A Modest Proposal for the Abortion Divide —Pick Your Procreation Path
Choose your pro-life values; choose your pain
This final installment of my series concludes an argument for a male masturbation ban and mandated vasectomies. Both are presented as companion edicts for any abortion and/or contraceptive bans in the USA.
This unconventional proposal has responded to a simple question: If females are being asked to surrender their anatomical liberty at the altar of pro-life doctrine, should not men be expected to match their sacrifice?
Thus, legislators now have an argument to be deployed for enacting an evenhanded abortion policy. Since conservatives broke the abortion status quo, they must take the lead in repairing the national divide.
Choosing the least bad abortion solution — for American unity
Contras (i.e., conservatives) may be troubled by the implications of the checklist provided for assessing their conservative authenticity, which was included in my last post. Regardless, they should be led to one of six political choices for governing reproductive rights. They are described below.
Hence, the decision conservatives must face regarding all current and future procreation laws can be summarized thus — choose your values, then choose your pain:
1) Pro-life absolutists risk unleashing a new Thirty Years’ War
Pro-life politicians can maintain and advance abortion bans and birth control product prohibitions. Both positions are essentially BDSM orgies of puritanical posturing against reproductive rights. That will certainly win accolades from the most zealous ranks of the pro-life base.
However, it would also earn the eternal enmity of millions of pro-choice women and their male supporters. And that would tear society asunder, risking a rallying cry for a cold (or hot) civil conflict. Might we expect a modern Thirty Years’ War — American style?
2) Advance only abortion bans, but still risk radicalizing women
Pro-life legislators can proceed solely with abortion access bans (perhaps with one or two exceptions for incest or rape) and largely satisfy their forced-birth base, while leaving absolutists disaffected over contraceptives.
That will still generate the ire of legions of reproductive refugees — on a scale analogous to war-torn Ukraine. So, expect abortion ban escapees moving by modern versions of the underground railroad: from post-millennial slave states to jurisdictions where their uteri can be free.
And, again, that risks the radicalization of angry women and men. One would hope we learned lessons from the Lorena Bobbitt case and January 6th.
3) Anti-abortionists retreat & risk pro-life vigilante violence
Politicians can drop their insistence on any bans and cling largely to the former status quo. Yet that risks earning condemnation from the hard-right base. And if politicians still propagate anti-abortion dogma as a means of cultural branding, this could incite perpetual episodes of vigilante violence from fundamentalists.
And those zealots could be better armed than Russian forces in Ukraine.
Choose your values, then choose your pain.
4) Forced vasectomies & masturbation bans
Alternatively, conservatives can implement my two proposals, thereby seeking a devil’s compromise that gives maximalist zealots the control of women’s wombs and gives pro-choice advocates a shield for pregnancy protection in abortion- and contraceptive-banning states.
In that manner, the contentious issue can be calmed, if not settled. The pro-life faction gets what the pro-choice disciples think they should not have. Likewise, the pro-choice faction wins countervailing control of male genitals: With a snip or slice, females will face diminished risk of unwanted impregnation.
5) Let males carry the burden for pro-life protections
If conservatives still respect traditions of chivalry, why should they even impose any bodily controls upon females? Red states could protect unborn human life simply by requiring boys and men to undergo vasectomies, while combining that with male masturbation bans.
Then, females could be dismissed from the regulatory equation. The exception would be for authorizing vasectomy reversals upon marriage. And that opening of the floodgates would be subject to the periodic reinstatement of the surgical procedure — at a wife’s discretion.
6) Declare an armistice — and Republicans get to build a wall
Alternatively, conservatives could just return to that former political oasis of reproductive rights — before they stray too far barefoot on the burning desert sands. Doing no harm to female teens and women is also a valid pro-life posture.
That way, contras can maintain their personal anti-abortion beliefs, while simply rejecting the question of who is morally right and who is sinfully wrong — insisting rather on an iron wall separating dogma of religion and dictates of the state. This also provides a wall that conservatives could say they finally built (or rebuilt).
The former judicial wall of Roe v. Wade was meant to be a barrier. It left the imperfect judgments of morality solely to a woman, her physician, and her personal relationship with her creator. Thus, pro-lifers would be free to think abortion participants will burn in hell: They would just keep that opinion to themselves.
Final thoughts
Belief in human imperfection, inclusive of our own intellectual limits, is the central pillar of conservatism from which the other pillars radiate.
Yet, if you cannot prove with philosophical certainty that your moral imperative should take precedence over the presumption of individual liberty, logic presumes that personal choice should win the day. In the ultimate analysis, personal choice is the flip side of the coin of personal responsibility, another pillar of conservatism.
Conservatives, who wish to be authentic to that brand, would be well served to recognize the limitations of their omniscience — of God, of ethics, of risks to female health, of economic implications for the poor.
Yes, we all should be mindful of our limits before engineering sweeping social revolutions. Social revolutions, after all, are something that liberals are notorious for embracing.
I trust this dark satire provided insights into the inherent contradictions of this era’s so-called conservatives: specifically as they advance their control over female bodily rights.
But I also hope that liberals found something to admire in conservatism (in certain contexts) — particularly the acknowledgment of human imperfection and personal responsibility.
Lastly, I extend my appreciation for Jonathan Swift, who provided Britain — three centuries ago — with the original Modest Proposal for population management.
Let us pray that America’s pro-life absolutists never advance Swift’s solution for dealing with the newborns their zeal would force upon the nation. The previous post to this ten-part series (Part 9) can be accessed here.
My thanks to all readers — especially those who have shared this proposal with their state and federal legislators. To follow future posts, you can press the button on the screen. — Geronimo Redstone
