A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR 2022

By Ruth A. Sheets

Each week, Dr. Robert Reich former Department of Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton and Economics Professor, asks a challenging question for members of his Substack thread to answer.  On September 14, 2022, he asked why we thought Republicans had decided to push for a nation-wide abortion ban so close to the November election.   He posed a few possible answers for us to consider:  to respond to evangelical voters, to deflect attention from Trump, because GOP leaders are clueless, and because GOP leaders are misogynists.  One would have thought Lindsay Graham and his crew would have waited until after the upcoming election to push their national abortion ban bill, but they didn’t.  They are now saying aloud what was only implied before. They want our federal government to control women’s bodies. 

The following is my response to Dr. Reich’s question.  Note, Dr. Reich “liked” my comment and I hope you will too.

“My answer is, ‘ALL OF THE ABOVE’ plus, those Republicans are trying to look more powerful to their fundamentalist and Catholic male base. Those guys are so scared of women they will agree to just about anything to keep women out of their colleges and workplaces. They want women pregnant, barefoot, and silent in the home ready to take care of every need of their child-man husband/partner who wants to pretend we are still living in the Medieval days when men could rule at home, if nowhere else and could do whatever he wanted to do to his wife (woman) and kids.” 

“I recently heard a whine by Doug Mastriano running for Governor of PA. He said ‘bodily autonomy was a joke.’ He meant, and so does Lindsay Graham (the biggest misogynist in the Senate, well, maybe not the biggest) women’s bodily autonomy is a joke.” 

I continued, “I say it is time for equality. If men can control women's bodily autonomy, women should be able to control men's. Therefore, I have a modest proposal. 

1. After the birth of a man's 3rd child, he has 2 weeks to get to a doctor for a vasectomy. We are in a climate crisis which includes overpopulation. Women can go in hired groups to pick up the men who don't show up. The child's births can be DNA tested and the males identified. 

2. An honestly convicted rapist (proven by DNA and a reliable witness, not by his race, will be taken to a hospital or clinic and castrated immediately after the sentencing. His actual sentence might be reduced if his behavior and attitude are improved by the surgery. That would include men who rape other prisoners in jail. 

If men actually had some skin in the game and stopped putting the blame for their own bad behavior on women or trying to get people to ignore it altogether (Kavanaugh), bodily autonomy for all would be the law of the land and no Supreme Court conservative majority  could mess with it. Until then, we the people need to act. Scared white conservative men should not be able to control anyone's body but their own.” 

I heard from a few members of the thread that my “modest proposal” was a bit harsh.  Hmmm!  My response to them was  that women were potentially sacrificing more than those men would due to male anti-abortion laws,   even death.  I have never heard of a man dying of vasectomy or castration, but of many women dying due to pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum complications.  I do believe my “modest proposal” is reasonable and fair.  

Now how do I get my proposal into law as quickly as Republican white men (and the women who love them) got their woman-hating laws passed in the Confederacy and confederate wannabee states after our Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade?  The Catholic conservative majority gave them a giant push, than they often reached back more than 150 years to scrape up laws that forbid abortions, from a time when men were so desperate to keep women/midwives out of medicine they passed laws they couldn’t     actually prosecute because most abortions were performed in secret and men, even doctors had no idea what women were doing for each other.  

The Arizona law they are chasing was passed before Arizona was even a state.  How is that even allowed?  So, white male misogynistic racists today will go after the women they fear and hate with ancient laws that were misogynistic at the time they were passed and are still.  They threaten violence for women who don’t submit to keeping a pregnancy they either don’t want or is dangerous to their health or the survival of the fetus.  They imprison pregnant women claiming “for the benefit of the ‘child.’”  They care nothing for the fetuses except that they can use them as a whining point supposedly showing their “love of life” while every other action of those folks’ lives points to anything but love and life, and no new laws have been passed in those states to help the host, the fetus, or the forced-birth baby.

Yep, we need my “modest proposal” to let those particular ignorant hateful white men who think they should be able to control women, feel something of what is like to have someone, not yourself, forcibly mess with your body and your reproduction.  Come on women and men who care, let’s get this done.