A thought experiment:
Pretend, for a moment, that instead of nominating religious fanatics to the U.S. Supreme Court, Donald Trump had instead packed the high court with dentists.
And instead of reversing Roe v. Wade, the ruling that for half a century protected the right of American women to make their own reproductive choices, this new court of oral activists allowed state legislatures across the country to mandate what brand of toothpaste women must use.
Men, of course, would be free to continue using whichever toothpaste they like.
Certain states, such as Illinois, would continue to allow their female residents access to the range of available brands. Crest. Colgate. Herbal toothpastes like Tom’s. Sensodyne. Their choice.
But other states would rush to make that decision for women and mandate a particular brand — or even bar toothpaste entirely. Use a rag and baking soda, honey, just like in the good old days.
How would people react?
Some would no doubt shrug and do whatever the state says. Freedom can be stressful, and there’s always a big slice of the population that resents the pressure of being expected to run their own lives. The secret shame of totalitarianism is that a slice of the oppressed like it. Slavery is freeing, ironically, to them. No need to think for yourself, to agonize over choices — your betters do that for you. All you need do is obey.
But others would rebel at the idea of the government telling us what dentifrice to put in our mouths. We saw how people resisted being told to do something as simple as wear a paper mask during COVID. And gratifyingly seven states — including backwaters like Kansas — rushed the abortion question onto their ballots, protecting the right of women to figure out their lives themselves. These initiatives didn’t fail anywhere, because Americans overwhelmingly want the right to choose to have an abortion. Just like Mexico, Ireland, the rest of the Western world.
Which brings up the connection between undermining voting rights and pushing mandatory religious fundamentalism. What the far right is doing is not popular. Most people don’t want it — there are heartening signs that Americans are standing up and making their will known — so voting has to go. Since that’s too naked a totalitarian flex, even for religious zealots, it’s disguised as fighting election fraud, which scarcely exists.
They pretend it’s about fair elections, when in fact the elections are being made more unfair. And they pretend it’s about their being free to practice their own religion, when it’s really about extremists being free to force everybody else to practice their religion.
It’s ironic. The state choosing your toothpaste would be seen as obviously oppressive, almost laughably intrusive, in an unacceptable way that the state banning abortion, a far more significant act, somehow doesn’t. One-third of American women live with it. Why? In part because the anti-choice crowd can deploy the most effective political metaphor ever conceived: its zombie army of imaginary babies.
Seventy percent of Americans believe in the physical reality of angels —wings, halos, the whole bit. Fetuses are just angels in training. If the toothpaste-mandate crowd invoked the tooth fairy — she’ll decide, respect her! — it wouldn’t work nearly as well. Red state legislatures keep cooking up new ways to declare fetuses to be honorary babies, everything short of requiring them to be dressed in onesies. They invoke the concept of “murder,” ignoring that abortion isn’t considered murder except as an argument against the procedure. If it were, then when do the murdering moms go to prison? Short answer: never. It’s only an argument.
Of course, far right Republicans are now talking about putting women who have abortions into jail. And banning contraception. A reminder that there is no end to oppression — exerting power is the point — and when abortion is banned nationwide and contraception tightly controlled, they’ll set their sights on masturbation. Don’t laugh. It’s happened before.
If it were toothpaste brand being dictated, Americans might be more agitated. But because it’s only a vital, personal, life-altering choice, millions just shrug. People are funny that way.
The good news is the issue might yet snag the attention of the inattentive non-voting masses. But up to now it hasn’t, not enough.
“We could have done more to fight,” Hillary Clinton sighed earlier this year, referring to the maddening tendency of the Democrats to sit on their hands while Republicans take pickaxes to their rights.
Forget the past. We could do more to fight right now.
