The abortion debate is not about difficult circumstances. It’s about sexual freedom

By Jonathon Van Maren

As Roe v. Wade heads toward a Supreme Court reckoning, the abortion wars are heating up. We don’t know if Roe will go, of course — some watchers think yes, others no — but abortion activists certainly think so. There are already plans to put an underground abortion network in place; to distribute abortion pills to states with pro-life laws; to defy any legislation enshrining rights for pre-born children. In the process, the masks are coming off and abortion activists are beginning to admit what we always knew: The right to kill children in the womb is necessary for sexual liberation.

Sure, most activists and media figures will use the tiny number of cases where sexual assault has occurred or other heartbreaking circumstances in order to pretend that “pro-choice” is about compassion rather than convenience. But that has never been true, and that is becoming increasingly obvious.

Consider, for example, the outrage in the media right now over a U.S. Supreme Court brief observing something that previous generations of human beings understood: Sex makes babies. From The Huffington Post:

The key architect of the radical new Texas anti-abortion law has argued in a U.S. Supreme Court brief that women can avoid pregnancy by simply avoiding sex.

The stunning argument was presented by attorney Jonathan Mitchell in a friend-of-the-court brief this summer supporting a restrictive Mississippi law denying women the right to an abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The brief also argued that Roe v. Wade should be overruled.

“Women can ‘control their reproductive lives’ without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse,” Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general, lectured in the brief, which was first reported by The Guardian.

Despite decades of sex education in public schools, it is apparently “stunning” to observe the obvious. It is indisputably true that sex makes babies. It is also true that pregnancy can be avoided if sex is avoided (and, of course, through a variety of other practices.) The brief noted that an “individual can simply change their behavior … if she no longer wants to take the risk of an unwanted pregnancy,” observing that the only times this is not the case is in instances of sexual assault.

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