The Invisible Library

Dan Savage is consistently one of the most amusing and provocative sex-columnists around. For the last few months he’s been running the occasional Straight-Rights Update, in which he keeps his regular readers appraise dof the shenanigans of the prudes and moralizers (all of whom, I’m sure have more than a few kinks in their closet, eh, Senator Santorum?). This week, he brings to our attention a truely frightening piece of legeslation, right out of The Handmaid’s Tale:

STRAIGHT-RIGHTS UPDATE: After tossing nearly half of last week’s column away on a straight-rights update, it was my intention to give it a rest. In fact, every time I write one of these, I think, “This is the last one. Banning abortion, evicting unmarried straight couples and their children, moving to ban birth control—things can’t get any worse, can they?”

Oh, but they can: Not satisfied with meddling in the lives of the relatively small percentage of women who are pregnant, the American Taliban is moving to regulate the lives of all American women.

“New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves—and to be treated by the health care system—as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon,” reports The Washington Post. “[T]his means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control… [I]t’s important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed.”

Color me paranoid, but ordering American women to regard themselves as “pre-pregnant” because they may harm a fetus they don’t know they’re carrying opens the door to prosecuting women who harm their fetuses by failing to regard themselves as “pre-pregnant.” How long until “women should… refrain from smoking [and] maintain a healthy body weight” becomes “women must…” Does that sound paranoid? Well, so did a war on contraception once.

Next week, Dan is going to have an all Stright-Rights column. Spread the word.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 3:30 am and is filed under News, Culture War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.