Pro-choice author and researcher Rosalind Pollack Petchesky writes:
“As I argued initially, the “contraceptive revolution,” especially the pill, has increased rather than decreased women’s need for access to abortion.
This is true because of two interacting developments: the widespread availability of the pill and legal abortion, reinforcing women’s awareness of fertility control as their right; and a newer political consciousness that refuses to accept risk to reproductive health as fate’s decree.
The current status of contraceptive techniques underlines more than ever that as long as it remains possible for a woman to become pregnant without wanting to be, abortion will be a necessity and its denial a punishment of women – for having sex.”
Rosalind Pollack Petchesky Abortion and Women’s Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom (New York: Longman, 1984) 190
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