A Mississippi state senator calls for criminalizing the “discharge” of “genetic material” for pleasure
A Mississippi Democrat has introduced a bill seeking to fine men up to $10,000 for ejaculating “without the intent to fertilize an embryo.” The bill is a stunt aimed at drawing attention to the state’s tough anti-abortion laws.
Introduced on Monday by State Senator Bradford Blackmon, the ‘Contraception Begins at Erection Act’ would make it illegal for “a person to discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo.” If the bill were to become law, men masturbating or engaging in non-procreative sex would be fined $1,000 for a first offense, $5,000 for a second offense and $10,000 for any subsequent offenses.
“All across the country, especially here in Mississippi, the vast majority of bills relating to contraception and/or abortion focus on the woman’s role when men are 50 percent of the equation,” Blackmon said in a statement to WLBT News. “This bill highlights that fact and brings the man’s role into the conversation,” he added.
The US Supreme Court’s judgement in Roe v. Wade guaranteed the right to abortion from 1973 until it was overturned in a 2022 ruling. With federally protected abortion rights gone, individual states have set their own laws on the matter, with liberal strongholds such as California and Vermont writing abortion rights into their constitutions, and a dozen conservative bastions – including Mississippi – enacting near-total bans.
The bill is unlikely to pass Mississippi’s Republican-dominated legislature, but has drawn significant media attention across the US. This, Blackmon said, was his aim.
“When a bill has been filed that would regulate what a man is able to do with his own body in his own home, it suddenly has people in an uproar,” he told Newsweek. “I am trying to figure out when it is okay for the government to dictate what you do in the privacy of your own home. Apparently, it is when the laws regulate men.”
Blackmon’s bill is not the first of its kind. Back in 2017, Texas State Representative Jessica Farrar – a Democrat – introduced the ‘A Man’s Right to Know Act’, which included fines for masturbation and a 24-hour waiting period for men requesting a colonoscopy, vasectomy, or Viagra prescription.
The bill’s name was a play on ‘A Woman’s Right to Know,’ an anti-abortion pamphlet circulated by pro-life and religious organizations. “Let’s look at what Texas has done to women,” Farrar told CNN at the time. “What if men had to undergo the same intrusive procedures?”
