Why does every day feel like we’re marching ever nearer to living The Handmaid’s Tale in real life? How have we gotten to a point where far-right Republicans feel comfortable coming out and saying we should go back to one vote per household?
Two years ago, Roe v. Wade was overturned, in what has to be one of the biggest steps backward for women in the U.S. at the time. But there are always those who want to take things further, and the far-right always seem to operate under this delusion that things were better in the past. They call it “traditional values,” but in reality, traditional isn’t the right word — maybe antiquated, outdated, or primitive would be a better way to refer to these values.
So, in 2022 the clock turned back to 1973, and now Republicans want to move the clock all the way back to the beginning of the last century by undoing all the work of the women’s suffrage movement. A video posted to TikTok by “The New Evangelicals” exposes the kind of future certain militant Christians want to see.
The man in the videos shows several examples of Republicans and right-leaning individuals essentially attacking women’s rights. He also provides examples where it seems they are actually making progress with bills protecting access to contraception being blocked, exposing the alarming truth that the U.S. seems to be heading towards a dystopian nightmare.
We see a man calling for people to “behave as a Christian people,” he further explains what that means, saying “we are going to utterly abolish abortion including In Vitro, including the hormonal birth control pill.” He goes on, but you get the gist; essentially he wants to see the removal of any access to birth control that a woman could need.
Of course, there are those who argue that abortion is about protecting unborn babies but it would be interesting to see how many people would try and defend removing access to IVF and birth control. This isn’t about protecting an unborn child at this point, this is just a way of controlling women’s bodies. The fact that there is actually progress towards this ban on contraception is deeply disturbing.
The creator of the video goes on to theorize what could come after if these right-wing individuals are successful. He makes the bold claim that women’s suffrage is the next item on the chopping block.
“There are people with power who would like to see the right for women to vote roll back and opt instead for one vote per household where a man leads his family and votes for them.”
That may sound a bit over-dramatic at first, but he has receipts to back up his claim; at the end of the video, he shows a man saying exactly that to 14,000 at Turning Point USA’s America Fest. The worrying thing is there are actually people cheering for what this guy’s saying. It feels like the Harrison Butker speech, but even worse. Naturally, many on TikTok were absolutely disgusted to hear this. Some drew links to Project 2025, which is a plan from Republicans to give the president even more powers.
It almost feels like watching a slow motion car crash, like we’re slowly rolling towards a cliff but nobody is able to do anything about it. The best we can hope for is more people hear about this kind of stuff because, thankfully, most people do actually disagree with it, it’s just not being talked about enough.