By Mary Peyton Marble

On Wednesday, Oct. 16, Americans for Contraception hosted a breakfast and roundtable event at the Blacksburg Public Library. Roundtable participants discussed the ongoing fight to pass the Right to Contraception Act. Led by Katie Baker, Virginia America for Contraception coordinator, the event outlined the Dobbs decision and its impacts on women’s rights to contraception and body autonomy in the Va. Participants included Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia Jamie Lockheart, Senior Human Sexuality Educators Monique Ingram and Melinda Britt and Virginia Tech Student Eireann Maybach. In a similar vein, grassroots association Our Bodies Our Choice organized a seminar for reproductive justice on the following Wednesday, Oct. 23. The group formed in Jan. 2024 and consists of women and male allies over 50 who “could no longer be silent,” according to affiliate Susanna Rineharrt.

“Reproductive rights may not have seemed like a compelling issue for 75 to 80 year olds, but they lived their young adult lives, pre-Roe v Wade, and they knew all too well how much of a fight it was to establish the right to full reproductive care for women, including abortion, those rights have been so swiftly taken away.” Rinehart explains to the audience, which consisted of women young and old. “We must all add our voices to re-establish a woman's right to choose what she does with her own body.” The Dobbs v. Jackson decision (2022) states the Constitution does not guarantee a women’s right to abortion services, directly overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which had protected the constitutional right to abortion in the United States for nearly 50 years. This decision, along with the written statement from Justice Clarence Thomas that said the courts should also “reconsider” the right to basic contraception, has opened the door for states to revisit IUD and contraception access. Lobbyists and outreach groups across the country are working to protect another act — Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) — which safeguards the right to privacy for married couples to use contraception without government regulation. “And then we saw attacks on IVF earlier this year in Alabama. Contraception — we're beginning to see attacks on that — specifically hormonal contraception, IUDs and emergency contraceptives, are the next line of attack. So we have activated.” said Baker from Americans for Contraception.

In the event that Griswold is overturned, Americans for Contraception advocates for state and federal laws that would codify a right to contraception. “At the federal level, Congresswoman Kathy Manning from North Carolina, and Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts have been carrying that bill,” said Baker.

In Virginia, state Senator Ghazala Hashmi from Chesterfield County and Delegate Cia Price from Newport News carried SB 237 and HB 609 — codifying a Virginian’s right to birth control, condoms, IUDs and emergency contraception.

Baker explained Republican and Democrat bipartisan agreement is possible, SB 237 and HB 609 received support from republican delegates, but some Republicans “have the most extreme wing of their party in their ears” admonishing any support for controversial bills.

Glenn Youngkin vetoed the bill, claiming it would “create an overly broad cause of action against political subdivisions and parents…(The bill) fails to include adequate conscience clause protections for providers and also undermines the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning their children's upbringing and care.”

Baker told the crowd that even though Youngkin vetoed the bill, “we are not giving up.” Americans for Contraception, along with Planned Parenthood, will continue to “have conversations all over the Commonwealth with people about what they can do to communicate with their legislators about this bill.

Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner Laurie Buchwald of Our Bodies Our Choice stressed the many uses of contraception, saying, “we want to focus on the use of contraception to improve quality of life and to address the myriad of gynecologic conditions that affect a woman's life and therefore the life of all those around her.” Women use contraception for a variety of medical reasons, including preventing pregnancy, unpleasant menstrual cycles, iron deficiency anemia, premenstrual migraines, ovarian and endometrial cancer, physical, mental and emotional symptoms, as well as preventing menstrual exacerbations of comorbidities, seizures, migraines, irritable bowel, Crohn's disease, asthma, diabetes, and hypertension — “I can't tell you how many women I have helped with get on hormonal contraception to prevent diabetes flares and Crohn's flares,” said Buchwald.

Narratives and myths surrounding abortion and contraception target another aspect of reproductive freedom: sexual education in schools.

Monique Ingram, Planned Parenthood sexual educator examined the space provided by Blacksburg Library, saying “it's not lost on me that Melinda and I, every summer, are in this very space teaching Teen Connections, which is our comprehensive sex ed camp that we run for middle and high school students right here in this very room. We talk about condoms; we give condom demonstrations. We do the contraception matching game so that they can know exactly how contraceptives work.” Monique Ingram, Melinda Britt and other educators travel to Virginia school districts to teach Family Life; “And we're able to do that work because we get support from the community, and we get support from the school system, and that's not that's not the case in every school district. That's not the case for every young person in the United States.”

Britt explained her experience with working in contraception deserts, saying, “we find a lot of people that not only don't understand how contraception works or all the different options that might be there, but also don't understand how their body works, how the uterus works, what is actually happening when a person has their period…all of that is information and education everyone has the right to.”

Contraception and reproductive stigmas affect young people around the country. Virginia Tech student Eireann Maybach, political science and communications major with a health policy focus, discussed her experience as a gen z student with contraception and advocacy.

“Contraception is an integral component in the ability to enable people to have the freedom to choose their relationship to parent with as college students” said Maybach. “Intercourse is common college and young adulthood is an experimental educational time, and often is the first time people are truly independent, relying on themselves to evaluate decisions. You would never do a chemistry experiment without goggles and gloves, and similarly, you would never experiment with each other without contraception.”

Abortion and contraception methods are currently legal in Virginia, but access is limited across counties. Rural communities are unable to support reproductive health clinics or provide adequate contraception options in pharmacies; transportation also factors into lack of access. Britt explained, “people in this rural space don't have access, or even a place to go for over Plan B or emergency contraception.”

Nurse Buchwald concluded her discussion with some statistics, contending “more than 19 million women of reproductive age in the United States are in need of publicly funded contraception, and live in contraceptive deserts. This means they live in an area that lacks reasonable access to the full range of contraceptive methods. Around 1.2 million women live in a county without a single health center offering the full range of methods. In Virginia, 409,000 women live in a county that lacks reasonable access.”

For more information on contraception laws and regulations, click here
For more information on contraception deserts and statistics surrounding women’s health care, click here
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