{"id":105,"date":"2015-09-09T12:05:48","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T16:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/?p=105"},"modified":"2015-09-09T12:05:48","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T16:05:48","slug":"myth-of-sexual-autonomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/index.php\/2015\/09\/09\/myth-of-sexual-autonomy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Myth of Sexual Autonomy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Julianne<\/a>

Julianne Wiley<\/p><\/div>\n

by Julianne Wiley<\/p>\n

Note: Julianne Wiley (aka Juli Loesch) was the founder of Prolifers for Survival, the predecessor group of Consistent Life (CL). This is an updated version of an article published in the Spring 1987 version of Sisterlife, then newsletter of CL member group Feminists for Life. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Occasionally on the web we find abortion defenders compelled to admit that the Left and the media\u00a0are more likely\u00a0to be won over by the \u201cseamless garment\u201d approach, which includes opposition to abortion in the context of opposition to other kinds of sanctioned killing. Or that prolife feminists have grasped some \u201cessential feminist truths\u201d which make their arguments against abortion more compelling.<\/p>\n

With the game beginning to go against them, some will fold the rest of their hand and slap their highest card on the table: sexual autonomy.<\/em><\/p>\n

No matter what else happens, and no matter what \u201cutopian\u201d changes may come, there will always be the vagaries of sexual passion and the failures of contraception. Thus, come what may, abortion will always be \u201cnecessary\u201d if we are to be free to live \u201csexually autonomous\u201d lives.<\/p>\n

Ellen Willis in the Village Voice<\/em> hurled the following challenge: \u201cI have yet to hear any right-to-lifers take full responsibility for that fact or deal seriously with its political implications.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the contrary. I think that it\u2019s the advocates of sexual autonomy who have failed to recognize its political implications.<\/p>\n

The opposite of sexual autonomy, or independence, is sexual bondedness, or interdependence. What the autonomous wish to enjoy is precisely unbondedness; and one of the bonds to be rejected is a bond to offspring who were conceived without deliberate choice.<\/p>\n

To the defenders of such autonomy I would like to post these questions: Is there such a thing as parental obligation? If so, when and how, and for whom, does this obligation arise?<\/p>\n

In the past, people assumed that simply by engaging in heterosexual relations with each other they acquired parental obligations if and when pregnancy resulted. But now, this is to be seen as a denial of sexual autonomy. Obligations now arise, not from the decision to have sex, but from the strictly separate decision to bear the child.<\/p>\n

But please note: The decision to have sex is a decision made by both partners. The decision to bear the child is made by only one of them<\/em>: namely, the woman.<\/p>\n

Thus, the woman\u2019s responsibility corresponds to her choice, made at some point during the pregnancy. If she doesn\u2019t want to assume any obligation, she can choose abortion and any question of parental responsibility is foreclosed.<\/p>\n

But for the man, parental obligation supposedly arises from the woman\u2019s choices: her choice to bear the baby, and her choice to name him as the father and even to bring legal action to compel his support, if it comes to that.<\/p>\n

The problem here is obvious. You can expect increasingly to hear the sexually autonomous male\u2019s just complaint: \u201cHow is it that she gets a choice, but I don\u2019t? She chose to be a mother. I didn\u2019t choose to be a father. I just chose to have sex!\u201d<\/p>\n

There will always be men who, at any given moment, want sex but don\u2019t want a child; some of these men will get women pregnant. But sexual intercourse now implies for each of them \u2013 exactly nothing, no responsibility.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only the woman\u2019s subsequent and separate option that determines everything. That being the case, why should any man feel he\u2019s acquired an obligation if the woman decides to give birth? Because he deposited sperm in the woman\u2019s vagina? Don\u2019t be medieval.<\/p>\n

Am I predicting that the elevation of sexual autonomy to the status of a \u201cright,\u201d coupled with the availability of abortion, will cut men loose entirely? That paternal responsibility will sink to zero? That men are not only going to take off, but feel justified about it?<\/p>\n

Hell, no. I\u2019m not predicting that. I\u2019m reporting <\/em>it. I\u2019ve done my share of women\u2019s shelter work. I saw it all the time. A couple has a child. Three years down the line he decides he isn\u2019t cut out to be a father. \u201cBut you can\u2019t just walk out. This is your child too!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSure, sure. But it was your choice.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, the gentleman is right, given that the availability of abortion has made procreation a unilateral female decision.<\/p>\n

\"dad
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Most male commitment to the long-term responsibility of child rearing is not obtained through court order. It is obtained voluntarily through a man\u2019s sense, bolstered by society, that it\u2019s right and fair. Why? Because the choice that obliges both him and the woman is the choice they made together, in the act that made the child.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of women and children in this world rely upon webs of interrelation predicated upon a sexually connected man: a man whose sexuality makes him the husband of this <\/em>woman, the father of this <\/em>child. It\u2019s sex that binds him, obliges him to another gender and another generation.<\/p>\n

If the act of generation loses this weight, this significance\u2014and the abortion culture simply blows it away\u2014then you end up with fathering that never makes a father, mating that never makes a mate, short-circuited sex that dreams of nothing more than being plugged into its own sockets.<\/p>\n

Autonomy\u2014in this sense\u2014is as pro-woman as poverty and as pro-sex as an amputation. And abortion\u2014the dismembered offspring\u2014is not only its program, but its most perfect and fitting image.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Julianne Wiley Note: Julianne Wiley (aka Juli Loesch) was the founder of Prolifers for Survival, the predecessor group of Consistent Life (CL). This is an updated version of an article published in the Spring 1987 version of Sisterlife, then newsletter of CL member group Feminists for Life.   Occasionally on the web we find… <\/p>\n