The Sex Tax
For over 30 years, the Right has used abortion as a wedge issue to separate culturally-conservative traditional Democrats from the party that supports their interests on economic issues. That’s because the mechanics of abortion, which involves terminating a potential life, strike a discordant tone in the consciences of many well-meaning people. It’s not difficult to take a moral position opposing the killing of babies; when that’s the frame of the debate, liberals have a tough mountain to climb.
Of course, the vast majority of people on the pro-choice side aren’t pro-abortion. Indeed, in a basic way, the continued existence of abortion represents a failure of the real objective, which is extending reproductive rights. Abortion is a means to that end, but it’s recognized to be the worst possible means. The fight to keep it legal is much more about the principle of moral autonomy – that women, not legislators, should be the ones making the difficult choice when it needs to be made – and the practicalities of women’s health and safety than it is a defense of the basic morality of abortion.
The real issue at the center of the abortion debate is the separation of sex from procreation. The “value proposition” of reproductive rights is to make the act of having children fully intentional, not some unexpected byproduct of an impulsive sexual encounter. Abortion is simply the most crude and extreme way to prevent the appearance of an unwanted child. But it’s the far end of a continuum that extends from sex education to birth control to “morning after” and non-surgical pregnancy countermeasures.
The more sophisticated opponents of abortion understand this very well. Sexual freedom for women actually is what they oppose. In their moral view, sex is a sinful activity; it should have consequences. It is necessary to preserve the deterrent of pregnancy as punishment for women who indulge their sexual appetites outside the rigid conventions of marriage, and as a caution for men about pushing too far without the willingness to make a lifetime commitment.
Most people are nowhere near this extreme in their views. While it’s appropriate to take sex seriously and enter into sexual relationships responsibly, in modern America, sexual behavior is more a matter of existential practicalities and personal integrity than metaphysical sinfulness. Even people who have religious views about sex tend to make exceptions to their moral absolutes when it comes to themselves and their immediate families, especially when facing the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. If you have any possibility at all of finding yourself in this position, the existence of reproductive rights has an undeniable appeal, albeit perhaps a somewhat guilty one.
But to win this argument, progressives need to move the debate off abortion and onto this larger issue. The killing of unborn babies produces moral revulsion, but so too should the notion of forcing women to bear unwanted children as a consequence of incidental sexual contact when humane alternatives exist.
Sex in modern society is recognized by most people as a healthy activity that mature adults should be free to engage in if they choose. It is by its nature usually less deliberate and less psychologically consequential than the decision to have children, which really should involve a commitment between the potential parents. Making procreation more intentional and sex more spontaneous is a reasonable goal in terms of both individual freedom and societal welfare.
Now that technology and social mores permit us to pursue this policy, the anti-sex right is in a panic. The risk of incurring the cost and complication of childbirth every time one engages in sexual activity constitutes a powerful incentive – a sex tax, if you wish – to discourage activity that sexphobes oppose. If you see things this way, then the entire project of reproductive rights, not merely abortion, is a profound threat because it promises a repeal of the sex tax and a repudiation of the whole underlying moralistic policy.
That’s why the progressive frame on this issue needs to shift – away from the grim and grue of abortion rights, and toward the affirmative repeal of the sex tax. “Morning after” contraception is the wedge issue here. By preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg in the wall of the uterus, morning-after pills avoid the whole semantics of “unborn babies” and the inflammatory imagery of in utero fetuses. Likewise, they sidestep the debates over sex education and the appropriateness of imparting explicit information to children: by the time anyone needs a morning-after pill, the moment for education (and abstinence) has obviously passed.
Morning-after contraception captures the issue of sexual freedom in its most crystalline form. Do we, as a society, allow a woman to opt out of the possible consequences of sexual activity after she has had sex (but before she is actually pregnant), in private, without even a doctor, at her own discretion? Or is it so important to preserve nature’s “punishment” for sexual promiscuity that we deny ourselves the benefits of technology and perpetuate the social problems of unwanted births?
Do we want to keep the sex tax, or repeal it?
Let’s put that one on the ballot and see if it flies.
10:23:12 AM 
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