On Monday, actress Alyssa Milano called for women to go on a sex strike in protest of Georgia’s new “heartbeat” abortion law. This is after she called for Hollywood to leave the state if the law was passed, to which the Governor responded something along the lines of go right ahead. My post today is going to discuss what it is she’s calling for, why it is literally the plot of a comedic play, and the major flaws in the logic of her strike.
Most of my irritation from things like this making the news comes from this new idea that we are listening to actors and actresses, Hollywood People as I call them, as our sense of moral authority. My question I pose to people who actually listen to these people is in our relativist world, why would we need a moral authority? But I suppose because politics and policy is downstream of culture and the culture is dominated by Hollywood People they have some say, because it is their right, in public discourse no matter how ill-informed it is.
I’ll be honest, I had to look up who Alyssa Milano is. The only thing I remember her from was seeing her sitting the background of the Justice Brett Kavanaugh hearings, but apparently she was also in Who’s the Boss? and My Name is Earl. And, like many other Hollywood People she has decided to speak to her fan base and promote her leftist agenda.
Her most recent call is for women to go on a sex strike in protest of the “Heartbeat” law in Georgia. The bill, which you can read in it’s entirety here, is called the Living Infants Fairness and Equality 29 Act or LIFE act. I find one if it’s first premises interesting. It says that modern medical science, which has proven that unborn children are living persons, was not available during the Supreme Court decisions Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and Roe v. Wade (1973). It also establishes that “the term ‘child’ means child or children, including any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat” (line 181). And Section 8 makes it illegal to obtain an abortion after six weeks, since this is the earliest week at which a heartbeat can be detected.
Of course those of us on our side of the argument praise the law because it has yet again put more restrictions on the largest genocide in history. But Milano does not feel the same way. In an op-ed on CNN.com, she calls this and other similar laws in sixteen other states an “alarming trend” and that it is an “attack on women.”
So, logically, what is the best way to protest this? Denying men sex. As you might imagine this was met with mixed feelings and she admits this. But least, as she says, it got the country talking about the “GOP’s undeniable war on women.” She says, and I’m quoting to show how ridiculous this is, “A #SexStrike is another way for people who have the potential to get pregnant to call attention to this systematic onslaught and assert the power to change our own destinies.” Her form of protest is for women to deny men sex because it will show that women can decide what to do with their bodies. I am assuming this is harking back to the “my body, my choice” argument which many pro-life advocates have broken apart.
She then quotes a few different instances in history where women have supposedly gone on sex strikes to change the outcome of decisions from male dominated societies. I, nor EPIC Radio, have the time or resources to verify the articles that are linked there. The one about Colombia seems legitimate because it is from a popular newspaper in the United Kingdom.
She ends her op-ed with “A #SexStrike is a way to target straight, cisgender men so they may feel the physical consequences of our reproductive rights being systematically eliminated. … Join us by not having sex until we achieve full bodily autonomy for all.”
So let’s look at a few problems with this protest. First of all, and this should go without saying, this isn’t going to affect pro-life, conservative, Christian men or women. The only “straight, cisgender men” that would be affected by this are the effeminate men that run around screaming “I’m the problem in women’s lives! Have pity, have pity!” They also wear hats with female body parts on them and go to the Women’s March in Washington. I’ll leave that at that.
Secondly, her protest is straight out of an ancient Greek satire by Aristophanes called Lysistrata. I will not link it here nor quote from it because I have determined that it is not appropriate for it to be on this website, but the plot is something like this. Lysistrata is a woman in Athens and she and the other women are tired of the men being off at war all the time. So they decide that they will deny men sex until the war ends. At the end of the play the war does end and the women return to their husbands. Keep in mind that Aristophanes is a satirist.
Thirdly, Milano is making this protest because she is claiming that women are being told what to do with their bodies and that if abortion becomes outlawed that it is an attack on women and on women’s rights. How does she choose to protest this? She tells women what to do with their bodies. The irony here is so incredible. “We’re not going to let them tell us what to do with our bodies, so do this with your bodies in protest!” It just goes to show this idea that the Hollywood People think and truly believe that they are the moral authority.
Some go as far as to say that Milano’s protest is the same as calling for chastity, but I have yet to be really convinced by that argument. She’s not advocating for waiting to have sex until marriage or when it is the proper time to have children, but simply until the LIFE act is stripped away and then, presumably, they can return to their hedonistic ways. Fr. Harrions Ayre said on Twitter, “1) she’s showing that abstinence is the best insure you don’t get pregnant; 2) she‘s showing that sex is not just for fun but has an end: procreation; 3) she’s showing contraception actually doesn’t work as well as we are told.” I just don’t see where she is saying that. I don’t deny that it does come across that way and I do think it is laughable, but I think the protest, as she said in the op-ed, is more of a way to get back at men.
But since she’s decided that she does not want to get pregnant, let’s look at the outcomes of this by taking it to its logical extreme. If her and other pro-abortion activists continue to not have sex until every pro-life law is overturned, which could presumably be a while, it could turn into the point where these women are aged enough that they cannot have children anymore causing only the pro-life, Christian, conservative families to be having children which would greatly reduce the number of abortions.
Now, obviously, I don’t believe that they are going to die off, but I hope you’re beginning to see the picture for why this is so absurd. A sex strike is not going to hurt the men and women that put this law in place. Perhaps it is time we stopped paying attention to what the Hollywood People think and their satirical ideas. As a Catholic, I’m going to point to Holy Mother Church as our moral authority. Don’t forget to pray for these people. Despite some of their idiotic ideas and the renunciation of all that is good, they are still God’s children.
May the dogma of the Church always live loudly from within you,
Matthew
Update (15 May 2019) – The bill has passed and been signed into law in Georgia. It is the strictest law against abortion in the country today as it bans abortions in almost every case.
EPIC Radio 