Women can’t catch a break in the sexual code department. When I was a girl in the early 60s the protocol was that it was up to us to control romantic encounters because teenage boys could not; their urge was so strong they couldn’t be expected to curb themselves, so we had to do it for them. This was conveyed through a gamut of society’s gatekeepers. For me, first it was the nuns in Catholic school, pleading with us to feel sorry for the boys because of their weakness in matters of the flesh. It was impressed upon us that we were very powerful in this regard, and boys were at our mercy, a provocative flip of the script for the sex that discovers soon after the age of reason arrives that It’s a Man’s World and we are here as its guests. In high school it was the same message but with a different emphasis, because it was public, not parochial; whereas the sisters worried about a boy’s soul should we lead him astray, in high school it was concern over his having to give up a football scholarship and a glorious future because his girlfriend got pregnant. In either case it amounted to the same thing: It’s our fault. Ever Eve. Built in. Damned even if we don’t.

Pre-Roe, this social order did provide us with, if not real power, some maneuverability. If two teens were getting hot and heavy in the back of a Chevy the girl could slow things down by saying to the boy: “This is really great and all, but a year from now, do you want to be off to college like you’ve always dreamed of or do you want to be a nineteen-year-old husband and father stuck in this one-horse town pumping gas?” Bingo. At this juncture I would like to point out the flaw in the thinking that insists it should always be up to the girl to control the amorous situation simply because a boy’s urges are stronger than hers. It may have been written in stone back then, maybe some people still believe it, but it doesn’t take into account that during ovulation, about two weeks before their period, women experience increased sex drive when hormones like estrogen and testosterone peak. Our weakness of the flesh being cyclical doesn’t make it any less potent at that moment. From a biological imperative perspective, it makes sense that a woman would desire sex most strongly when she is most likely to conceive. But if the kids in that car on Lover’s Lane were lucky, and she was in low gear desire wise, there was a better chance he got to go to college, and she didn’t have to quit high school. Not to mention escaping the fate of being a social pariah for robbing a boy of his future.

Then came the Sexual Revolution! We were freed from those tsk tsk-ing sexual mores! The “revolution” was begun by the hippies, its “shot heard ’round the world” was the Summer of Love in 1967; the means to nullify the pesky biological aftermath of all that free love came next with two Supreme Court decisions: in 1972 gave single women legal access to The Pill (catching up to their married counterparts who got contraceptive access with1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut), and in 1973 Roe provided nationwide abortion on demand. Interestingly, one of the things hippies were well known for was a distrust of government. (Hmm. First distrusting hippie’s “free” love, then it’s the judicial branch of the government that shows up to smooth out the wrinkles for them. Ironic, isn’t it?) Closer to home, all this freedom dramatically changed the dynamics of the teens in the back seat of a car on Lover’s Lane. Now if the girl didn’t feel like having sex and tried to avoid it by evoking consequence, boyfriend says: “You can get an abortion.” From his point of view there’s no reason not to have sex. She’s less in the driver’s seat, not more.

Doesn’t that sum up the modern sexual code? No reason not to. Sex can have all the seriousness of a spa day if one chooses. Simply a form of relaxation. The point of view of a horny adolescent has become that of grown women. And we have the liberty to choose from an array of harmful-to-our-bodies abortion options to circumvent the biological consequences, all packaged as rights to possess, freedoms to defend, autonomy to celebrate.

Part of what drives my involvement in the pro-life cause is the certainty that life begins at conception. Some people may find that rather airy and conceptual, a developing fetus with fingers, toes and a face being easier to relate to. I, however, can relate just fine to the simple logical fact that a thing begins at its beginning. But there’s another side to my pro-life commitment that has nothing to do with babies. It’s that I truly believe that when it comes to abortion women are being taken for a ride. Damned if we do.