"If you're going to penalize someone for an unwanted pregnancy, why not penalize the person who is also responsible for the pregnancy?"
"All across the country, especially here in Mississippi, the vast majority of bills relating to contraception and/or abortion focus on the woman's role when men are 50% of the equation," Blackmon explained,
according toNBC News. "This bill highlights that fact and brings the man's role into the conversation. People can get up in arms and call it absurd but I can't say that bothers me."
Meanwhile in Ohio, state Reps. Dr. Anita Somani (D-11) and Tristan Rader (D-13) have introduced their own Contraception Begins at Erection Act, which would fine violators $10,000 per unauthorized discharge, with exceptions for when contraception is used during sex, or in cases of masturbation, and sex between members of the LGBTQ+ community.
"If you're going to penalize someone for an unwanted pregnancy, why not penalize the person who is also responsible for the pregnancy?" Somani, who is also a licensed OB-GYN,
asked in an Ohio Capital Journal article published Sunday. "You don't get pregnant on your own."
Responding to Republicans who have called her bill "absurd," Somani said, "If you think it's absurd to regulate men, then you should think it's equally absurd to regulate women."
While observers have questioned the seriousness of these bills—and with Somani and others giving nods to a
famous number in Monty Python's 1983 black comedy The Meaning of Life—they come at a nadir for reproductive freedom in the United States.
Since the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court
canceled half a century of federal abortion rights in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling, a dozen states including Mississippi have also passed near-total abortion bans, while numerous other states have enacted restrictions on the procedure.
Eight states have also enacted or proposed restrictions on access to contraception,
according to the Guttmacher Institute. Last year, Senate Republicans blocked consideration of the Right to Contraception Act. Republican President Donald Trump has signaled support for federal restrictions on contraception, and far-right U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has suggested that the tribunal "should reconsider" past rulings upholding the right to birth control.
In Ohio, voters
decisively enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution via a 2023 ballot measure. Nevertheless, anti-abortion activists haven't given up—Republican activist Austin Beigel told the Capital Journal that GOP lawmakers are preparing to introduce legislation for a total abortion ban in the coming weeks.
"It just says human life begins at conception," he explained. "Therefore, all the protections that are offered to other people under the state law are also offered to the pre-born."
This isn't the first time that semi-satirical legislation has been introduced to highlight the hypocrisy of banning women from controlling their bodies. In 2019, a Democratic state lawmaker in Georgia
introduced a "Testicular Bill of Rights" that would, among other things, have required men to get permission from their sexual partners before obtaining erectile dysfunction medication and enacted a 24-hour "waiting period" for men who want to buy porn or sex toys.
Correction: This article orginially said the "Every Sperm Is Sacred" song is from Monty Python's 1979 dark comedy The Life Of Brian. It is, in fact, from the 1983 Monty Python film The Meaning of Life. The author—who still considers The Holy Grail the finest comedy ever made—apologizes for the error.
