In response to Georgia’s governor signing the controversial “heartbeat bill” earlier this week, actress Alyssa Milano took some flak for being “anti-feminist” when she called for a sex strike until “we get bodily autonomy back”. Milano is not the first to evoke a sex strike. More than two thousand years ago it worked for Lysistrata– a woman whose namesake play was first performed in Ancient Greece in 411 BC. It’s about a woman who organized a sex strike to end the Peloponnesian War– if only it could have the same impact today!
But then the thought occurred – half jokingly- I’m not sure all women are guaranteed the right to go on a sex strike anyway. The idea that a married woman could deny consent, or be raped by her husband was making headlines around the time of Roe v. Wade, but it didn’t became illegal (there are still loopholes) in all 50 states until guess when- 1993! Why on earth did it take two decades and what does that tell you about how society views women?
In Googling “marital rape” this paragraph from Wikipedia came up about rape in general:
“Rape as a crime was constructed as a property crime against a father or husband not as a crime against the woman’s right to self-determination.”
No wonder women’s rights are still controversial! No wonder 25 white men in Alabama felt they had the right to take away a woman’s right to choose! Although the founding of our country was deeply rooted in the ideal of self-determination, the passage of these new anti-abortion laws means that fundamental right is not guaranteed to women.
Upholding Roe v. Wade does not ensure that women are treated equally under the law in every way. But protecting reproductive rights is absolutely essential to women’s equality. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg so eloquently wrote in her Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc (2014) dissent, when Congress required insurance plans to include preventive services specific to women’s health needs, including contraceptives, it understood that the “ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation, has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.”
With a new wave of women’s rights and the “Me Too” movement demanding equality and challenging the status quo for women, is what’s happening in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio and Alabama partly a response to that? What these bills propose to do stomps on women’s reproductive rights and their ability to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation. 1 in 4 women have had an abortion. And in practice, these laws would hurt the most vulnerable among us.
So beyond a sex strike, let’s state the obvious again, in capital letters. WOMEN HAVE TO BECOME POLITICALLY ACTIVE AND THEY HAVE TO VOTE. If we’re not energized by this, we never will be! Give to Planned Parenthood, or the ACLU if you so choose.
The Republican Party has decided now is the time to go war. At the state level, and at the national level, they’ve decided this is the moment. Brett Kavanaugh has been seated, a wink and a nod has been given. GOP state legislatures are acting.
These guys don’t know what they’ve unleashed. This is a war on women.
This post contains analysis and opinion.
