Business Newspaper Looks Back Fondly on When Birth Control Was a Crime
The Hartford Business Journal ran an opinion piece, Where are the Babies?, by a Laurence Cohen bemoaning that the people of Connecticut are allowed to use contraception legally. Mr. Cohen assigns all of the state's business woes to the fact Connnecticut is not overpopulated by families unable to control reproduction. Cohen believes unplanned families would fuel the economy and force many to take low earning jobs in once thriving factories. he fingers the real culprit: Griswold vs. Connecticut, the US Supreme Court ruling that granted married couples the right to plan their families. Cohen writes,
According to a recent ACNielsen survey, the Hartford-New Haven area is one of the strongest markets in the country for the sale of over-the-counter contraceptives. Aren’t we the lucky ones. With a population growth pattern on the order of North Dakota and other Canadian provinces, Connecticut is at risk of losing another Congressional seat, of seeing the average age of its population rise from the current 85 to 87, and of dumping plans for Hartford’s exciting Front Street development project and replacing it with a geriatric medical center.Of course, Cohen fails to mention that Connecticut also happens to be, based on average household income, the third richest state in the country--funny how he doesn't link that to the legacy of Griswold v Connecticut. Maybe the local business problems in Hartford have more to do with allowing the likes of Mr. Cohen at the brainstorming table. (Does he really think the birth control pill is responsible for the death of the typewriter? And, if so, that's a bad thing?) We can only hope there'll be more hilarious "in-with-the-old, out-with-the-new" business ideas to look forward to from Cohen and the Hartford Business Journal (there's not enough satire in business writing these days). Here's an idea to bounce around at their next editorial meeting: Bringing Back Child Labor: How to Get Your Kid Interested in Working at a Hat Manufacturing Plant, Making Brass, or Knowing What a Typewriter Was."
Connecticut patted itself on its old, sore, bony back when national studies found that the credit crisis and foreclosure frenzy has had less impact here than in many other places. Of course, the explanation is that while other states have actually been building new homes for a growing population, Connecticut has only been building new warehouses so that CVS and Walgreen have somewhere to store the extra supplies of condoms and contraceptive creams and gels and other yucky stuff.
Is it not enough that you can’t buy a bottle of wine in a grocery store, a bottle of whiskey on Sunday, the bars close early and the Hartford “Welcome Center” closes at 5 p.m.? So why do we need responsible sex?The impetus for the lack of Connecticut baby production stems from the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Griswold vs. Connecticut, in which the high court tossed out Connecticut’s economic development strategy of discouraging and criminalizing contraception, to increase baby production.
And thus, the great slide began. Waterbury stopped making brass. Danbury stopped making hats. Hartford stopped making typewriters. And the whole damn state stopped making babies.
About this post: posted by Cristina Page at
2/11/2008 09:35:00 AM
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Are you sure the Cohen article isn't a deliberate spoof? The average age in CT can't possibly be 85. Worse, he got the year of Griswold v. Connecticut wrong (it was 1965). (On the other hand, if it were a spoof, he might have mentioned that the CT state legislator responsible for the original 1879 ban was none other than P. T. Barnum...yes, that P. T. Barnum.) I suppose it is just a comment on the current state of affairs that anti-choice rants are so disconnected from reality, we can't tell whether they are for real or not.
CT is having a baby-less time of it are they? Well, CT has an above average income profile, a greater than average number of college education citizens and real estate values are above national average - so why are the childbearing women of CT not have making any more babies?
Are other issues at play? How about affordable medicial insurance, how about being able to afford college for the kids you already have; how about paying for private school, books and supplies. And, despite what many men say; they themselves have a lot to say about how many children they father; and face it, fewer kids, means less expense, worry and a shorter span of time being the parent of a minor child. Then there is the great expense of money, time, effort and energy to care for aging parents. Pensions as well as job security are a things of the past, irrespective of one's level of education or profession; so people have to limit kid production as a cost saving device.
Women in the country on average have 2.3 kids; we are a growing population despite use of BC. I think the real problem is that most women and men know their limits and have aspirations for something other than breeding and caretaking. But one can never underestimate those who want women out of the workplace as that creates more competition and competition is only good if men are involved?!
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