Marriage Equality and Reproductive Rights

One of the most curious confluences of euphemisms by opponents of "traditional values" is between the phrases "Marriage Equality" and "Reproductive Rights". These euphemisms are so effective that they, and the ideas they really represent, have become fashionable even among many self-described conservatives.

If the uninitiated person takes the phrase "reproductive rights" at face value, he may mistake it for the right for a two people who can naturally reproduce together – a man and a woman – to do so, unencumbered by government restrictions.

However, many people who claim the phrase as one of their major causes mean nothing of the sort; their main concerns are ensuring easy legal access to - and often taxpayer funding for - contraception, which prevents reproduction, and abortifacients and surgical abortion, which kill a human being after she has been created through reproduction. In a paradox, many champions of "reproductive rights" call for - or remain complicity silent when others call for – peer pressure or government restrictions on how many children to whom a person may give birth, or government-funded incentives to use contraception or abortion. Their heads explode when they think of the Duggar family.

Also, very few of them would support "reproductive rights" for siblings or other close relatives. (My own philosophy has no conflict in this area – I believe we are born with and naturally develop our rights, but just as it is wrong to say certain things – even though we have freedom of speech – it is also wrong to reproduce with a close relative, and it is possible and sometimes necessary for government to regulate behavior between two people that has a negative impact on a third person who does not consent.) I also don't see the organizations supposedly championing reproductive rights speaking up about paternity fraud, even though reproduction involves paternity.

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So then the phrase "reproductive rights" really means the right not to reproduce even though one is engaging in reproductive behavior, the right to kill a baby, and the right to taxpayer money to provide these things. Throw in the right to donated eggs, sperm, IVF, and womb time.

Actually, the donated eggs, sperm, IVF, and womb time become very important when we discuss the other euphemism, Marriage Equality. This is one of those noble-sounding terms (aren't most of us for equality?) that is really nonsense. "Marriage equality", when used as a call to make brideless or groomless unions equal to marriage, is a ridiculous term and people who use it should be called on it every single time. No two marriages are actually equal. Some things, though, are objectively observable - such as behaviors and the composition of organizations. The government should only treat equal behaviors and equal situations and the same kinds of organizations equally. Bride+groom marriage is different from the pairing of two men or two women. This is demonstrably true.

However, many in our society confuse principle of equal access or equal protection with equal outcomes. A married couple certainly has reproductive rights insofar as they are able to naturally conceive. But what about two men or two women? This is where "reproductive rights" actually comes to mean, to some, the right to reproduce, and where the "right" to donated egg, sperm, womb time, or IVF becomes important. Combined with the demand for "marriage equality", how could these concepts not compel taxpayers to pay for same-sex couples' access to "third party" reproductive assistance?

Sure, for now the euphemisms are really about marriage neutering and easy access to abortion, and thus don't mix because same-sex couples do not get pregnant together. However, the people pushing for marriage neutering have a history of changing the meaning of terms to suit their purposes, and it wouldn't be a stretch for them to change the phrase "marriage equality" from a focus on neutering state marriage licensing (especially if they accomplish that nationwide) to a focus on the state making their state-licensed marriages "equal" to those of bride+groom couples, by paying for third party reproduction. After all, don't we all have reproductive rights? Doesn't our Constitution's principle of equality, in their thinking, demand that the government (and thus taxpayers) remove any obstacles same-sex couples would have to equality with bride+groom couples?

My philosophy is that there is only a natural right to reproduce insofar as one is capable of finding an eligible, consenting partner of the opposite sex with whom to naturally conceive children. If either individual has some impediment to this process, or they are for any other reason unable to naturally conceive as a couple, nobody else should be obligated to mitigate this with money, expertise, sperm, eggs, or a womb. Also, children have a natural right to life and a mother and father in way that should prevent the exclusion of either the mother or the father from parenting the child unless the parent is a danger.

Previously: Is it Possible to Truly Achieve "Marriage Equality"?