The other gap

Until 1999 the Chilean constitution said that all men are equal; since that date it says that “men and women” are equal before the law (law 19.611).

I consider technology one of the great engines of cultural change, and whenever I discuss these matters I always pick the contraceptive pill as my example.

If you ask a group of people which great technological changes they think have changed society, the answers will include the printing press, television, writing, the wheel, and of course the internet. But they rarely name the contraceptive pill, or contraceptive methods in general. I do not know if it is machismo, but people tend to forget the impact of this technology.

When people talk about the contraceptive pill they almost always associate it with miniskirts, hippies and free love. As if the sexual revolution were the only effect contraceptives had on our society!

But have you thought about the tremendous positive impact it meant for half of civilization?

It is astonishing, because this technological advance is relatively recent. Before, a woman had no freedom to decide when she would devote herself to motherhood. In fact, her one and only role was considered to be that of mother. Yes, there were women who worked, intellectuals and scientists, but they were very few. Look in the history books and you will see that, apart from great queens and empresses (all of them mothers), women’s participation is minor, not because they were not there, but because they have carried the great weight of holding families together, in their role as mothers.

baby

Contraceptive methods are one more of the many advances in health that technology has given us. A woman can not only choose when to be a mother, she also knows that her child will survive childbirth. Families in the old days had to have many children, because they needed to raise the odds of their genes surviving. It is no longer necessary to bring so many children into the world, because we know they can survive better than 60 or 100 years ago, so we have no need to bring unwanted children to suffer in this “vale of tears”.

But that works for those who have access to this technology. Because technology gaps show up at many levels. Technology gaps are, in reality, social gaps.

In many countries the poor still have many children, to raise the odds of genetic survival. Many children keep dying while the strongest of their siblings survive. Many women who have been raped have to decide whether or not to abort; others, frightened at the prospect of having a child they do not feel ready to receive, face similar dilemmas. Meanwhile the daughters of high society do not even give it a thought: they go to the pharmacy and have access to the technology that keeps them from having that unwanted child.

The truth is that this technology, like all technologies, has its own gap, and somebody has to do something to try to close it. That is what health programs do. It is not about being against life, it is about justice, about allowing access to a technology that gives freedom and makes sure the children who come into our world are wanted and loved. That they arrive when their mothers feel sure about receiving them, ready for that wonderful moment.

Today, in my country, a group of gentlemen has apparently decided that many women of modest means should lose that ability to decide over their own bodies and lose their freedom. Those who proclaim themselves defenders of freedom are depriving women of one of their most precious freedoms, and they want to take us back to the darkest past, where unwanted children will be torn apart in the womb and thrown out like garbage. They, who are against abortion, become accomplices in the thousands of abortions that will come, out of desperation.

Ignorance kills. How true that phrase is.

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