Robin Abcarian: No one polices men's bodies the way we police women's bodies

Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times on Jan 31, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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While we've been distracted by wildfire tragedies, and the dizzying stream of Project 2025-inspired directives flowing from the Oval Office, we cannot forget that the Republican-led war on women's reproductive rights shows no signs of waning.

In fact, it's heating up again.

Last week, a Democratic Mississippi state senator with a wry sense of humor introduced a law meant to call attention to the absurdity of America's enduring efforts to control women's bodies.

Sen. Bradford Blackmon, 36, introduced the "Contraception Begins at Erection Act," which would criminalize ejaculation — "the discharge of genetic material" — without the "intent to fertilize an embryo."

Yes, it's silly. But he has a point. Why should women shoulder all the responsibility for unwanted pregnancies? Without men ejaculating irresponsibly, after all, there would be none.

In a written statement, Blackmon noted that the 2022 Supreme Court case that reversed women's right to abortion originated in Mississippi, where it is now illegal to have an abortion unless the life of the mother is at risk, or the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest that has been reported to law enforcement — as if, say, a violated adolescent is going to run straight to the police.

In 2023, a 13-year-old girl in Clarkesville, Miss., who was raped by a stranger was forced to give birth because her mother could not afford to take her to the nearest abortion provider, 600 miles away in Chicago. She started seventh grade as a new mother. This protects children?

"The filing of this bill is to point out the double standards in legislation," said Blackmon. "You have male-dominated legislatures in Mississippi and all over the country that pass laws that dictate what a woman can and cannot do with her body."

His words echo a famous 2018 exchange between then-U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing. "Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?" Harris asked. Kavanaugh stuttered, then admitted he could not.

Over the last week or so, President Donald Trump has signaled to the antiabortion wing of his base that despite his campaign promises, he will not leave abortion regulation to the states.

On Friday, he revived a slew of antiabortion policies that President Joe Biden had overturned.

Trump reversed a Biden order that government agencies "protect and expand" access to abortion care, including medication abortion, birth control and emergency contraception.

He has also reinstated the Reagan-era "Mexico City policy," which Democratic presidents ritually suspend and Republicans reinstate. The policy forbids foreign groups that receive U.S. funding from providing or promoting family planning that includes abortion — even if the funds they use for that purpose do not come from the United States. (Critics call it a global gag rule.)

These are not benign policy shifts; people die when denied access to abortion care, and studies show that when the Mexico City policy is in effect, contraceptive use and family planning diminish overall.

In 2022, a National Academy of Sciences study found that the Mexico City policy is associated with higher maternal- and child-mortality rates, and higher HIV rates, worldwide. During Trump's first presidency, according to the academy, the policy resulted in approximately 108,000 maternal and child deaths and 360,000 new HIV infections.

In 2011, a Stanford University study found that the number of abortions in 20 African countries actually rose when the Mexico City policy was revived during the second George W. Bush administration, after having been suspended during the Clinton administration. Less access to contraception, the researchers theorized, may have led women to substitute abortion for birth control.

Last week, Trump also pardoned 23 antiabortion extremists, including some who were convicted of violently invading and blockading an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C., in 2020, forcing it to temporarily shut down. Trump described the radicals — some of whom were in federal prison — as "peaceful pro-life protesters."

"They should not have been prosecuted," he said. "Many of them are elderly people."

If they were so fragile, how did they manage to injure clinic workers as they used bicycle locks, ropes, furniture and their bodies to barricade the clinic doors? You may recall a bizarre footnote to this case: protest instigator Lauren Handy, 31, was found to have five fetuses in her refrigerator.

She and her fellow extremists are now free to obstruct abortion clinics again.

As Slate legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick put it last week: "Anybody who decided to take the law into their own hands is just fine as long as they were doing it for something that Donald Trump likes."

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