The Sex Tax

From Emphasis Added, Rob Salkowitz cuts through all the bullshit that's piled up within and around the abortion debate:

The more sophisticated opponents of abortion understand this very well. Sexual freedom for women actually is what they oppose. In their moral view, sex is a sinful activity; it should have consequences. It is necessary to preserve the deterrent of pregnancy as punishment for women who indulge their sexual appetites outside the rigid conventions of marriage, and as a caution for men about pushing too far without the willingness to make a lifetime commitment.

Most people are nowhere near this extreme in their views. While it’s appropriate to take sex seriously and enter into sexual relationships responsibly, in modern America, sexual behavior is more a matter of existential practicalities and personal integrity than metaphysical sinfulness. Even people who have religious views about sex tend to make exceptions to their moral absolutes when it comes to themselves and their immediate families, especially when facing the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. If you have any possibility at all of finding yourself in this position, the existence of reproductive rights has an undeniable appeal, albeit perhaps a somewhat guilty one.

But to win this argument, progressives need to move the debate off abortion and onto this larger issue. The killing of unborn babies produces moral revulsion, but so too should the notion of forcing women to bear unwanted children as a consequence of incidental sexual contact when humane alternatives exist.

Sex in modern society is recognized by most people as a healthy activity that mature adults should be free to engage in if they choose. It is by its nature usually less deliberate and less psychologically consequential than the decision to have children, which really should involve a commitment between the potential parents. Making procreation more intentional and sex more spontaneous is a reasonable goal in terms of both individual freedom and societal welfare.

Click here for the rest.

When I first started teaching in Baytown, I remember being a bit surprised by how widespread anti-abortion attitudes were among the teenagers there. I mean, I knew I was in Texas, but pro-life seemed to be the overwhelming point of view, not simply a majority; it took several months before I finally met a student who seemed comfortable publicly taking a pro-choice position. Meanwhile, I was also starting to realize how many teenaged girls in Baytown were getting pregnant--kids joked about something being in the water, but it was obvious that these students were having sex, knew nothing about birth control, and didn't believe abortion was a morally acceptable option.

Every now and then I brought the issue up for discussion in the public speaking class I taught and would be amazed by a particular strain of anti-abortion rhetoric that kept coming up: it was something to the effect of "that's what you get, bitch," which usually came from female students. That is, pregnancy was cast as some sort of divine punishment for sexual sin. It took a couple of years for me to finally figure out a good response that wouldn't advocate abortion rights too terribly; after all, as a teacher, I felt obliged to illuminate the debate, but not really take a side. Anyway, to mix things up, whenever I heard the that's-what-you-get strain of rhetoric, I would say, "Wait a minute. Isn't the creation of human life, planned or not, a wonderful gift from God? How could bringing a child into the world be a punishment?"

Generally, I would get some kind of a "good point" response, and the overall class discussion would move away from the pregnancy-as-punishment direction to some more relevant lines of argumentation. Hooray for me I thought; I'm such a good teacher.

In hindsight, however, and after reading Salkowitz's essay, maybe I was wrong to not allow the discussion to go further. That is, maybe I should have let it become more clear that, ultimately, the anti-abortion position is also the anti-sex position. I don't know. Frankly, I was always worried that discussing the topic at all would get me in trouble with the administration somehow, but I think that most Americans who are opposed to abortion rights aren't sexual Puritans: perhaps it would be a good thing to rub their noses in the fact that their point of view is hopelessly intertwined with fundamentalist anti-sex quackery.

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