Closer and Closer to Reproductive Totalitarianism
Sexual behavior has always been the subject of government censorship and control. Blame the Puritanist streak in American politics, blame the controlling conservatives, blame…the voters, in the end. Us.
The Comstock Act was written to stop obscene material from being sent by US mail — without defining what “obscene” meant. It was used to prevent the distribution of birth control, and even the discussion of it by doctors until that portion was overturned.
The law is still on the books, but it opened the door to contraception and the ability of a family to choose its size and the timing of having children.
The latest Constockian machination of the ultraconservative- and totalitarian-run Republican National Committee is to wield the 14th Amendment, the one that freed the slaves, to prevent all abortions, extending even to IVF. That Trump supports it is not due to his puritanical leanings, but rather, in his Machiavellian style, to pander to the same Christian extremists whose support brought him to power in 2016.
Writing the first Shmuley Myers novel in 2016, this kind of rule I thought required a separate constitutional amendment. Now, in 2024, history is catching up quickly to the creation of the Preborn Investigation Bureau, to investigate every non-birth pregnancy to determine the guilt or innocence of the woman and/or any abettors.
As a dad of daughters, I know that where they live plays a part in their decision regarding their rights to have (or not have) children. With the attempts to criminalize even those assisting women in having abortion access (usually across state lines, and therefore a possibly federal offense), the policing of women’s bodies, as I’ve written in the novel’s universe, has begun. I only hope Shmuley and Chaya’s universe does not become our own.