# "Pro-lifers want to control women's bodies" - Okay, but........why? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 22, 2019, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330 "2019-05-22T02:24:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/41 "2019-05-22T14:43:44Z")
This pro-life legislator ([voted for the MS heartbeat ban](https://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/130306/doug-mcleod#.XOVf9chKjcs))[is a serious control freak wrt his wife’s sexuality](https://myfox28columbus.com/news/nation-world/report-mississippi-lawmaker-punched-wife-in-face-over-sex): > [@](#): > > LUCEDALE, Miss. (AP) — A police report says a south Mississippi lawmaker punched his wife in the face after she didn’t undress quickly enough when the lawmaker wanted to have sex. > > Republican state Rep. Doug McLeod of Lucedale was arrested Saturday on a misdemeanor domestic violence charge. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/42 "2019-05-22T14:52:54Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > Trump isn’t Christian. > > It is perhaps the only thing I respect about him. Hard to respect him for faking it though. If he was honest about it, that would be one point in his favor. Pretending the Bible is his favorite book isn’t the way to garner respect from either the religious or nonreligious. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/43 "2019-05-22T15:04:48Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > Hard to respect him for faking it though. If he was honest about it, that would be one point in his favor. Pretending the Bible is his favorite book isn’t the way to garner respect from either the religious or nonreligious. It’s plenty telling Christians don’t appear to care enough to vote for someone who follows a righteous path. It’s almost like they’re faking it. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/44 "2019-05-22T15:07:58Z")
The anti-abortionists (I won’t dignify the term “pro-life” by using it in an uncontested way) tend to come at it from a religious justification point of view. Male control over the female reproductive process is a well-trodden religious path. Give it the authority of a divine commandment and codify it in religious practice and bingo, you’ll even get women to agree to it themselves. It is no real surprise. Religions have historically sought control over land, property, thought and action and women have often fallen squarely in the second category. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/45 "2019-05-22T15:43:40Z")
> [@Grrr](#): > > They want to control women’s _sexuality_. > … Yes. Their idea is that women should only have sex to have babies for their husbands or to please him. (Men, of course, are free to fool around). That’s why abortions are evil, women are there as baby makers, barefoot and pregnant. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/46 "2019-05-22T15:46:28Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > It’s plenty telling Christians don’t appear to care enough to vote for someone who follows a righteous path. It’s almost like they’re faking it. Dont say Christians as if you are lumping together about 75% of the population of the USA. Only about 25% of Americans want Roe vs Wade overturned. Most Christians support a woman’s right to choose, altho many are unhappy if the choice is abortion. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/47 "2019-05-22T15:47:30Z")
I’d say they want life done in a certain way and for people to conform to their views of how it should be. Without abortion as a option, it automatically puts women at a disadvantage in some aspects of life, and they like women being at a disadvantage, as that seems ‘right’ and the way it is suppose to be. Women who don’t like that are troublemakers that can’t accept their place. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/48 "2019-05-22T15:47:32Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Yes. Their idea is that women should only have sex to have babies for their husbands or to please him. (Men, of course, are free to fool around). That’s why abortions are evil, women are there as baby makers, barefoot and pregnant. And apparently, if women don’t undress fast enough to have that sex, their Christian pro-life husbands get to punch them in the face. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/49 "2019-05-22T15:53:22Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > The mystery here is WHY does their religion tell them these things? As much as their religion would like us all to believe it is the unvarnished word of God, the exact tenets and teachings of religions are decided upon by the people who run the churches. > > Those people have decided that sex is naughty, and people who engage in it must “face consequences”, whether or not those people are practitioners of their religion. The consequences of sex are much deeper for women than men, so they bear the brunt of these religious attacks. Well, pretty much, the Bible does say that adultery is wrong and even sex without marriage is wrong. That’s not something weird Church leaders have dreamt up. And in fact that has been the prevailing thought for pretty much all of recorded history. Not just Christianity, Islam, Judaism teach the same and : Hinduism : [Hinduism and adultery | Adultery Divorce | Areas of Law | Law Library | AdvocateKhoj](https://www.advocatekhoj.com/library/lawareas/divadultery/1.php?Title=Adultery%20Divorce&STitle=Hinduism%20and%20adultery) _According to Hinduism dictionary,” Adultery is sexual intercourse between a married man and a woman not his wife, or between a married woman and a man not her husband.” In Hindu shastras, adultery is considered as a serious breach of dharma. Hinduism considers marriage as a sacred and a highly sanctified relationship._ Buddhism :[https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/guides/zmjmyrd/revision/2](https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/guides/zmjmyrd/revision/2) _The Five Precepts are considered an important source of authority in Buddhism. The third Precept offers guidance on how to achieve a successful marriage. ‘Do not engage in sexual misconduct’, instructs Buddhists to be content within marriage and not to commit adultery as this will cause suffering._ ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/50 "2019-05-22T15:56:00Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Ask them where in the Bible these teachings come from. If abortion is such an evil that women should gladly turn over their bodily autonomy to ensure it never happens, then surely this evil is unambiguously described in the holiest of texts and explicitly forbidden. Abortion is not mentioned much in the Bible. There are some disputed verses. Adultery is mentioned many times as is Fornication. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/51 "2019-05-22T15:59:22Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > Yeah it’s religious. Should we stone them to death those who wear two items of clothes woven from different fibers? That’s religious too (or something like that - I don’t care anymore about the specifics). … Yeah, that’s not really in the Bible. Jews are not supposed to wear clothes made of linen woven with wool as that is reserved for the Priests. Stoning is not mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/52 "2019-05-22T16:01:25Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > Trump isn’t Christian. > > It is perhaps the only thing I respect about him. > **[Donald Trump | Religion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#Religion)** > > Trump went to Sunday school and was confirmed in 1959 at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens. In the 1970s, his parents joined the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, which belongs to the Reformed Church in America. The pastor at Marble, Norman Vincent Peale, ministered to the family until his death in 1993. Trump has described him as a mentor. In 2015, the church stated that Trump was not an active member. In 2019, he appointed his personal pastor, Religion \*Trump is a Presbyterian.[59][60][61] His ancestors were Lutheran on his paternal grandfather’s side in Germany[62] and Presbyterian on his mother’s side in Scotland.[63] His parents married in a Presbyterian church in Manhattan in 1936.[64] As a child, he attended the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, where he had his confirmation.[43] In the 1970s, his parents joined the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan,[65] part of the Reformed Church.[66] The pastor at Marble, Norman Vincent Peale, ministered to Trump’s family and mentored him until Peale’s death in 1993.[67][65] In August 2015 Trump told reporters, “I am Presbyterian Protestant. I go to Marble Collegiate Church,” adding that he attends many different churches because he travels a lot.[68] The Marble Collegiate Church then issued a statement noting that Trump and his family have a “longstanding history” with the church, but that he “is not an active member”.[66] Trump said he was “not sure” whether he ever asked God for forgiveness, stating “If I do something wrong, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture.” He said he tries to take Holy Communion as often as possible because it makes him “feel cleansed”.[59] While campaigning, Trump referred to The Art of the Deal as his second favorite book after the Bible, saying, “Nothing beats the Bible.”[69] The New York Times reported that evangelical Christians nationwide thought “that his heart was in the right place, that his intentions for the country were pure.”[70] Trump has associations with a number of Christian spiritual leaders, including Florida pastor Paula White, who has been called his “closest spiritual confidant.”[71] In 2015, he released a list of religious advisers, including James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Ralph Reed, Michele Bachmann, Robert Jeffress, and others.[72][73]\* ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/53 "2019-05-22T16:09:43Z")
Yes, I’ve talked to some rah-rah Christians who believe a husband cannot rape his wife. If he wants it, she has to submit. And they also think marriage is only between a man and a woman. If I had a nickel for every time one of them said “Your sister can’t have a wife,” I would ride the bus free for a year. And several have told me the children my SIL had and my sister adopted are not my nieces. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/54 "2019-05-22T16:15:14Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > N.B. I’m going to use “woman” somewhat loosely in multiple contexts in this post without much disambiguation. On one hand, I’m using it as shorthand for people the abortion issue directly affects: people with functioning wombs, of which it is worth noting not all of whom are women, and is a class that not all women fall under. However, many of the social issues I’ll discuss transcend the direct effects of the issue at hand and have ramifications for women as a perceived political/social class, distinct from the exact group of people the policy itself harms. > > Here’s the thing, almost none of them have some like… master plan. I guarantee almost nobody is squatting in the shadows, cackling like a goblin, saying “mwahahaha just another step in my MASTER PLAN to control people with functional wombs!!!” This argument, like the definition of patriarchy, isn’t some argument about what some shadowy cabal is explicitly planning to do to women. > > It’s an argument about what the **undercurrent** of their position is, especially when taken in concert with the particular arguments they use, the attitudes they hold, and the other positions they support. As well as an assertion about the ramifications of policies engineered to enforce these attitudes. > > When viewed under this lens “but women do it too” isn’t really a sensible counterpoint. Of course individual women can be complicit in, and in some cases actively supportive of, institutions and actions that oppress women as a collective group. All oppressed groups contain members who facilitate or support their own oppression, whether they mean/want to not. This doesn’t mean “oh, these poor women, they know not what they do and act against their own self interest!” But it doesn’t change the fact that that they are reinforcing institutions that harm women as a class, even if they’re in a position where they as an individual wouldn’t be harmed by the specific policy. In fact, I’d argue that all of us women are, in at least one aspect of our lives, doing or arguing for **something** that undermines women as a class, it’s a nature of the system, that doesn’t mean we can’t criticize those things because almost all of them are things women do or defend. > > A lot of this rhetoric owes itself to both radical and marxist/socialist feminism (which are two groups that are not identical and sometimes at odds, but have similar ideas about the origins of the oppression of women in the modern context). Both radical and socialist feminism view the classification of women as entities whose primary role and definition is reproduction and tasks surrounding reproduction (such as housekeeping) as one of the roots of female oppression. Socialist feminism departs from radical feminism here because radical feminism largely views this as **the** defining aspect of womens’ oppression (which is why so many radfems are trans or sex work exclusionary), whereas socialist feminists view this as part of the redefinition of womens’ roles under the rise of new economic systems and another means to create a class divide (see the book Sylvia Fedricci’s Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, which is not quite a Marxist text but contains many of these arguments). In both viewpoints, of course, this is seen as something to be eliminated, albeit they take very different routes towards addressing this. > > Under such a framework, the explanation for a lot of sexism takes form. Note that while some radfems may claim this as foundational, most wouldn’t deny that many of these attitudes have multiple causes, but merely this is the primary cause. For instance, social policing of womens’ sexual promiscuity as “sluts” is the manifestation of social forces requiring women to only engage in reproductive behavior on society’s narrow terms – controlling their social roles and bodies, in essence. Similarly, victim blaming for rape and social expectations about women being more “on the hook” for worrying about birth control stem from women being the ones expected to be the custodians of reproduction on society’s own terms. > > Note that this is a very nuanced viewpoint with a lot of foundational theory, as well as historical and statistical evidence that’s difficult to cover in one post. There are aspects of these viewpoints I’m leaving out. Including the importance bits that contextualize the treatment of women who cannot produce children in such a system. > > Regardless, under this viewpoint where women are oppressed in large part (or fundamentally, if you’re a radfem) due to their societal role centering around their reproduction, then **control over the terms under which women may elect whether or not to reproduce** is an attempt to leverage that role against women. By defining when women may elect to reproduce, we’re not only requiring women to engage in this definition (as they have little choice whether to engage in motherhood now), we’re also renegotiating their freedom of engaging with it on their own terms. > > Women have even less freedom to engage with their social role as babymakers. It’s controlling their social role, their lives, and yes, their bodies. This is a very useful and important post that sets out the issues clearly and concisely. Thank you! Nitpick to help those who will look for the book cited: the author is Silvia Federici ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/55 "2019-05-22T16:47:17Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > It’s often said that the real motive of pro-lifers is not to preserve unborn life, as they claim, but rather, “to control women’s bodies.”… > > but why? What do they get out of controlling women’s bodies? Disclaimer: haven’t read the other replies yet, so this may be repeating things. First off, I think it’s both useful and morally important here to distinguish between the leadership and the “rank and file” right-to-lifers, the latter of whom really do often care about those poor unborn babies and get all misty-eyed about itsy bitsy little toes and whatnot. Many of them are innocent of wanting to control women’s bodies. Now let’s look at the larger picture. Patriarchy is a social system, not just a box of mean-spirited attitudes. If patriarchy in its entirety can be said to “want” something, that something is control. And the appeal of patriarchy to leaders and other individuals, aside from resonating perhaps with their personal enjoyment of male privilege or feeding their egos and whatnot, is that it increases their sense of keeping all the people in the social system under control, hence keeping outcomes under control. It isn’t unreasonable to posit that perhaps patriarchy arose in a time of scarcity as an overarching response to crisis – “let’s get everything under rigid control”. Now let’s examine how that control-thingie works. Reproduction is a tricky dilemma in a fragile social system: you sure don’t want to not have enough people being born or your tribe or band dies out, but you also don’t want to have too many or the children eat all the food and soak up adult attention that might otherwise be deployed gathering that food. So, in the name of control, wouldn’t it be cool if reproduction could be narrowly tied to the ability to feed the children? OK, so here’s an idea: what if we had a way of making it so the young healthy horny powerful men can’t get any nookie except when they’re working their butts off for the tribal elders? Not only does that imply a pressured increase in the production, but it also means the kids are byproducts of someone working hard which implies that the ones that get born will get fed. Oh but we can improve on that, it gets “better”. The process by which we make it so those young horny men can’t get sex simply by seeking it from the young women who find them cute and fun is that we make it socially unacceptable and deplorable for the women to be promiscuous, we make it so they keep their assets unavailable except to the guy they get married off to. Well, how do we enforce that, you ask? We make it socially unacceptable for them to have babies until they’re married or to have babies by anyone who isn’t their husband. Abortion and birth control, if the women have access to them, frees the women from having to participate in this game. It enables them to choose to have sex with the guys that they find cute and fun, as opposed to retaining it only for the males who are capable of feeding the resulting babies and who have promised in advance to do so. And if the women are free, so are the horny young guys, who then have less inclination to do whatever the tribal elders tell them to. This is an oversimplification (like what isn’t, when the topic is large?) but does this kind of parse for you? ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/56 "2019-05-22T16:59:16Z")
> [@Llama\_Llogophile](#): > > Giving some benefit of the doubt, it may sometimes take the form of a puritanical outlook on sex rather than punishment, but I think there’s a sizable block that simply resents people having sex for pleasure outside of what they consider “proper” conditions. This seems to fit with the (otherwise inexplicable to me) faction that seems to want zero abortions, yet also doesn’t support many forms of contraception, easier access to contraception in general and comprehensive sex education. The clearest example of the is the opposition to the HPV vaccine. The argument against it really comes down to the feeling that Cancer as punishment for promiscuity is a good thing. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/57 "2019-05-22T16:59:27Z")
Shades of Warren Jeffs and the twin metropolises of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/58 "2019-05-22T17:04:28Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Well, pretty much, the Bible does say that adultery is wrong and even sex without marriage is wrong. That’s not something weird Church leaders have dreamt up. And in fact that has been the prevailing thought for pretty much all of recorded history. Not just Christianity, Islam, Judaism teach the same and : > > Hinduism : [Hinduism and adultery | Adultery Divorce | Areas of Law | Law Library | AdvocateKhoj](https://www.advocatekhoj.com/library/lawareas/divadultery/1.php?Title=Adultery%20Divorce&STitle=Hinduism%20and%20adultery) > _According to Hinduism dictionary,” Adultery is sexual intercourse between a married man and a woman not his wife, or between a married woman and a man not her husband.” In Hindu shastras, adultery is considered as a serious breach of dharma. Hinduism considers marriage as a sacred and a highly sanctified relationship._ > > Buddhism :[https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/guides/zmjmyrd/revision/2](https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/guides/zmjmyrd/revision/2) > _The Five Precepts are considered an important source of authority in Buddhism. The third Precept offers guidance on how to achieve a successful marriage. ‘Do not engage in sexual misconduct’, instructs Buddhists to be content within marriage and not to commit adultery as this will cause suffering._ Sex between two unmarried people is not adultery and thus seems to not be a problem for anybody but the bible-users. (Presuming that the bible actually does ban that - I’m not actually sure of that myself.) ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/59 "2019-05-22T17:06:18Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Yeah, that’s not really in the Bible. Jews are not supposed to wear clothes made of linen woven with wool as that is reserved for the Priests. Not sure that I buy that. The prohibition is in the same verse as “Do not mate different kinds of animals. Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.” “Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together”. So its pretty clear that the overall message is that mixing different things together is unclean, not that its being reserved for the most holy. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2019, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330/60 "2019-05-22T17:08:32Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Reproduction is a tricky dilemma in a fragile social system: you sure don’t want to not have enough people being born or your tribe or band dies out, but you also don’t want to have too many or the children eat all the food and soak up adult attention that might otherwise be deployed gathering that food. So, in the name of control, wouldn’t it be cool if reproduction could be narrowly tied to the ability to feed the children? OK, so here’s an idea: what if we had a way of making it so the young healthy horny powerful men can’t get any nookie except when they’re working their butts off for the tribal elders? Not only does that imply a pressured increase in the production, but it also means the kids are byproducts of someone working hard which implies that the ones that get born will get fed. Oh but we can improve on that, it gets “better”. The process by which we make it so those young horny men can’t get sex simply by seeking it from the young women who find them cute and fun is that we make it socially unacceptable and deplorable for the women to be promiscuous, we make it so they keep their assets unavailable except to the guy they get married off to. Well, how do we enforce that, you ask? We make it socially unacceptable for them to have babies until they’re married or to have babies by anyone who isn’t their husband. That’s a nice story that you might like and that might make sense to you, but it’s about as proven as all the random evolutionary hypothesis that people like to make up out of thin air. That is, not at all. You’re making up a sociological story instead of an evolutionary story, but it’s just that : a story. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-want-to-control-womens-bodies-okay-but-why/834330.md?page=4)