Singer Bette Midler is taking a page from history by encouraging women to go on a sex strike to protest the draconian Texas anti-abortion law.
“I suggest that all women refuse to have sex with men until they are guaranteed the right to choose by Congress,” Midler tweeted.
The proposed action evokes “Lysistrata,” a play from ancient Athens in which the women of Greece denied men sex until they ended a war between nation states. The main character is believed by some scholars to be loosely based on the real-life Athenian activist Lysimache.
Actor Alyssa Milano similarly called for a sex strike in 2019 after a controversial anti-abortion “heartbeat” law was passed in Georgia but later shot down by the courts.
The new Texas law is the most restrictive in the nation. It prohibits abortions after six weeks, which is before most people even realize they’re pregnant. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court refused to take immediate action to block the law.
The statute also sets up a bounty system for vigilantes who report people seeking abortions and can collect a $10,000 reward if they successfully sue those who “aid and abet” an abortion.
Not everyone praised Midler’s proposed protest. Some said it “demeaned” women’s rights as merely transactional by presenting them as only “granted” by men in “exchange for services.”
Another said the stunt implies straight women have sex to please men, not themselves.
Many noted that Midler’s message underscores that it takes two to make a pregnancy — yet women are the ones singled out for shame and penalties for an abortion, while men can easily dodge any responsibility or consequences.
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