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 Students listen to, from left to right, Mary Lopez, Jet Tilley, and Liz Brandt, on a forum regarding birth control at the UI Law Auditorium on Tuesday evening. Nick Groff/Argonaut
Despite contraceptive options available, one-third of all American women will have an abortion in their lifetime.
With legislative attempts to infringe on these options ever increasing, the future of birth control is unsure.
Voices for Planned Parenthood at the University of Idaho joined panel guests, Mary Lopes, Liz Brandt and Jet Tilley — all experts in their field, and interested individuals — met Tuesday to consider the effects of increased legislation on birth control.
During the discussion, panelists were asked to define their idea of birth control. Lopes, an advanced registered nurse practitioner said contraception can range from one extreme to the other.
“It’s all a measurement of what your desires are,” Lopes said.
Tilley, director of public policy for Planned Parenthood of the Inland Northwest, said the most popular form of birth control is sterilization, tubal litigation for females or a vasectomy for males.
“Birth control is about family planning,” Tilley said. “People have been trying to control fertility for a long time.”
Brandt, a UI College of Law professor, said beside the common methods, birth control also encompasses medically accurate
sex education.
“I don’t think we’re there yet,” she said.
It is important to have sex education available that is age appropriate, medically accurate and peer reviewed, Tilley said. She said healthy learning establishes an individual’s refusal ability, boundaries and positive self-image.
“We don’t have to go very far to see a model that works,” she said.
In Europe, Tilley said children are taught sex education at age 9. She said programs that promote the idea of abstinence until marriage are “absolutely proven not to work.”
“It deprives teens of the info they need at a crucial time in their life,” she said.
The only way individuals can develop a healthy attitude toward sex, Brandt said, is through open conversation, something abstinence until marriage programs do not advocate.
“The whole idea is to not talk about sex,” she said.
Until men and women can talk about sex freely and together, Brandt said tragedies will continue to occur due
to misinformation.
In Idaho, sex with a female under 18-years old is considered statutory rape, whether or not the act is consensual. Tilley said certain organizations argue that birth control providers must disclose names of minors who attempt to obtain contraception, making a minor less apt to seek it out.
Tilley said if laws like these are not changed, the access to contraception will never be regarded as a “fundamental human right.”
Colorado will be voting on legislature that would define the beginning of human life at the point of fertilization, Tilley said. South Dakota is working to pass an abortion ban.
“The movement to define human life at fertilization has huge ramifications for the hormonal birth control method,” Tilley said. “Science doesn’t really back it up. Fertilization is a temporary state. It is not something you can test for.”
More than 60 percent of all fertilized eggs are sloughed off during a woman’s menstrual cycle, Tilley said. She said naming the beginning of life at the point of fertilization would be as ridiculous as accusing women of killing fertilized eggs while they are on their period.
Over the last several years, Tilley said politics surrounding contraceptives has been like a “war zone,” a constant erosion of women’s rights. The idea of granting pharmacies the ability to refuse contraceptives to customers is, to Tilley, the act of seeing “whose conscience gets to trump whose.”
“I don’t know what to expect next,” she said.
Brandt said people are unfamiliar with how difficult court attacks would be in regaining access to contraceptives should it be denied. She said legislation contains purposely ambiguous language to make appeals impossible.
“Ambiguity itself is the tyranny that enforces (legislation),” she said.
Tilley said there are 25 states that have legislation that would put a ban on all abortion, should contraceptive access lose its footing. Idaho, she said, is not one of these states.
If contraceptive access was diminished, Tilley said there would be more abortions, another aspect those pushing the ban on contraceptives are against.
“The unspoken agenda of the radical right is to control women,” Tilley said. “That gets under my skin.”
Brandt said she personally views access to contraception as an aspect of women’s empowerment.
“You are enslaved if (you) don’t have control over your own body,” Brandt said.
If this access was denied, Brandt said the rise in unwanted pregnancy and mental illness would increase.
“It would be a huge squandering of human capitol,” Brandt said.
Overall, Tilley said she tries to have a positive outlook on the political future of contraceptives.
“I’m crossing every finger and toe that I have,” she said. “It is in our power to make sure this doesn’t happen.”
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