Tulsa's War Against Birth Control

We here at AltTulsa don't mind hearing the other side in a political argument. But the Tulsa-based group arguing against birth control has "a hard row to hoe," as we used to say in the South.

The latest attack on women's efforts to control their own bodies was a letter in today's Tulsa World. The letter argues that the use of oral contraceptives (the pill) is linked to divorce. Thus, the letter argues, as the pill became popular in the 1960s, the divorce rate soared.

Well, it's not that simple. In the first place, the argument violates a fundamental rule of statistics: correlation does not equal causation. Just because the pill became popular does mean it caused a soaring divorce rate. Correlations can't account for other causal factors, of which there are many in this case.

More fundamentally, American couples have embraced a variety of family planning and birth control methods despite the best efforts of the zealots and religious warriors. Hasn't it long been the case that Catholic women, for instance, use birth control in overwhelming numbers and in direct violation of the church's teaching?

We suspect that the War on Birth Control was lost many years ago. Wouldn't it be better to put all that money and energy into something that would really help Tulsans who need it?