Roe v Wade: A “penis bounty” to level the playing field?

New Rural Virginia asked Patricia Underwood, a Rappahannock-based artist, several of whose works and exhibitions have focused on historical and cultural portrayal of women and women’s rights, for her response to the recently-released draft opinion suggesting the Supreme Court will overturn Roe vs Wade. 

By Patricia Underwood

It is shocking but not surprising that those states with the most restrictive reproductive rights also have the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality, much lower access to affordable health insurance for women, and greater disparity between women’s pay and men’s.  

 I have always had a heightened sense of human rights and fairness, especially for women. I am aware that in their lifetime, 1 in 4 women in the U.S can expect to be raped, and many do not have an option to do something about it.  

Men are not forced to have vasectomies against their will, and are not subjected to a gauntlet of screaming prolife activists if they decide to get one. What I am advocating for is a level-playing field.

 Consider the recent Texas law that criminalizes a woman’s right to reproductive choice and allows vigilantes to collect $10,000 bounties for turning those women in who do exercise this right.  Let’s enact a set of specific and equally-restrictive laws on exactly how and when a man can make decisions on how he behaves with his penis.  We could allow those who witness any penis-behavior transgressions like rape or incest or sexual assault, to collect a ‘penis bounty’ as it were, much like the ‘abortion bounty’ in Texas, to bring those men to justice.

 Going further, since every pregnancy begins with a penis, let’s hold men responsible for every unwanted life they help create. We could require paternity testing ensuring that every father is verified and held financially responsible for child and maternal support.   

 Pro-choice does not mean you are pro-abortion. It means that no matter what your personal feelings or beliefs about abortion are, you understand it is not your place to make a decision for a woman about what she can and cannot do with her body. We need to pass the ERA including a complete complement of women’s reproductive healthcare rights codified into law. Anything short of that is sexual slavery and forced motherhood.

 Passing laws that regulated penis behavior would get people to see the inequality in how women are treated versus men, and create the means to hold men responsible for their transgressions and the outcomes they create.