Much has been written about Alyssa Milano’s call for a sex strike following the passage of a Georgia heartbeat bill, which bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, typically around six weeks.
In addition to this sex strike, there are more liberal and mainstream media lunacy reactions surrounding the law. Such reactions come off as idiotic. They also display a fundamental misunderstanding of basic biology and serve to mislead the public.
What about men?
In March, when the bill was being considered in Georgia, one of Rolling Stone’s trending articles was about “Georgia Lawmaker Proposes Requiring Permission for Viagra, Criminalizing Vasectomies.”
This glowing feature is about Democratic State Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick, who introduced legislation known as the Testicular “Bill of Rights” Legislation which would:
Require men to obtain permission from their sexual partners before obtaining medication for erectile dysfunction
Ban vasectomies in Georgia
Make it an “aggravated assault” crime for men to have sex without a condom
Require a man proven to be the father by 8 weeks gestation to start immediately paying child support
A waiting period for men to buy pornography or sex toys in Georgia
The above bullet points come from a tweet by Rep. Kendrick who noted “You want some regulation of bodies and choice? Done!” The bill was filed by five Democratic lawmakers. Is this any way for elected officials to respond? Not unless they have the maturity of junior high students.
Now that the bill has passed, more reactions abound. Actress Evan Rachel Wood expressed in a tweet she wanted men to get “mandatory vasectomies.” She continued with “Come on guys, Let's save lives! What's that? A hard no? Why? Cause it's your body and we don't get to make that choice for you?” In subsequent tweets, however, she clarified “I don't want mandatory vasectomies because I don't believe we should legislate peoples bodies, its a dangerous slippery slope. I used the example to point out the hypocrisy of always putting the responsibility, punishment, blame, or means of prevention, solely on women.”
It’s not merely equating abortion laws as about “legislat[ing] peoples bodies.”
Heather Anne Campbell, a comedian, and writer, displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of biology. Her tweet read “sperm has DNA. DNA is when life begins. every sperm is a potential human being,” before she went on to call for men to stop masturbating, to stop carrying cell phones in their pockets, and to wear skirts to protect their phone. Subsequent tweets similarly mentioned more radical ideas.
It’s amazing that this has to be explained. I have come across just about every abortion argument there is. Believe it or not, some people actually make such points. In order for an egg to develop into an embryo, a fetus, a born child, the sperm needs to actually fertilize the egg. It is accurate to say that a newly created human being is human because it has DNA, but that is its own unique DNA. Life begins at fertilization, not at ejaculation.
These people actually have verified Twitter accounts, despite how such stupidity ought to disqualify them.
Not a human person?
We’ve just been over how, from the moment of fertilization, also known as conception, a human person has been created, with its own set of DNA. Such a being has not existed before, and will not exist again.
When talking about the heartbeat bill on May 6’s Primetime with Chris Cuomo, Christine Quinn made the claim that “when a woman gets pregnant, that is not a human being inside of her. It is part of her body.” She continued on that “this is about a women having full agency and control of her body…and making decisions about what is part of her body with medical professionals.”
Chris Cuomo, brother to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who championed his state’s abortion until birth legislation, went on to claim “her body is always her property.”
If Cuomo meant to say that the contents of what’s in her body, namely the unborn child, are a woman’s property, then unborn children are being viewed in the same way slaves were, as property. Such is a dangerous way to view anyone, especially a vulnerable class of people as the unborn.
Women will be jailed!
When even Planned Parenthood, which has viciously opposed the heartbeat bills and threatened lawsuits, admits that women could not be prosecuted under the law, you know it’s bad for media outlets to claim otherwise. The New Zealand Herald similarly tried to correct the record, pointing out how the law is not even in effect yet.
You wouldn’t know the truth from these outlets, including:
Business Insider: “Women could get up to 30 years in prison for having a miscarriage under Georgia's harsh new abortion law”
The Week: “Georgia's 'heartbeat' abortion bill could imprison women for life”
Glamour: “Women Who Have an Abortion in Georgia Could Soon Be Sentenced to Life in Prison”
Popsugar: “Georgia’s Abortion Ban Is a Real Attempt to Reduce Women’s Bodies to Crime Scenes”
IFL Science: “Georgia Law Could Make Women Who Miscarry Liable For Second-Degree Murder”
The Anniston Star: “Editorial: In Georgia, miscarriages can be illegal. Seriously.”
It’s not that difficult for journalists to be well-versed in the legislation they’re reporting on. It’s media malpractice to not be, especially when it creates confusion and misleads readers.
The law does not constitute a life sentence for anyone and holds liable the party which performs the abortion.
There is much to debate about the merits of such a law, particularly on the constitutionality of it, with Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey still the law of the land. Such talking points do nothing for civil discussion and discourse. If anything, it misleads and dangerously dumbs down the American public.