Daily Wire's Michael Knowles attacks the constitutional right to contraception
Knowles: “Maybe you like condoms. Maybe you don't like condoms. I don't know where you're gonna find that in the Constitution. ... If you can't read between the lines, the conclusion that one draws is that condoms are kind of gay.”
Published
We have previously documented how, now that the right-wing Supreme Court has overruled Roe v. Wade, conservative media now are eyeing the right to access birth control enshrined in Griswold v. Connecticut:
Right-wing lawmakers are also eyeing emergency contraceptives, which can be used up to three to five days after unprotected sex. Access to contraceptives is especially at risk as Justice Clarence Thomas named Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that protects contraception for married couples, as one of the precedents the court “should reconsider.” Confusion over the changing landscape of restrictions even led one locality to temporarily pause distribution of the popular contraceptive medication Plan B, also known as the morning-after pill. On top of these attacks, other medications that could induce abortions are being denied to patients despite being prescribed for reasons unrelated to reproductive health.
Citation From the July 10, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Michael Knowles Show
MICHAEL KNOWLES (HOST): The same people who are furious that conservative women are pushing against birth control are also furious that the Supreme Court made it a little bit harder to kill babies through abortion. They're the same people who are pushing euthanasia for the elderly and the poor and the homeless and the mentally ill. They're the same people who are pushing the sterilization of children through all these eunuch-making procedures that they call transgenderism. It's all the same thing. And I can't help but notice the end is always the same, which is fewer people. Because these guys, the leftists, the sexual revolutionaries, who are pushing all of these social pathologies, they just seem to hate people, or at the very least, they're being used by vessels of entities that hate people. It's always the same end.
And it's a reminder for conservatives. You know, there were a lot of conservatives who would argue, and pro-lifers, they would say, look, we just want to end abortion. We're not gonna touch contraception. We're not going to touch -- I don't know, artificial insemination. We're not going to touch IVF. We're not going to touch surrogacy. We're not going to touch this, that, or the other thing. And I understand, tactically, why they say the killing of babies in the womb is -- is much more urgent and dire and dangerous than these other issues. But you can't neatly separate all of these issues. It's all of a piece with the sexual revolution. The culture that treats sex very casually and that suggests that we have a right to sex absent the consequence of pregnancy, is going to be a culture that's more likely to engage in abortion. The culture that embraces radical individualism and selfishness and libertinism in one area of sexual matters is going to embrace it in another, and that's going to result in abortion.
And furthermore, we're all complaining about the Pride movement, and the Pride movement has become much less popular than it used to be. You're seeing this in a drop -- Gallup polling and the values survey that it gives out showed a significant drop in support for the Pride coalition in just one year. So, a lot of people are turning on it. A lot of mothers, a lot of parents in schools -- it's how Glenn Younkin won in Virginia. It's how Ron DeSantis won in Florida. Well, I think people now are beginning to look back. And they're saying, look, it's not just transing the kids, it's transgenderism more broadly. This was the point of my CPAC speech. And it's not just transgenderism, it's the redefinition of marriage. And it's not just the redefinition of marriage, it's the way that we view sex. Why did Gallup show a seven point drop in support for same-sex relations of any kind? Because people are beginning to pull on the thread of transing the kids and realizing that because ideas have consequences, bad consequences come from bad ideas. And so, they're going all the way back -- and forget redefining marriage or whatever. You go all the way back to the beginning of the sexual revolution. And you go all the way back to contraception.
There were two cases, Eisenstadt and Griswold. First was Griswold in 1965. Then Eisenstadt comes around in 1972, the year before Roe v Wade. And Griswold finds a right to condoms within a marriage. Where is that in the Constitution? I have no idea. But some libs on the court discovered that magically in 1965. But they said, but -- there is no right to condoms outside of marriage. Then seven years later, the court discovers, oh, actually, there was more invisible ink in the Constitution. And actually, there is a right to condoms outside of marriage. Okay. Maybe you like condoms. Maybe you don't like condoms. I don't know where you're gonna find that in the Constitution. I think a lot of people are beginning to notice that the contraceptive mentality is the beginning of the Pride mentality. Because the contraceptive mentality divorces sex from the consequences of sex. It introduces a sterile sexual ethic, which is exactly what gave us the Pride movement. There's no distinction here. If you can't read between the lines, the conclusion that one draws is that condoms are kind of gay. To put it as bluntly as possible. Okay?
And it's not a coincidence that female conservative influencers, noticed by NBC News, are beginning to pick up on that. Bad ideas can have a very long run, but eventually -- and this is the conservative consolation, reality reasserts itself in the end. And people are beginning to realize, okay, if I don't like this insane, anarchistic view of sex that is totally self-centered and divorced from any ends whatsoever, well, then maybe I gotta rewind it and ask what is the point of sex? Which is why it's not gonna be the patriarchy that's coming for your consequence free birth control. It's not going to be the men. The men, frankly, are huge supporters of -- of birth control and contraception because it allows them to have consequence-free sex. It's gonna be those conservative women. That's who's coming for it. NBC News is right to be worried.