Nelson’s Corner | November 2024

Keep Your Laws Off Their Bodies — or Else

Between my typing and your reading, an election took place. Colorado Amendment 79 either passed, allowing abortion rights to be enshrined in the Colorado constitution, or it didn’t.

While I am hopeful, even its passage would be a very small gesture of enlightenment. Until and unless a Democratic president, in concert with a Democratic majority in Congress, enshrines abortion rights in federal law, much of America will stay in the dark (ages).

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs unleashed torrents of tragedy. Stories of the consequences of denying urgently needed care emerge every day.

The morality police are not done. The religious right (an oxymoron if ever one existed) is hellbent on criminalizing birth control or at least making it very difficult to obtain.

(As a side note, I suggest legislation that requires any man voting for, or judicially imposing, any restrictions on abortion or birth control be required to provide certified evidence of a vasectomy before casting a ballot.)

The most public — and absurd — salvo in the modern-day war was Donald Trump‘s declaration that women should be punished for having an abortion.Outrage flew at Trump from all directions, except from the women in his life who apparently sold their souls long ago. Even Ted Cruz thought Trump went too far.

For decades — no, centuries or even millennia — men have sought to control women and their bodies. The vast majority of right-to-life leaders are cis men. All of the male, conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices cavalierly moralize about women’s bodies and reproductive choices. Why not? These matters have no impact on them — or most other men. Women — and trans men and “assigned female at birth,” non-binary people — endure pregnancy and delivery, take the lioness’s share of birth control responsibility, do the lioness’s share of childcare, and deal with all the ramifications of unwanted pregnancy.

But cis men, particularly pious men, oppose both the ability to prevent pregnancy and the right to deal with it thereafter. And let us not forget that far too often, single mothers not only have to bear and care for their babies, but they have to do it on wages that are only 79% of the pay received by the men who abandoned them.

Three in 10 women have abortions at some point in their lives. If I were an investigative reporter, I’d be scouring the landscape to see how many abortions have occurred among the women in the lives of the hypocritical men in the right-to-life movement. I would bet the ranch that the serially rapacious Trump has left more than one woman to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. I would place a similar wager about women in the lives of the majority of sanctimonious MAGA (Make America Great Again)  blowhards.

This entire “war” is designed to impose a Christian morality on all citizens. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor offered this gem when pointing out the hypocrisy of her Catholic colleagues: “Catholic women don’t use birth control anyway (wink, wink)….”

Despite the fact that the vast majority of women, including Catholic women (86% of Catholic women, according to several surveys), use birth control, the most zealous male protectors of female morality preach abstinence as the only moral way to limit reproduction. How ‘bout we take them at their word?

The Republican war on women will rage on endlessly unless and until women unleash the power of denial. It’s time for a modern-day Lysistrata. In this ancient Greek comedy, women sought to end war by withholding intimacy from their soldier men — sex strike, if you will — or perhaps better said, “if you won’t.”

To all the women whose moralizing husbands would deny reproductive rights to others, try this: “Not tonight, honey. I’ve got a headache, and you’re causing it.” Maybe after a few months, they’ll see things a little differently.

After all, abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.