-income women who most need them.

The possible ramifications are significant: Poor women would have a better chance to climb out of poverty if they are no longer burdened with too many children. This, in turn, would give them greater access to the economic and political halls of power. That would chip away at oppressive social values still set mostly by men, and maybe even change how men and women get along individually.

The old chauvinist saw that a woman's best condition is "barefoot and pregnant" -- dependent and limited by motherhood -- may at last be in jeopardy.

Overpopulation, whether on a global or neighborhood level, means poverty. It's a simple equation: As population grows faster than resources, less is available for each person.

Yet population control is still seen as an ominous threat by some very influential people -- again, mostly men.

Pope John Paul II in 1991 actually encouraged women of Brazil -- a country wracked by poverty -- to have more children to increase the pool of candidates for the priesthood. Presidents Reagan and Bush were so rigid in opposition to abortion choice -- a woman's right to decide whether or not to remain pregnant -- that they spiked family-planning efforts not only here but the world over.

A shrewdly effective plank shared by some anti-abortion and ethnic activists holds that any attempt to limit childbirth is a subtle form of genocide against people of color. Choice over fertility, they argue, only cuts down the birth rate of babies of color.

But a more compelling argument is that denying women the chance to make informed decisions about fertility is an effective way to keep them, and their children, poor and powerless. That's a far greater peril to the world's brown- and black-skinned peoples.

Individually, men would have to learn greater respect for women who control their own fertility. Young men who want to prove their manhood by siring a child would be denied that foolish goal by an empowered woman. A man expecting pregnancy and motherhood to keep his mate at home would have to work harder to keep her once she's as free to roam as he is.

The trend is not without dangers. Society might, for example, be tempted to impose contraception on those deemed undesirable -- an intolerable possibility.

But as long as information and education accompany the expansion of fertility alternatives, women have at hand the tools to escape the "barefoot and pregnant" prison forever. Reebok and Nike will take care of the former. Women now can take control of the latter.