Show me how you care: Birth control, is it (a) right?

It was when I read Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung’s The Delusions of Care that I really started to view care as a commodity, as a sort of performative currency that eggs neoliberalism forever onward in the guise of help, protection, modernity, or any other trope that the Global North plasters onto its capitalist and imperialist policies affecting the peoples forever viewed as lesser-than.

Care can encapsulate any number of things, provided it fits the desired framework. And birth control has long been utilized as a major axis of said care. Several non-governmental and rich white philanthropists preach the importance of birth control, but a look into the beginnings of the birth control movement in the United States paints a more complex picture, one whose insidious legacy has clear traces in Lebanon today.

Abortion has been illegal in Lebanon since the drafting of the Lebanese law in 1943. It is equally forbidden by religion, whose tentacles have found their way to every last part of the Lebanese state. It must be mentioned that in 1969, the Presidential Decree No.13187 stated that abortion would only be permitted if the mother’s life was in danger. But this is more a matter of logic than a reproductive health victory, and so this amendment has not changed the contraceptive landscape in Lebanon at all, where not only women seeking abortions but also the person performing the abortion are punishable by law. This, however, in no way decreases the state’s intervention in decreasing birth rates when it comes to the Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, or the female migrant worker populations.

“What was demanded as a “right” for the privileged came to be interpreted as a “duty” for the poor” 

The American Margaret Sanger was the one who coined the term birth control and founded the birth control movement in the US in the early 20^th century. But the interconnectedness of her message with eugenics and racism proves once again that the white woman’s feminism was anything but intersectional. In the late 1800’s, the white birthrate in the US was decreasing significantly. This meant that the future workforce would be considerably less white, and therefore considerably more non-white: other racial groups that had suffered at the hands of the white population would hold more power as this white population dwindled. Unsurprisingly, this sounded the capitalist/racist alarm, as the decreasing white birthrate was even officially dubbed “race suicide.” In an eerie alignment with the eugenics movement, Angela Davis explains in Women, Race & Class how birth control thus emerged as a way to “prevent the proliferation of the lower classes”, and thus as an “antidote to race suicide.” As such, birth control was introduced to the Black, immigrant, and poor populations: their numbers had to decrease for white supremacy to remain intact.

Davis’s sinister words have remained with me since I first read them: “What was demanded as a “right” for the privileged came to be interpreted as a “duty” for the poor.”

From its earliest beginnings, birth control was nefariously altered from a progressive right that women were advocating for to a deeply racist strategy intending to control a population. This tinges everything that came afterward with an ambiguity removing all innocence from the act of a woman having the final say over her own body and future: how could birth control be viewed as entirely positive, as care, knowing the history of the movement? Knowing the interwovenness of capitalism and racism with the control of populations?

The same scenario unfurls in Lebanon today: the state, religion, and patriarchy wield their power to control women further, with how inaccessible “black market” abortions are and the fact that the law itself criminalizes them. Thus the unsafety is twofold: medically speaking, since the abortion would be performed in relatively unsafe environments with no post-abortion care, physical or psychological, but also legally speaking, since it is against the law.

This is an important tool for the state to continue protecting its own nationalistic view—and while bearing in mind the sheer plurality of these views, a plurality resulting from the various sects and communities that constitute Lebanon’s social fabric, they all seem to converge on the supremacy of the upper class and the denigration of any other community (and race) unanimously viewed as lesser. Sanger’s connection to eugenics comes up again here, in the discussion of the “quality” of a population and, to put it rashly, who is allowed to breed. Birth control takes center stage as abortion is pushed aside, and the conversation changes from who is allowed to terminate a pregnancy to who is allowed to get pregnant in the first place.

Is there even such a thing as care in the patriarchal state?

In light of this, stories of contraceptive success take on uncomfortable dimensions when thought of in relation to the deep racism of the Lebanese state. For instance, Palestinian refugee women’s fertility rate dropped by half between 1987 and 2006, and it is even projected to become negative in the near future. This can be linked back to very high rates of UNRWA-provided contraceptive usage. The question is, why? Why is it so important for these women not to procreate? And the same goes for Syrian refugee women in Lebanon: the focus is centered on limiting their birthrates and increasing their access to contraception. This is not what is exactly happening on the ground, however, as these women have been reported to face difficulties in finding contraceptives or reproductive healthcare services, be it due to discrimination, financial reasons (the cost of healthcare or the cost of transportation to clinics) or even the lack of women’s preferred methods of contraception. Female migrant domestic workers also bear the brunt of the Lebanese state’s racism. The Kafala system, likened to modern-day slavery, ties these women up into inhumane working conditions with no protection, and cases of pregnancy are scandalous and quickly resolved: preventing the proliferation of the lower classes, of the subjugated women.

How is it, then, that birth control and access to contraceptives could be viewed as care? And is there even such a thing as care in the patriarchal state? As disaster after disaster erupts in societies all over the world, and as Lebanon descends further into utter chaos and destruction, it is abundantly clear that these systems are not working. There is something deeply wrong, as care has lost all its meaning and become a delusion. How is it, then, that we can unlearn it back to its initial significance?

Disclaimer: Abortion and birth control should be accessible for women of all classes and races with no exception. It is a fundamental right that a woman should be able to choose for herself whenever and wherever she deems it necessary.