The Conservative War on Women Proven

New research confirms that providing women access to free birth control does not result in women having sex with more partners — a false claim that has been repeatedly pushed and promoted by conservative media, and which contributes to their efforts to stigmatize women’s sexuality.

Providing women with no-cost contraception did not result in “riskier” sexual behavior (defined by the researchers as “sex with multiple partners”) but did reduce unintended pregnancies and abortions, according to a comprehensive study from the Washington University School of Medicine.

As Amanda Duberman noted at the Huffington Post, having new empirical data to push back on the moralizing arguments against birth control is helpful, but raises the question: “why do we care?” The fact that researchers felt the need to study this particular claim about birth control at all reveals an “implicit stigmatization” of women’s sexuality.

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