A Modest Proposal
It seems that the United (more accurately, Un-tied) States of America is all in a tizzy over a recent string of rulings.
These rulings have been handed down from on high — specifically, from the United States Supreme Court, or SCOTUS, as it is widely known. Because of the recent shenanigans, rule bending, and general rigging of the SCOTUS nomination process by the United States Republican Party - also known as "GOP," or Guns Over People — the Supreme Court might well be labeled the Supreme Court (Republican) of the United States - or, more neatly, SCROTUS.
SCROTUS rulings seem unassailable to ordinary United States citizens. To these benighted souls, SCROTUS appears to have arrogated to itself a certain “divine right of kings.” More accurately, SCROTUS majority views align quite well these days with the views of the “Divine Right.”
In its present form, SCROTUS will be the “interpreter of last resort” for some time. Thus, the United States finds itself in the unenviable but common position of suffering under a minority point of view asserting itself as the law of the land.
How could this happen? Let’s turn to a bit of history.
The United States is ruled by a highly respected set of statements developed over two hundred years ago, known as its Constitution. This document was created in secret by fifty-five men, a majority of whom were lawyers (1). These gentlemen were really supposed to be fiddling around the edges of a previous document called the Articles of Confederation. While the Articles provided plenty of freedoms to the emerging states, this earlier document also tried to guarantee certain rights of individuals. Naturally, the states paid no attention to much of this and beat each other up over all kinds of things, until it became clear (2) that order needed to be restored, and fast.
So the lawyers, almost-lawyers and generally clever men assembled in a hot, sweaty room, with the public intent of revising the Articles. Revising the articles required all thirteen states to agree to the new set of governing principles. This would be a problem, as only twelve states were represented. (3)
Once the door was closed, they tossed the Articles altogether and created instead the Constitution, writing into it the new rule that only nine states need ratify it for it to become law.
This is what happens when you stick a bunch of high-powered men in a room with no oversight. Of course, the argument goes, the noble end — creation of one of the great legal documents of the age — more than justified the means. (4)
Americans love to change the rules when the game doesn’t go their way. They also love to accuse each other of it, which is always fun to watch, if only because one learns new ways to twist thinking and frame arguments, the better to support a flawed point of view.
Back to the Constitution. Once the document was completed, it was declared perfect by those who signed it (70%) and awful by those who didn’t (30%). The doors were flung wide, and immediately the protests began. The most important of these protests had to do with what wasn’t in the Constitution. Where were the rights of the people? (5)
To keep the peace and help secure the acceptance of this fledgling masterwork, one of the almost-lawyers (6), a small man named Madison, examined the hundreds of people’s rights that had been written into state constitutions, or proposed by the states, or written on the backs of various napkins, sifting the ones he figured would satisfy the letter, if not the spirit, of the request that such rights ought to be appended to what he probably thought was a perfect document. Of the nineteen he proposed, ten were agreed by the fledgling states and appended to the Constitution as the first ten Amendments, known by Americans as the Bill of Rights. (7)
This is important for our discussion, because it illustrates the first go-round between those who figured there was no need to call out specific rights of the people versus the powers of government (these were implied in the core Constitution), and those who figured it was better to be explicit about this kind of thing.
This has been the issue ever since. (8)
While many of the subsequent Amendments deal with trivialities (for example, the right to sue states, how to choose the President, who can vote for Senators, income taxes, how many terms the President has, whether to remove him (9) when he’s nuts, and the hilarious twin amendments – first, to prohibit alcohol and then to recognize how stupid that was), there are a few amendments that present themselves for our use here. These are the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Nineteenth. For those unfamiliar:
Thirteenth - Abolishing slavery (unless you’re a prisoner)
Fourteenth - Equal protection of the laws
Fifteenth - No denial or abridgment of voting based on race or servitude
Nineteenth - No denial or abridgment of voting based on sex
So, with these under our wing, let us tackle one of the more recent SCROTUS rulings, the Dobbs opinion, which overturned previous rulings (Roe and Casey) around the matter of a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
A great deal has already been said (or screamed) about the woman’s right to privacy, the privacy of patient-doctor relationships, how and where medical students focusing on reproductive care may choose to study and then to practice, where female students may decide to study, what the effects of this ruling will be on economics, inter-state travel and commerce, even the right to travel (which we suppose would include the right to crawl, walk or run (10)), where employers choose to locate, how they might or might not compensate their female employees, on and on and on.
We must be clear here. SCROTUS doesn’t care about any of this. That is to say, how the United States may be torn apart, whether certain states will unearth hundred-plus-year-old laws and enforce them, and whether the individual states will embark upon yet another update to the war between the states (11), is of no concern to SCROTUS. SCROTUS does not care that the United States will divide itself into slave states and free states, in which modern slaves (often referred to as women) will attempt to flee to the free states, pursued by the agents of the slave states, and if they are lucky enough to arrive, being defended by those upholding equally valid, separate but equal free state laws. Welcome to the 21st century American Civil War.
The Thirteenth Amendment is silent about women as slaves or bound to servitude; perhaps this is because, until the Nineteenth Amendment, women did not exist, certainly not as voters capable of influencing the state laws SCROTUS is charmed to invoke here. Perhaps this is the logic that SCROTUS applied to the Fourteenth Amendment which, while widely regarded as the single most important extension of the Bill of Rights, could not possibly include women, as these did not yet exist, as they could not vote. The fact that fetuses didn’t exist or vote, either, seems not to be of concern. We await an amendment where there shall be no denial or abridgment of voting based on fetal condition.
SCROTUS cares only about the dry words. SCROTUS can afford to do so, because it lives behind its walls of safety. The men and women who sit upon SCROTUS (12) remain there “during good Behaviour,” as the Constitution tells us.
“Good Behaviour” essentially means for life. While we should have great respect for the many hard-working attorneys who take on causes that help guarantee the rights and securities of clients and in some cases, all citizens, we find it hard to believe that an assembly of representatives, politicians, attorneys, and in general clever and ambitious people would be able to agree upon a moral compass that (a) Defines “Bad Behaviour” and (b) Fails to sweep them all up in that same definition. Agreeing upon “Good Behaviour,” or its egregious lack, therefore, carries with it the same probability of success as economists agreeing upon the state of the economy.
So with SCROTUS scrotified for life, the options here essentially include death of a “Scrotee” or a decision to retire. These folks tend to hang on into their eighties, often dying while serving (and sometimes drying up well before departing the bench).
Let us therefore turn from SCROTUS, as it is useless to help heal the wounds of the nation at this time. Indeed, let’s not look to SCROTUS for any assistance whatsoever, as their track record includes such lively decisions as Dred Scott, Plessy, Buck, Shelby, and Citizens United. None of these were notable for helping the United States chart a proper way forward as a beacon of democracy for their own citizens, let alone for the rest of the bemused world observing this violent, gilded nation. (13) Indeed, one could argue that the SCROTUS charter is to materially harm whole swathes of the population, that the SCROTUS charter is to shrink the tent in such a way that only those with property and privilege may dwell within. But this digression, amusing as it may be to contemplate, detracts from our efforts. We leave this to others to pursue.
So. Now that SCROTUS has encouraged yet another chapter in the war between the states, we turn from them to the arguments around both sides of the Dobbs vs. Roe equation.
Some will argue that the rights of the woman outrank the rights of the unborn. Others will argue that the rights of the unborn outrank the rights of the woman carrying that unborn.
That is all that matters in this argument.
We may include sanctity, viability, quickening, age of the woman (or girl), whether of consenting age, whether consent was given, whether the father has the say over the mother, deformity, risk, on and on. It will get us nowhere. It gets us nowhere because it is focused on the wrong target. We must focus elsewhere.
We therefore propose a different solution. Our solution will remove nearly all risk of unwanted pregnancy. After all, the issue at hand is whether a woman can decide on whether the pregnancy is too risky, not desired, and so forth.
SCROTUS and certain states have removed that decision from the minds of women. So must we.
The problem in pregnancy is not with the carrier. The carrier is the victim. The problem is with the perpetrator.
Men create pregnancies. Women bear them.
In the law enforcement terms so dear to SCROTUS, men are the perpetrators.
To address the problem, therefore, we have a modest and very simple proposal. We will sterilize all the perpetrators, commonly referred to as men (or guys). No exceptions.
You may ask, how can this be a viable solution? The population will shrink to zero! Surely the framers must have written into the constitution protections against enforced sterilization!
We address the last objection first. We note that no such protection against sterilization exists within the Constitution, and that in 1927, SCROTUS argued in Buck vs. Bell that, among other things, “three generations of imbeciles are enough” while upholding the right to perform eugenics on undesirable segments of the population. (14) This decision has never been formally overturned, by the way, and it isn’t likely even to be taken up by today’s SCROTUS.
As for the first and second objections, we offer something similar to what certain states are offering as compensation for removing choice from women. These states are promising — with all the force such political promises carry — to provide wraparound services for unwilling mothers, include the privilege to carry to term an unwanted pregnancy and the privilege of adoption, and perhaps even the privilege of a few weeks of care after the bundle of unwanted joy arrives.
Such compassion is remarkable.
Our offering is similar. We will provide wraparound services for men. Each man (and for want of a better definition, we will define “man” as “a gender attaining an age capable of ejaculation”) will be provided the following services:
1) Immediate access (subject merely to scheduling) to two separately located state-controlled sperm banks
2) A monitoring tether (or chip) to ensure that the man has no uncontrolled ejaculations prior to his sperm bank appointments
3) Access to the sterilization method of his choice, with present gentle methods that include vasectomy or castration
The man will be able to provide his sperm to two locations, to ensure that there is no possibility of loss of sperm due to power failure, flood, invasions of hamsters, or any other random acts beyond one’s control. (15) The locations will be equipped to: (a) Take and preserve the man’s semen; (b) Provide mandatory DNA testing; and (c) Provide onsite, convenient (and of course, mandatory) sterilization.
DNA testing ensures that, in the unlikely event a pregnancy occurs after sterilization, the law provides for:
1) Verification of paternity; which proof is followed by
2) A binding obligation to provide childrearing support for the next eighteen years, failure of which results in the father becoming a ward of the state (in other words, imprisoned; or a slave, per the Thirteenth Amendment) and the child similarly provisioned.
To encourage compliance with the sterilization mandate, the law will also include:
1) A first-time misdemeanor for first ejaculation, if no female is present; the recommended term is a minimum of thirty days or sterilization, whichever occurs later
2) A first-time felony for first ejaculation into a female, whether or not pregnancy results, and whether or not the female consented to the activity; the recommended term is a minimum of five years and placement on the state sex offender rolls
We acknowledge that SCROTUS has directed that these laws be enacted at the state level. Therefore, each state passing such sterilization requirements will also require border checks, including an option to the visiting male to sterilize before proceeding across state lines. Male college students are of course a priority, as are college and professional athletes traveling to sterilization states. Foreign exchange students may want to rethink their educational opportunities.
Unauthorized, undocumented males from other states will be considered illegal aliens and subject to deportation back to their home state. “Visiting Granny” will not be considered an excuse for random impregnation efforts in restricted states. For repeat offenders, mandatory exit sterilization procedures may be exercised. In extreme cases, border walls may need to be built.
The benefits from the sterilization program are many:
It preserves the freedom to choose. When a man and a woman choose to have a child, the man simply obtains his verified sperm from one of the two locations. While there is a small risk of switched sperm and the female carrying to term a person of, say, an unexpected race, DNA testing can determine where the mixup occurred; the (possibly surprised) other male will then be informed and offered the choice of supporting unexpected progeny over the next couple of decades.
It preserves (to the possible distress of some who would hope otherwise) the joys of sexual activity between consenting men and women.
It nearly eliminates the risk of pregnancy arising from rape or incest. This allows females the opportunity, in the words of at least one Republican (16), to simply “lie back and enjoy it.”
It preserves the privacy of the sex act. Other than filling out a form in triplicate that is subject to state review and control as it pertains to obtaining sperm from the sperm bank, men and women are free to frolic.
It preserves the sanctity of life. Indeed, “life” may be seen as well-preserved at over 300 degrees below zero.
If applied nationwide, it may help with reducing the number of unwanted immigrants (although it will do nothing to distinguish between “shithole” immigrants and desirable ones). Immigrants may decide that the cost of forced sterilization and sperm bank donation associated with immigration is simply too high, given that what the United States offers in return includes the chance of being shot while shopping or being arrested for driving while foreign-born — all the while waiting perhaps years for the opportunity to vote for some other way to live.
It will increase the number of border controls, which likely will increase the sale of guns, which is also an economic benefit hidden (some would say enshrined) in the Constitution’s Second Amendment.
Children killed in mass school shootings could easily be replaced, simply by checking out another sperm sample and having another implantation. Waiting ten or fifteen years for a chance to outlive the next school shooting gallery is not considered a significant issue.
If this seems harsh to some, be aware that we are of course being merciful — for now. We are allowing males to ejaculate harmlessly wherever and whenever they wish (almost — there is a matter of gross indecency to consider). However, we would urge that cases be developed for SCROTUS review that examine the moral question of Onanism (using the awakened definition that includes male masturbation) and its associated penalty of death. To those states which still hold the death penalty as not cruel and unusual punishment, death for those men convicted of this crime is a reasonable, moral punishment for this nasty misdeed. (17)
Lastly, we are considering reinstating the Eighteenth Amendment outlawing alcohol. We understand that fetal alcohol syndrome is a very real risk for the precious unborn. Therefore, to remove all risk of this occurring, we once again suggest that America return to the days of prohibition. Prohibiting everything (except guns) is a good thing. America is well on its way there, anyway.
The way to enact (or, surprisingly, to reject) the above proposal is to vote. And while efforts are underway that seek to prevent fraud and ensure accurate voting, we would argue that these violate the abridgment terms of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments. After all, if the right to bear arms cannot be abridged, no matter the cost, we cannot abridge the right to vote, either, no matter the cost to those who would so abridge.
We offer this modest program in the hope that it will address both the sanctity of life issue and the freedom of choice issue, once and for all. What better way to preserve the sanctity of life than by freezing it? What better way to accommodate the rights of citizens than by freezing them as they were hundreds of years ago?
We ask that the states consider this male sterilization program and, if it results in continued contention among and between them, for Congress to act to codify male sterilization as the law of the land.
And then five ninths of SCROTUS can be duly sterilized. Or is it six?
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Notes & Such:
(1) Thirty-four of the fifty-five seems to be the best estimate. Of course, who really qualified to be a lawyer in those days was hardly clear, as the bar was set fairly low. Come to think of it, based on today’s evidence, perhaps the bar hasn’t been raised too much in some notable cases. And fifty-five men locked in a room to discuss anything is pretty frightening.
(2) Have you ever tried to prove the instant when something “becomes clear” to enough people to warrant action? And is this moment — “it became clear” — the “moment of conception” of the Constitution? The “divine spark” that allows the Constitution to exist and persist? The “sanctity of life” it appears to enjoy?
(3) Rhode Island didn’t attend. For that snub, it was tarred as “Rogue Island,” and so much scorn was heaped upon the little place that it’s a wonder it didn’t sink into Block Island Sound. They printed their own money, too, which resulted in a lovely bout of runaway inflation which itself was one of the things that drove the other states to the Convention: “Hey, if it could happen to them…”
(4) Indeed, one need look no further than the present situation with Uber — in which executives were quoted as saying they knew they were doing illegal things while elbowing their way into world markets. After all, the noble end was affordable rides for everyone — never mind the impact on whoever might get in the way (taxi drivers and their families come to mind). Uber, like Wells Fargo, is a case of pursuit of profit without regard for the laws. The majority of modern-day rascals may not go that far, settling for the merely “unethical but legal” as taught in business strategy — and defending this as smart and good. The United States has built presidencies in this fashion.
(5) As in, “We, the People”? Never mind the definition of people as excluding blacks (but counting them at 60% so that the slave economy could continue, and importation of blacks allowed to fuel it until 1808) and our friends “Indians not taxed.” And despite Abigail’s protests, try to find the “fairer sex” represented anywhere.
(6) Well, was he or wasn’t he a lawyer? Madison. He wasn’t. He knew his way around the law and studied law books, but that’s about it. How he snared Dolly is anybody’s guess. How Clarence snared Ginni (or vice versa) is much easier to understand.
(7) And picked over ever since. Incidentally, it’s easy to forget that the first ten Amendments managed to get through the ratification process by 1791. In the next 130 years, only seventeen more have made it, out of well over ten thousand — and a notable failure in this was the Equal Rights Amendment for women. (Imagine what a sorry state of affairs we’d find ourselves in if that had been ratified.) As a matter of fact, the 27th Amendment was ratified a couple of hundred years after it was proposed. Don’t expect the amendment process to be a rapid or practical remedy.
(8) Let’s face it. The temptation to clear things up by making things more explicit has been doomed to failure ever since men and women realized that the balance between intuition, judgment, and reason is not attainable. Yet try we must. Hence, the simple exhortation of Hillel the Elder (1. That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow; 2. This is the whole Torah - the rest is commentary; 3. Go and study) is buttressed by countless thousands of pages written by well-meaning religious experts who are driven by the notion that if they get all their words exactly right, understanding will follow. It doesn’t, and it never will. So, like the Bible or the Torah, just about anybody will find anything they either desire or despise in the Constitution, and no amount of clarifying will solve the problem.
(9) I realize that I really should say, “him or her,” but the United States hasn’t yet figured out that women make highly effective leaders. After all, what could the United States hope to learn from other countries, where female leadership is both effective and thriving?
(10) Yes, they’re really thinking about this. Freedom to go for a walk isn’t in the Constitution. See: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/is-it-legal-to-travel-for-abortion-after-dobbs
(11) The first war between the states finally exploded into a shooting war from 1861 - 1865 and is known as the American Civil War. Since that time, a narrative has emerged that suggested it was an economic war, a war about states’ rights, and so forth. This looks away from the realities of the time. Ever since the Constitution was proposed, slavery was not only written into it - slavery was a part of the lives of several of the United States’ first presidents. Slavery, as is so often the case with large economies, was necessary for the health of the nation. Why else explicitly state (Article I, Section 9) that the slave trade will not be tampered with for 20 years? Why else create the three-fifths rule to increase representation in states where large portions of the population were slaves? But despite the care taken to reorder the definition and terminology associated with the Civil War, we can safely say that the states have been at war many times, starting before the Constitution was written. Why else was there a need to discard the original Articles of Confederation?
(12) I really must apologize to the three women who find themselves caught in the company of the five men and the woman who might as well be one. SCROTUS must refer to the entire Court, despite the best efforts of these three.
(13) I realize that I have previously used SCROTUS to refer to the most recent decisions of the Court. However, if some can argue that the establishment clause of the Constitution may be stretched so that “In God We Trust” can be the motto of the nation, and that “under God” can be included in the Pledge of Allegiance, and that the Christian Bible can used each time a President is sworn in — well, I may stretch SCROTUS a bit to include prior decisions harmful to the well-being of this republic.
(14) I may be a tad harsh here, but only a tad. Hitler looked to the United States as an example of the justification of forced sterilization for undesirables in his population, too. He simply took matters to their logical conclusion, millions of lives later. “Ethnic cleansing” is a lovely term more recently applied as justification for disposing of vast swathes of undesirable but walking and talking life.
(15) This mouthful was provided as a windy substitute for “acts of God.” I don’t know about you, but I think any “God” who ships a hundred thousand hamsters to invade a sperm bank and steal somebody’s potential progeny is a pretty funny supreme being.
(16) Don’t take my word for this. See: https://wgntv.com/news/gop-candidate-says-he-tells-daughters-to-lie-back-and-enjoy-it-if-rape-is-inevitable/
(17) It’s in the Bible, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onan . Poor Onan. He just didn’t think having sex with Tamar, the wife of his deceased brother, was worth it. And for that, the most merciful Yahweh killed him. All this could have been avoided if Onan had just gone through with it and let Tamar herself control the intake of semen, as asserted by a Utah Republican woman. It’s not possible to invent this; see: https://jezebel.com/im-still-thinking-about-that-utah-republican-saying-wom-1849134683
Sources (partial):
Democracy, David A. Moss (Harvard University Press, 2017)
The Words We Live By, Linda R. Monk (Hachette, 2015)
The Bill of Rights Primer, Akhil Reed Amar and Les Adams (MJF Books, 2013)
Wikipedia, James Madison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison
Sterilization, Buck v. Bell, never overturned: https://timeline.com/supreme-court-forced-sterilization-763f8bfefe48
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/553604/facts-about-us-constitution
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/01/the-rights-made-up-constitution-3/
https://constitutionus.com/constitution/why-didnt-the-articles-of-confederation-work/
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
