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Chapter Fourteen: “We aren’t the future, we’re the present”
- University of North Texas Press
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206 Chapter Fourteen “We aren’t the future, we’re the present” I once made the mistake of calling young people “the future” of the family planning movement. The teens in the audience answered in no uncertain terms: “We aren’t the future, we’re the present.” But what does the present mean to them? What meaning will they give to reproductive rights? From generation to generation One thing we know: sex isn’t a disease that gets cured once and for all. Each new generation has its own timetable for maturity and its own definition of relationships. Each generation defines family planning and reproductive self-determination in its own ways and asks different things of this movement. This is how meaning has evolved over the last three generations. A couple of years ago I visited Lincoln, Nebraska, to speak at an event. I met a ninety-five-year-old woman who came because she wanted to tell me personally that she got a diaphragm from Margaret Sanger’s clinic when she was a young wife. It was during the Depression, and she simply couldn’t afford more children. For her, reproductive rights “We aren’t the future, we’re the present” • 207 meant the relief of knowing that she would be able to take care of the children she already had, and she could stop having further pregnancies . She was brought to the lunch by her sixtyish daughter and son-inlaw . They told me that family planning had allowed them to finish graduate school. It enabled them to delay having children, and it meant the freedom to enjoy their sexual love without pregnancy. They had to go to a neighboring state to get birth control because it was still illegal where they went to college, but they knew about it and they were determined to have this measure of control over their lives. This couple brought with them their son and daughter-in-law, thirty-somethings who had recently adopted a baby. The young couple wanted to talk to me about how family planning, to them, means assuring the full range of options and an opportunity to nurture a child. The underlying values remain the same: the freedom to plan a family . But everything else changes over time, as the story of the three generations richly illustrates. The women who today are the age of those who came to Margaret Sanger to quit having children, now visit family planning clinics before they have their very first pregnancy and can plan thoughtfully and joyously for that day. What does the next generation ask from family planning providers and the reproductive rights movement—the young women and men just now thinking about forming their families? And what can the rest of us learn from them? When the global “youth quake” generation rocks the planet, what will everyone’s quality of life be? And what is this Britney Spears idealization of virginity while writhing with sexual invitation, anyway? Hands on, concrete, grass-roots Today’s young people are active and involved—but in different ways than their elders. They don’t want to pay membership fees and sit on boards—they want to educate themselves about the issues and join a grassroots network. They don’t want to come to meetings and manage volunteers—they want to help in concrete, personal, hands-on ways. [3.15.147.215] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 00:29 GMT) 208 • Motherhood in freedom I was especially taken by the compassionate words of this budding physician: After several years of counseling patients who were considering having an abortion, I learned that there truly is a story behind every choice. Whether it’s the woman’s first pregnancy or fifth abortion; whether she’s fourteen or forty-two; whether the conception is the result of rape or marital bliss; if she doesn’t want to have this particular baby right now, how could I want her to? How could that be what’s best for her health or what’s right for the potential child inside of her? A pregnancy can be the most exciting thing a woman ever experiences or the most terrifying, and each case is unique, medically and emotionally. I hope to become an obstetrician and to have the privilege of offering women my support and assistance, whatever their choice regarding pregnancy—avoiding it, achieving it, nurturing it, or discontinuing it. I feel extremely grateful to live in a time when that vision, that...