Clinical Chats: a Podcast for Sexual and Reproductive Health Professionals · Clinical Training Center for Sexual and Reproductive Health

The Gendered Burdens of Pregnancy Prevention

January 27, 2023·33 min·2 clips

Compulsory birth control can make it harder for women to prevent disease and negotiate condoms.

The podcast opens by framing the topic as the gendering of birth control and its link to reproductive justice. Katherine Atchison introduces Crystal E. Littlejohn, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon whose work centers on race, gender, and reproduction. Littlejohn describes the issue as a cultural assignment of contraceptive responsibility by gender. Men are expected to buy condoms, bring them to the sexual encounter, and use them properly. Women are expected to research methods, make the decision, and manage prescription contraception. That split becomes easier to see when it is treated as labor. The interview then turns to findings from Littlejohn's study. Participants often described pregnancy prevention as their main focus, while STI prevention received less attention. Littlejohn treats that imbalance as a result of how pregnancy prevention is organized in the United States, not as a natural outcome. The conversation also stays close to autonomy. Prescription birth control can be effective and valuable. It can also feel restrictive when it is treated as the default answer rather than a choice. Some women described being put on the pill or feeling they had to go on the pill after speaking with a provider. Even when they were unsure, some still went ahead because they thought that was what they were supposed to do. The episode returns several times to the difference between choosing a method and being nudged into one. That distinction matters for bodily autonomy and reproductive autonomy. The discussion stays practical and public-health minded rather than abstract. It keeps asking what clinic practice would look like if pregnancy prevention and patient choice were treated as shared responsibilities.

As heard by us

A serious look at how birth control responsibility gets assigned, and how that can constrain reproductive autonomy.

The conversation treats the gendering of birth control as a reproductive-justice issue, asking who is expected to prevent pregnancy and how that burden falls along gender lines. Katherine Atchison's exchange with Crystal E.

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Why you'd press play

For a grounded look at how birth control gets gendered in clinic life, and what that means for reproductive justice.

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