Tom McLaughlin: Sex strike?

Alyssa Milano wants women to be in control of their own bodies. Everyone should be, although it does get more difficult with age. I’ve added Milano to a list of “celebrities” of whom I had never heard until they made news by saying something stupid. I don’t know what she was famous for before her recent attempt at rallying American women to stage a sex strike in protest of legislation passed in a few conservative states that would virtually eliminate abortions. The irony seems lost on her, but seeking an abortion is a sign that women have not been in control of their bodies and got pregnant when they didn’t want to.

Even when I was a leftist, I knew abortion dismembered human babies, and I was always firmly opposed to it. “Then don’t have one!” was the knee-jerk answer from pro-abortion lefties I debated, “but don’t stop a woman from getting one.” That’s been the legal status quo of abortion ever since 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court passed Roe vs. Wade, which claimed that somewhere in the Constitution is a woman’s right to abortion. Having read that document many times while I taught civics, I know abortion is not in the Bill of Rights. The twisted legal gymnastics that Harry Blackmun wrote in Roe is among the most labyrinthian since the Dred Scott Decision. That was reversed in a subsequent court and Roe vs. Wade may be as well, Alyssa Milano’s sex strike notwithstanding.