Every man and every woman in the United States today is free to choose whether to have sex, when to have sex, with whom to have sex, and what kind of sex to have. That is reproductive freedom.
Yesterday, the Biden-Harris campaign and the Democratic Party sent out multiple emails, texts, and other propaganda to voters. Here’s an example from one of the emails I received:
Folks: Two years ago today, Trump's Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ripping away nearly 50 years of women's rights and stripping millions of Americans of their reproductive freedom.
Because of Trump, women are forced to beg for the medical care they need. More than 1 in 3 women now live under a cruel abortion ban.This kind of alarmist message is aimed at Americans who reacted to the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationby posting images from The Handmaid’s Tale on social media.
Image from The Handmaid's Tale, Courtesy of Hulu.
The implication was clear: Protecting unborn infants (in some states) is incompatible with “women’s rights.” Extending legal protection to any unborn infants, anywhere, anytime, is a form of tyranny over women, just like The Handmaid’s Tale.
Democrats are hoping to strike fear in voters and ride the theme of “reproductive rights” to multiple electoral victories in 2024. This includes Joe Biden on the national ticket and numerous incumbent Democratic governors within the states.
For those who insist we now live in some kind of tyranny after Roe was overturned, and that we must elect or re-elect Democrats if we are to end the dystopian scenario of The Handmaid’s Tale in which we now live and suffer, let us here clarify a few important matters:
FIRST, abortion never was and never will be a subject of interest only to women—nor can it be limited to “women’s rights”—for the simple reason that every unborn infant is also a father’s child and, therefore, a father’s responsibility.
SECOND, the wide-scale use of abortion as birth control is not the opposite of The Handmaid’s Tale. The polar opposite of tyranny is a regime of liberty, where each citizen—which includes each female citizen—is free to choose whether to reproduce and have children, which includes the choices of whether to have sex, when to have sex, and with whom to have sex.
THIRD, every woman in the United States today enjoys those liberties under U.S. laws.
Whatever one thinks about abortion, we should be able to agree on this simple fact: In the United States, today—two years after Roe was overturned—there is no law that forces any woman to be impregnated against her will, the despicable act that underscores the tyranny in The Handmaid's Tale.
The entire novel is about a regime that uses the government’s monopoly on legalized force to impregnate some women, lawfully, and without their consent, for the benefit of other women who have become infertile and can no longer conceive and bear children.
The entire novel is a tale of a tyrannical government that regulates, commands, and controls subjects—and bestows special legal privileges and powers on the few who are politically connected—rather than protects the rights of all citizens.
It is possible that a woman in the United States today can be impregnated by force, not by choice, when she is raped, and the laws of the United States correctly define that heinous injustice as a felony crime.
Precisely because rape strikes unjust violence into the most beautiful, tender, and sacred of human spheres—the choice to conceive and give birth to a new human life—it is quite arguable that rape should be a capital offense, too, punishable by execution. Just laws rightfully punish injustice, and the worse the injustice is, the harsher the punishment should be.
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In sum, today—two full years after the repeal of Roe—the laws in the United States do not authorize any man forcibly to impregnate any woman against her will. Every man and every woman, under the laws of the United States today, is free to choose whether to have sex, when to have sex, with whom to have sex, and what kind of sex to have.
That is reproductive freedom, in full.
No one is forced by law to have sex; no one is prohibited by law from having sex. No one is forced by law to reproduce. No one is prohibited by law from reproducing. The United States today—two full years after the repeal of Roe—is the opposite of The Handmaid's Tale.
Dr. Thomas L. Krannawitter is the former VP of The Claremont Institute, and former Professor at Hillsdale College & Claremont McKenna College. You can follow Dr. Krannawitter's Substack, Liberty Lyceum: Zetetic Questions for the Zeitgeist, here: https://tkrannawitter.substack.com/
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