Most of the pro-lifers I know say things like “We have the best healthcare in the world! People come from socialist Canada to have babies here!”
The pro-lifers have invested heavily in keeping people ignorant, and in American exceptionalism. Watching all the things that needed to come together actually, you know, come together for this white ethnonationalist movement to make these gains is truly astounding. All the counterfactual things you have to believe for a six-week abortion ban to make sense. Truly astounding.
The NYT has a long op-ed piece that said something new (or at least, new to me):
David Buss, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, argues that “attitudes toward abortion are linked to a key issue: sexual morality.”
One constituency, which Buss described in an email as “politically conservative and high on religiosity,” adamantly “abhors short-term mating, casual sex, promiscuity, etc.” For this group, “moral condemnation of promiscuity in others has a long and deep history.”
These particular conservatives, in Buss’s view, see abortion and other ruptures with traditional sexual morality as a threat to their own commitment to a lifelong faithful marriage. According to Buss, they recognize that men
become less willing to commit to one woman to the degree that there exist women in the mating pool who are willing to engage in casual sex with them. So allowing women to have abortions may be viewed by women and men alike as tantamount to endorsing a promiscuous mating strategy.
I’ve certainly heard the argument that anti-choice women are prioritizing their race or economic status over their rights as a woman, but this finally puts it in focus for me: they’re afraid if abortion and birth control are available, their men will cheat on them. After all, they’re told that men ‘naturally’ want to spread their seed, it’s not really their fault, so women are the ones who have to remain ever vigilant.
This reminds me of a woman I used to work with in theater. She would often speak out against abortion online, supposedly “voted her conscience” (safe bet that means for Trump), etc.
Our murder mystery shows often had quite a bit of sex in the background of the plot. To provide possible motives, people had to be in a relationship (secret or otherwise) with this or that (or a few) of the other characters. Well, nearly every time her character was involved in one of these hook-ups, she would use one of two characterizations. The main one was what I thought of as her “Anna Christie” perf. Yeah, I had sex with him, but I’m bitter and apparently hold him and myself in contempt for it. (I’m not certain if Anna Christie has to be played that way, but I’d seen her in the role, and that was her take on it.)
Occasionally, she’d try an alternate approach which was air-headed bimbo because only an air-headed bimbo could enjoy sex, apparently.
Unfortunately a lot of women have not been properly fucked. We could win this culture war if we could distribute some porn that actually focuses on the woman’s pleasure and secretly train an army of men that are suddenly into giving good oral.
