Who Will Own Your Body?

Is there any woman out there who really wants her body to become property of the state? For women, that is the most critical question of the approaching election. If you want to control your body, the choice is a no-brainer. Voting for a candidate who opposes reproductive choice is a vote to hand over your body to the state as if it were a piece of real estate instead of the unique bundle of pulsating cells, strands of DNA, thoughts, feelings, and desires that make up you.

Think about it. Really think. The antiabortion position deprives women of their most intimate right – control of their own reproductive biology. If men got pregnant, abortion wouldn’t be an issue. How many politicians would be discussing how to deprive men of controlling their reproduction? Can you imagine a Congressional hearing about male sexuality, condoms or Viagra? ”If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament,” said an anonymous New York female taxi driver, quoted years ago by author Gloria Steinem.

Anti-choice rhetoric about “murder” is a smokescreen for a far more devious goal -- control of women – a medieval position in line with that of the Taliban and other fundamentalist groups headed by men.

Not surprisingly, most of the antiabortion groups in the United States are headed by men: James Dobson, Douglas Johnson, Pat Robertson, Randall Terry, Richard Viguerie, and Jack Willke, just to name a few. Like male insects that seal female insects’ sperm storage chambers with a kind of genital glue, men who oppose abortion make up a sperm protection society that seeks to force pregnancy and birth on a woman whether she wants it or not. Some years ago, I wrote about the similarity between male insects and men who oppose abortion in my book, Sexual Strategies: How Females Choose Their Mates. In that book, originally published in 1992 and recently reprinted in a new edition by iUniverse.com, I wrote: “The so-called right-to-life movement may be perceived as a highly organized effort to legislate away women’s right to choose whether to reproduce.”

Although we are living in the 21st century, those who oppose reproductive choice – and yes, birth control, too – are trying to foist medieval notions on women and men. At various times in history, dispensing birth-control information has been considered subversion or an act of the devil. During the later Middle Ages, midwives were often persecuted as witches for assisting women with birth control and abortion. Sadly this persecutorial attitude rears its ugly head in the self-righteous political posturing of politicians like Presidential candidate John McCain and a number of local candidates running for Congressional seats in various states. While trying to woo Christian fundamentalists, these candidates are taking a vicious anti-woman position. McCain, for example, voted against requiring insurance companies to cover prescription birth control. What century is this man living in? True, he’s 71 years old, but there are lots of men his age and older who are in step with our time. McCain’s attitude would have been more appropriate a century ago. Keep in mind that many fundamentalists are trying to equate contraception with abortion. McCain has voted anti-choice 123 out of 128 times. And he voted against allocating money to preventative health services that would have reduced unintended teen pregnancies. McCain supports overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that liberated women from enslavement to the dark ages of reproductive tyranny. McCain, like George W. Bush, would take women backwards to a world pre-contraception, a world in which men and women had no options for limiting family size. Before contraception, men and most especially women lived at the mercy of their gonads.

Throughout history, various male leaders have enacted laws to dominate and restrict women by controlling reproduction. Whether among mice or men, once a male copulates, he no longer controls his sperm; he cannot force a female to use them to fertilize her eggs. Because of this biological fact, males throughout the animal kingdom, including men, will do virtually anything to control female choice and ensure confidence of paternity. Men in the antiabortion movement seem involved in trying to ensure a kind of group confidence of paternity. Sadly, many women support these efforts that only contribute to diminishing their individual freedom and basic human rights. But in the United States of America in this year 2008, there is no need for any woman to vote away personal autonomy over her body. Women have the voting power to swing this election away from a leader mired in the past toward a leader ready to move forward into a more enlightened future.