Sex in Zero Gravity
50 years of legal birth control: How it changed the workplace for women
Point # 3:
The economy comprises more female doctors, dentists, lawyers and business owners than before Griswold v. Connecticut. In 2013, women earned nearly half of all J.D. degrees, according to the American Bar Association. Planned Parenthood estimates that contraception has accounted for more than 30 percent of the increase in the proportion of women in skilled careers from 1970 to 1990. “It’s easy to get discouraged about the state of affairs in Congress, but it’s important to look back on the Supreme Court decision and the dramatic change it created in women’s lives,” Richards said. “I think people forget how that simple access to contraception has improved their access to the workforce.”
Regnerus certainly doesn’t shy away from controversy, does he? For the uninitiated, he’s also the author of a landmark study on same-sex relationships which came to the conclusion that the children of such relationships did indeed suffer vs. children of married (heterosexual) couples. The big caveat with this is something Regnerus admitted; his test sample was significantly the children of heterosexual couples, but where one partner had left the other for a same-sex partner. So you have same-sex parenting convolved with the effects of family breakup, which is also known to “leave a mark”, sociologically speaking.
That noted, his conclusion here is not exactly rocket science. If you make it possible to have sex without risking pregnancy, your “supply curve” of willing participants automatically goes up, which then drives the “market clearing price” down. In our society, the “clearing price” is generally less than marriage. Add a substitute good—pornography—and the price goes down yet further.
On the flip side, the cost of fornication—STDs, kids when contraception fails, etc..—pushes it back up a bit, but it’s a reality of which we all ought to be aware.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
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