News Briefs
Weyrauch Lecture: The complication of familial class and classification
by Leslie Cowan (2L)
In her March 23 lecture, titled “Family Classes,” Naomi Cahn discussed the way economic class controls general thought about conception and family planning, coloring the “entire range of issues from contraception to abortion.”
Cahn, the John Theodore Fey Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School, spoke at the Levin College of Law as the speaker for the third annual Weyrauch lecture, a lecture dedicated to the memory of the late Walter Weyrauch, a Levin College of Law professor and legal scholar.
Cahn asserted that the “rates of unplanned pregnancies, abortion, and unplanned births” are lower for higher-income groups who have greater financial resources and more options as a result. Abortion, a notorious “toxic issue in the culture wars” has also always been a class issue, she said. Because of the increased rate of unplanned pregnancies, poor women are more likely to get an abortion than are wealthier women. With the self-perpetuating cycle of little access to contraception, lower levels of education, and limited healthcare, the rates of unplanned pregnancies for lower socioeconomic classes are on the rise.
Cahn posed three steps that will lead the way forward in terms of establishing a pattern for policymakers to follow in addressing class inequities in reproductive health and planning. First, comprehensive sex education, including education about birth control in addition to or in lieu of abstinence education is key. Second, provision of comprehensive access to contraception, so that those currently limited by financial constraints will have access to better family planning. Her third suggestion is to increase adolescent access to contraception and education to empower them to protect themselves and to make educated choices.
In addition to economic variables impacting family planning, Cahn identified one of the most controversial families with no legal recognition — those that include a homosexual relationship — as lacking “a whole set of rights that are attached to the class of the family that you are able to enter into,” especially involving inheritance, medical decisions, and social recognition.
