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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowI seldom agree with what Sheila Suess Kennedy has to say, but I found myself nodding in agreement as I read her piece on how reliable birth control has emancipated women from biological and historical subordination [“Sheila Suess Kennedy: What family planning has meant to women’s liberation,” Aug. 18].
Her forthright acknowledgement of obvious biological differences between men and women was refreshing coming from a lefty. But then she veered off into fantasy, claiming that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision reverses all the progress she alludes to and returns “women to second class citizenship.”
As much as one may disagree with Dobbs, as I do, it does no such thing. The women’s liberation that Kennedy rightly champions was made possible by safe, effective and widely available contraceptives, not by abortions. Contraceptives remain safe, effective and widely available after Dobbs.
Perhaps a positive consequence of Dobbs will be a greater reliance on contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancies instead of abortions to end them.
—Charles M. Freeland
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