It’s an idea as old as Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (that’s a play from the 5th century BC, kids): women who haven’t gotten their way have decided to withhold sex from their men until the frustrated lugs comply with their wishes. In New York City’s Union Square on Saturday, a pro-abortion protester named Caroline Healey declared: “I think it’s absolutely valid for us to be withholding the Holy Grail that men seem to think is important.” Judging from the many videos that have surfaced over the last few days of green-haired, slovenly dressed, morbidly obese, body-painted pro-abortion protesters, there is only one response: Your terms are acceptable.
Nevertheless, Caroline Healey’s words were eye-catching: she and her pro-abortion allies don’t seem to realize that all too many men whom they count among their ranks are not there because they are sensitive feminists who are attuned to female suffering. On the contrary, many men stand with the pro-abortion crowd precisely because the easy availability of abortion enables them to behave cavalierly in regard to that “Holy Grail that men seem to think is important” and to move from woman to woman without any compulsion to consider a life of commitment and responsibility. If Healey and her ilk want men to think about them as anything other than utterly disposable sex objects, the answer is not a sex strike, but a return to traditional ideas of marriage and family.
American culture has moved so far from those ideas, however, that they don’t even occur to these modern-day Lysistratas. Another protester, Brianna Campbell, said: “If you’re a man who won’t get a vasectomy, even though it’s reversible, and you’re not out in the streets fighting for my rights, you do not deserve to have sex with me.” Healey added: “Why shouldn’t we withhold it if we’re always worried that they’re not going put a condom on, that they’re going take one off after we ask them to? If we can’t safely go out and have sex and know that we will have a choice after that, then why should we be expected to?”
