Congress, Horses, and Birth Control

This has been a devastating week for women in this country. On Friday – and into early Saturday morning – the United States House of Representatives voted to eliminate the federal family planning program, Title X, and to eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Both Planned Parenthood and the Title X program have provided preventative and life-saving health services to men, women, and teens in this country for decades. This choice endangers lives and makes clear the real agenda of American conservatives.

At the same time, the House considered funding a birth control program for wild horses, aimed to limit wild horse populations which are growing quickly in parts of the country and are expensive to control.

Many of my friends and feminists across the country have pointed to this juxtaposition as some sort of example of how Republicans care more about horses than women. I actually find this comparison completely inaccurate and somewhat offensive. Politicians are not giving horses birth control because they support the reproductive autonomy of horses. The last I checked, horses are not banging on the doors of Congress asking for federally funded family planning. Congress is interested in giving horses birth control for our sake, not for theirs. They are giving horses birth control for the same reason they are refusing to give women birth control: to control their reproduction. Horses are not being treated better than women. Women and horses are being treated the same.

Do I oppose giving horses birth control? Not necessarily. Quite honestly, I don’t know enough about the issue to make an informed decision one way or the other. But what I do know is that giving birth control to horses does not stand in contrast to taking birth control away from women.

Just like the control of women’s reproduction is central to the goal and philosophy of conservatives, controlling the reproduction of animals is central to our nation as a whole. This is nowhere more clear than in the use of animals for dairy products. Cows are forcefully impregnated over and over so that they will continue to provide milk. Their babies are taken away at birth and not allowed to nurse so that the milk can be used for humans. Cows bond with their babies, just like humans, and are inconsolable when their babies are taken away. Their baby girls are forced into the same short miserable life as their mothers. Their baby boys live even shorter lives– since they cannot produce milk – and are sold for veal. As an advocate of justice and as a feminist, I find this treatment of animals incredibly problematic.

The fate of women, and other oppressed groups, is intimately linked with that of animals. There has been growing recognition in recent years of the intersectionality of various social movements. And while many of my feminist friends are staunch advocates for other social issues, they still find no problem in oppressing animals. But oppressing animals only perpetuates our own oppression.

Maybe Congress is willing to give horses birth control it refuses to give women not because it trusts horses more than women. Maybe it is refusing to provide family planning services for women, in part, because we, as a society, allow the control of horses' and other animals’ reproductive capacity without question.