Capping off a wonderful week for the pro-life movement, which featured a six-week abortion ban in Georgia and a hugely successful pro-life rally in Philadelphia, a group of feminists decided to put the icing on the cake by making a retaliatory celibacy vow. As the leader of this movement, Alyssa Milano, explained it:
Our reproductive rights are being erased. Until women have legal control over our own bodies we just cannot risk pregnancy. JOIN ME by not having sex until we get bodily autonomy back. I’m calling for a #SexStrike. Pass it on.
Let’s leave aside, for the moment, the intellectual bankruptcy of a phrase like “reproductive rights.” Nobody is trying to infringe on anyone’s right to reproduce. As I explained in my speech at the rally, the child killed by abortion has already been produced. Reproduction occurs at conception. If feminists choose not to conceive, they will find no opponents to that decision among conservatives. But if they do conceive, creating a unique and separate human person in the process, they should not then be able to kill the person they conceived. Abortion is a parenting decision, not a reproductive decision. The abortive parents have chosen to kill their baby rather than care for him. The radical suggestion we pro-lifers make is that murder is not an acceptable childcare technique.
In any case, though I take issue with the way this abstinence pledge is framed, I fully support the pledge itself. For one thing, it’s no skin off my nose. My wife, praise God, is not a feminist. As a general rule, conservative men are not looking to date or marry hectoring feminists scolds. As we are choosing from an entirely different pool of potential mates, a sex boycott among the precise sorts of women we are determined to avoid does not cause us any real pain. A sex strike among feminists is, to us, like a kale shortage at the local vegan restaurant. Ironically, only the pro-abortion men, who have already sacrificed their man cards and their souls in submission to their feminist overlords, are being punished here. And it’s a punishment they well deserve, even if it wasn’t intended for them.
More to the point, Milano is finally conceding to an argument we’ve been making for decades. She says that women should avoid sex because they “cannot risk pregnancy,” thus admitting two crucial points: 1) Sex is a procreative act. 2) If you aren’t in an ideal position to procreate, you shouldn’t engage in said procreative act. Put another way: sex makes babies. Don’t want baby? Don’t have sex. It shouldn’t have taken feminists 60 years to have this epiphany, but better late than never.
It seems we now agree. The best way to avoid an unwanted pregnancy is to avoid sex. There are other methods, but none as effective, simple, and cheap as the newly feminist-endorsed method of abstinence. The advantage of saving sex for marriage is that marriage creates the ideal context for conceiving human life — whether or not the conception is intended. Indeed, married couples conceive unintentionally all the time, yet almost all of the women who get abortions are single. Why is that? Because a married couple is automatically going to be far more prepared to welcome a new baby into the world than an unmarried person. So, wait for marriage to have sex and you won’t have to worry about the abortion laws. It’s a simple strategy, really. I’m thrilled that Alyssa Milano and her friends are starting to see the wisdom in it.