“I suggest that all women refuse to have sex with men until they are guaranteed the right to choose by Congress.”
That’s the advice of Hollywood heavyweight Bette Midler, who tweeted the rallying call as a way of protesting Texas’ controversial decision to ban early abortions– once embryonic cardiac activity is detected– last week.
Midler’s tweet triggered an outpouring of support from women across the world including, Nancy Sinatra who suggested her “dad actually suggested that decades ago.”
Community organiser Cherie Boeneman, said she’d been saying the same thing for days.
“If I lived in Texas I would refuse to have sex while there is a ban on abortions and a bounty on the women who have them. We control our own bodies. #TexasSexStrike,” she tweeted last week.
Midler, a four-time Golden Globe winner, has become well known for sharing her political and policy opinions publicly on Twitter, and in the last few days, amplified her voice regarding Senate Bill 8.
“Why do #antivaxxers and #antimaskers get to live the ‘my body, my choice’ life, but pregnant women are not allowed to?” she wrote. “How is this fair? Some say it’s Texas’ way of keeping black and brown women poor. I say it’s also because they want WHITE women to keep replenishing the stock.”
“The cruelty of the #GOP is endless. We are suffering COVID-19, hurricanes, apocalyptic flooding, wildfires from hell, joblessness, homelessness, evictions, racial strife, and they pick this hideous time to pile on yet another shock to women, by taking away their right to choose.”
“This isn’t about guns, speech, money or war. It’s about women, their lives, their bodies and their autonomy,” she tweeted a few days later.
“That’s what allowed the court to do shoddy work, with careless disregard, because who’s going to stop it? They only did the thing in the dead of night, without care or effort, because they believe women are so used to being gaslit that of course, they’ll just tolerate it.”
“They did the thing in the dead of night without care or effort because they genuinely believe that they’re only women, and they deserve what they get,” she added.
The new Texas law will also give citizens the choice to sue an abortion provider who breaches the law and allows any citizen to bring a civil suit against an abortion provider or anyone who “aids or abets” the procedure.
In her latest Tweet, Midler posted a picture of an image created by Twitter user Paul Leigh, that shows the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders in blue “Handmaid’s Tale” uniforms. Leigh, who created the image in response to the enactment of Senate Bill 8, saw his image begin world-wide circulation the day after the Bill was passed in the Texas legislature.