Yes. They Are Coming for Your Birth Control

The antiabortion movement succeeded in overturning Roe v. Wade. It’s going after contraception next

- By Rebecca Grant

It was after 4 p.m. on Friday, September 23, 2022, when assistant professor Johanna Gosse received an email with the subject line “Guidance on Abortion Laws.” The email was addressed to all employees of the University of Idaho, where Gosse teaches art history, and contained a memo from the university’s Office of the General Counsel, summarizing Idaho state laws regarding abortion. The memo stated that the university prohibited employees from promoting abortion, counseling in favor of abortion, referring for abortion, dispensing emergency contraception (except in the case of rape), and advertising or promoting services for abortion. But it didn’t stop there: It also warned employees that “the prevention of conception” was against the broad language of the state’s law, and recommended that the university not provide “standard birth control” at all. The memo also noted that those who violated these laws could face a misdemeanor or felony conviction, mandatory loss of state employment, and a permanent bar from future state employment.

Gosse was appalled. The memo came off “not as a friendly warning from your university legal team, but actually a kind of slap in the face,” she says. It felt like a threat—don’t say the a-word, or else—wrapped up in a package of legalese. It was hard not to be confused by the university’s memo. Did mentioning the location of the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic—about 15 minutes away in Pullman, Washington—constitute “promotion”? Would resident advisers be jailed for telling a student that Plan B was available at Walmart? Were condoms and birth control pills now contraband? Those questions seemed dystopian and absurd, and yet this is our new post–Roe v. Wade reality.