Birth control pills have been available to women for about 50 years, and their advent has led to major societal changes. Women have the choice to delay or altogether forgo having children, which has allowed them to step out of the kitchen and enter the workplace. However, some hardcore pro-lifers actually believe oral contraception should be made illegal.

A pro-life group known as Personhood Florida is pushing for an amendment to the Florida Constitution that defines someone as a person “from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.” This proposed amendment resembles one that appeared on Colorado’s ballot in the 2008 election and was rejected by about 75 percent of voters.

On the surface, this amendment appears to be a run-of-the-mill initiative to criminalize abortion. However, some critics argue that if this amendment passes, its wording could potentially be used to make using birth control pills and the morning-after pill illegal.
Though the criminalization of birth control pills is not Personhood Florida’s chief goal (though leaders of the movement don’t discount the idea), the American Life League, a national association that is supporting similar personhood amendments in several other states, likens the use of contraception to “early abortion.” The group’s Web site also claims that the ability to use birth control leads to a “state of mind that treats sexual activity as if had nothing to do with babies.” In case none of you has heard, sexual activity is only OK if the couple’s goal is procreation.

In addition to the American Life League’s official Web site, the group also sponsors the Web site thepillkills.com. This site features stories of women who have died as a result of taking oral contraceptives and purports that the pill kills babies as well. Admittedly, oral contraceptives have been linked to life-threatening side effects but so is practically every drug on the market.

I’m not arguing that individuals should not be allowed to waste their time and energy on pursuits such as banning birth control. By all means, go right ahead if that’s what you want to do. I’m not trying to be an alarmist, either; honestly, there is little chance this proposal will become law given concerns about how far the amendment could be stretched.

What I do want people to think about is the context in which banning birth control could take place. Obviously, this could easily happen in theocratic countries where religious teachings are taken verbatim. In many such countries, birth control is not outright banned, but its availability is so limited that it might as well be.

Looking at this issue from another point of view, isn’t it possible such drastic initiatives could succeed if legislation taking away certain rights was more frequent? To use an analogy, John Marcotte, a Californian writer, has launched a satirical campaign to ban divorce in California. Marcotte told CNN that banning divorce is a logical extension of Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California. Using this same logic, it seems possible someone could take a law banning abortion one step further and argue that oral contraception violates the rights of an unborn child by not allowing a fertilized egg to attach itself to the wall of the uterus.

Though I do not believe abortion should be outlawed, I realize that a significant number of people believe otherwise, and it could very well be made illegal. If abortion is ever criminalized, hopefully the act of abortion itself will be made illegal because personhood amendments are wide open for interpretation. The wide interpretation presents the threat of criminalizing birth control, which could lead to many unwanted babies and unhappy mothers who are forced to take care of them.

—Aimee Sobhani is a junior in the College of Arts and Science. She can be reached at aimee.f.sobhani@vanderbilt.edu.