Technology is a friend to women. Oh, it helps men, too, with its laser levels and Helix 5 Fishfinders. But society places particular burdens on women, through the constraints of religion and marriage, the treadmill of family obligation. Technology levels the field, a bit, with its way of swinging open the cage door. Advances we think of as benign today, like the bicycle, were revolutionary for women when introduced, allowing them a path out of the house, unchaperoned mobility and a reason to wear pants, all in one fell swoop.
Particularly medical technology. For centuries, the prospect of pregnancy went arm-in-arm with the harangues of moralists. Until Chicago’s own G.D. Searle released Enovid, the first birth control pill, in 1960, and suddenly women could do what they want instead of what they’re told. Spoiler alert: they wanted to have sex without worrying about babies.
There’s an entrancing book on the subject, “The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution,” by my pal Jonathan Eig. He gives a great early history of the battle to wrest control over women’s bodies from pious men, spotlighting Margaret Sanger, who popularized the term “birth control” and opened the first clinic in 1916, later shut down by police, since even a pamphlet describing contraception was considered obscene, and illegal to send through the United States mail.
We are steadily sliding back toward those days. Moralists have hitched their wagon to would-be totalitarians, with restricting the right of a woman to control her own body — and the “babies” hereby saved — being the central plum used to rationalize depriving everybody, male and female, of all sorts of other basic rights, such as the ability to cast a ballot unhindered.
Four years ago, the Trump-packed Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal throughout this country. Thirteen states promptly banned it, even in cases of rape or incest. The same religious zealots in a lather because a 12-year-old might check out Judy Blume’s “Forever” from the public library would force her to have a baby.
And what was the result of banning abortion for 40% of American women? The practice is way up, 21% since 2020, because of our old friend, medical technology, in the form of the RU-486, a two-drug regimen that is safe, effective, and can be sent through the mail.
You would think this failure might humble those hot to impose their religion upon others; which is what banning abortion is, the enforcement of Christian morality through law. But nothing humbles them, and now some on the anti-abortion crowd are considering this exciting next step: charging women who have abortions with murder.
This hasn’t yet been done for two reasons. First, because the whole “killing babies” bit is just a religious construct, like Santa Claus. Rhetoric used because it works so effectively. The tell, the giveaway, is that while doctors can be prosecuted for performing abortions, and friends for driving the women to clinics, the actual murderess herself, putting this supposed crime in motion, is generally left alone.
Why? First, because, a fetus isn’t really a baby — if you disagree, try changing one — and second, the driving impulse behind all of this is the unspoken belief that women have no volition. They aren’t responsible for their choices, at least regarding abortion.
We forget how strange this notion is. If a woman cheats on her taxes, we call that a crime. If she were caught by the eagle-eyed IRS, we would think it very odd if her male accountant were charged, for filing the deceit, and her husband, for sharpening a pencil, but not the fraud herself.
This might be changing. “Support Builds on the Right for Prosecuting Women Who Get Abortions,” read a recent headline in the New York Times. Part of me wants to say, “Go for it!” Assuming that this grotesque injustice would get those still sitting on their hands, wondering whether the nation is headed in the right direction, finally in the game. But given the muted national reaction, as we merrily tumble toward some dystopian nightmare, that isn’t a certainty. I’m worried at this point American women will look up, shrug, and go back to binge-watching “The Kardashians.” There’s a lot of that going around.
Religion, like sex, is supposed to be a private choice. Not publicly enforced dogma. Given how the Supreme Court falls back on the original intent of our nation’s founders, when endorsing 18th century racial practices, for instance, it’s odd they ignore it in this realm. Abortion was completely legal, despite not being especially safe, in colonial America. Sad that 250 years later, we’re less free now.