BRIDGING THE ABORTION DIVIDE
A Modest Proposal for the Abortion Divide: Equally Distributing Misery
Release the Kraken! The Constitution sanctions vasectomy shields against impregnation
This article continues our previous strategizing of public support for mandatory vasectomies of males in anti-abortion states — the remedy for achieving pro-life gender fairness.
Mandatory vasectomies — the path to equal treatment
Legislative staff vetting this policy blueprint for reproductive equity can consider these relevant arguments:
1) Supreme Court precedent — Buck v. Bell
Where else in the law, besides the military draft, is there any basis for imposing jurisdiction over a citizen’s bodily autonomy? Well, we can look for authorization to one of the most influential of SCOTUS justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes issued a seminal opinion on reproductive rights in the 1927 case of Buck v. Bell:
“The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”
Ironically, that reference to compulsory vaccination also has resonance for our era. While later deemed controversial, that Court’s endorsement of sterilization supported government authority over the reproductive parts of an American female.
Hence, we only need to substitute the term “Fallopian” with “scrotal” and we have support from the grave from one of the most cited legal scholars of the 20th century. That means today’s Republicans can claim one of their own as a source for compulsory vasectomies. And vaccination.
2) Ending the unequal distribution of reproductive misery
There will be some red-state citizens resistant to the vasectomy remedy, just as many opposed COVID-19 vaccination and mask requirements — defying them as infringements upon their personal freedom.
And, if I am to be objective, I must agree their concern has validity — just as the barricaded off-ramps to pregnancy termination, likewise, limit female liberties.
Additionally, there will be cries that this universal vasectomy shield will result in nothing more than the equal distribution of reproductive misery — something tantamount to a socialist approach to population management.
Likewise, I am aware that conservatives denounce the equal distribution of national wealth. But does that really extend to the equal distribution of personal responsibility? Is there not a joint obligation for the protection of unborn life — if they deem that life important to protect?
Unless human females are believed capable of asexual reproduction, that is, indeed, an obligation shared. Of course, the most squeamish among American males likely will face a crisis of masculinity and harbor night terrors of what will happen with a snip or a slice.
However, the only alternative is enacting requirements for male chastity belts. That would be neither modest nor practical. To be blunt, I suggest men just grit their teeth and clutch their — well, let me just cite the great philosopher Nietzsche’s famous maxim:
“What does not kill me makes me stronger!”
3) Tradition versus the Constitution
Last, there also will be some hard-right women asserting that this urological directive is contrary to centuries of religious tradition, dogma that dictated a hierarchy of roles for males and females in procreation.
While traditionalists (aka conservatives) do hold dear what they see as God’s transcendent law, inclusive of a patriarchal social order, I have seen them press their hearts and sing the national anthem as a testament to civil ideals. And those ideals are embedded in the USA’s founding documents.
Thus, if conservatives only respected religious codes — to the exclusion of our constitutional values, Americans would still believe in the divine right of kings, and the nation would now be part of the United Kingdom.
So, the choice for traditionalists is not the sacred vs. secular, not either/or, but rather both the simultaneous appeals to transcendent guidance by one’s faith and the civil prescriptions of the Constitution.
Our focus here has been on state abortion prohibitions. But if Congress attempts a national abortion ban, then a national vasectomy imperative must be paired with it. Hence, we American scrotal patriots should find support for this vasectomy proposition — and due cause for directing our legislators to enact it — within the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
That text seems to codify a standard for equal treatment, and I suggest it can be applied to reproductive governance. As such, it would require males to match the anatomical submission demanded of American females:
“nor shall any State … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” — the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution
It should be noted that this amendment refers to “any person” unlike the Declaration of Independence, which explicitly only mentioned men. Even judicial textualists should agree that phrasing was intended to include women.
So, if females must give birth when inseminated, they must be provided some means of protection to determine when, how, and if that irreversible process shall occur. Fairness compels us to shout: Release the Kraken (i.e., the scalpels)!
The Constitution clearly screams for compulsory vasectomies in states enacting abortion bans. It did nothing less — eventually — for women’s suffrage.
Therefore, jurisdictions like Texas and Ohio must take the lead in advancing the requisite laws into action. Since they have enacted restrictions on female reproductive options, they must likewise impose offsetting measures on men and boys.
The conservative evolution for female rights
In a prior essay, I explained that conservatism has within it the ability to support social change, albeit slowly. As such, the ideology recognized that the impulses to patriarchy, those inherited from the Middle Ages, should give way to female suffrage. That was a win for enlightened conservatism.
And just as there were states that enacted women’s suffrage before the 19th Amendment, there are states that now should enact forced vasectomies before they are instituted nationally.
Conservative influences on government eventually relented to the equal treatment of women by the law. But that equality was a snail-pace evolution away from the opinions of an 18th-century English jurist who declared:
“By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband….” — Sir William Blackstone
In the next post, we will discuss whether women have advanced from that subjugating legal theory called “coverture” — or whether certain states are regressing to when females had no independent rights to property: inclusive of their bodies.
Is it really a question of going back to the 1950s — or rather to the 1750s?
The prior installment (Part 5) of the BRIDGING THE ABORTION DIVIDE series may be accessed here.
Thanks for your attention, and I welcome your response. To follow future posts, you can press the button on the screen. — Geronimo Redstone
