SAVE THE FAMILY; KILL THE WOMEN, SAYS HERITAGE FOUNDATION
A D.C. think tank says its new report will help the United States secure another 250 years of “greatness.” The Heritage Foundation report, titled Saving America by Saving the Family, claims that the purpose of its report is “to lay out a vision for the government’s limited role in promoting a culture of marriage and intact families, not to create a complex maze of federal marriage programs.” It’s simple, they say:
Women need to have more babies “naturally”
Women need to get married and stay married to their child’s father
The biological mother and father need to raise those babies
Many times, these government reports need to be parsed for their true brutality, but in this case most of it sits on the surface. These goals mean that divorce, IVF, abortion and surrogacy should be outlawed, or at least so discouraged that they are impossible in practice.
The Heritage Foundation authors claim that the report aims to make marriage and family life easier, and I think we can all agree that would be great. The typical distribution of labor in a family is far from equal, with women carrying much of the burden without pay, even when they also work outside the home. The plan proposes to compensate families through tax incentives. However, it also calls for eliminating the “marriage penalty.” Because welfare programs pay more to single-family households, the Heritage Foundation thinks it would be prudent to take that benefit away since it believes it disincentivizes marriage. This way, mothers would be more inclined to get married and stay married.
To further encourage marriage, the report calls “no-fault” divorce into question, arguing that the typical distribution of assets and alimony “act as perverse incentives for ending marriages that could otherwise have been saved.” Hilariously, the report uses the blockbuster book and film Eat, Pray, Love as an example of the pitfalls of no-fault divorce: “the main character walks away from her marriage—not because of any infidelity or hardship, but because married life no longer satisfies her sense of adventure and self-fulfillment.” I mean, why should any person be entitled to a sense of self-fulfillment? Let it be known that this couple did not even have children.
In fairness, the report does note that alimony reform should apply when there is not infidelity, abuse, or abandonment – breaches of [some] marriage vows. But if we were to get on board with this idea – that marriage can’t be ended only to seek self-fulfillment elsewhere – it would need to actually work in practice. And it would not.
In a case where a woman is being abused by her spouse and performed all the domestic labor while he earned money, under this plan the woman would not be entitled to financial compensation if she ends the marriage unless she could prove the abuse.
According to a 2023 NIH report, “domestic and family violence is difficult to identify, and many cases go unreported to health professionals or legal authorities,” but it is estimated “to affect 10 million people in the United States every year.” This includes psychological aggression and coercive control, which I expect are even more difficult to prove, particularly to an audience that believes a marriage must be saved at all costs. According to the United Nations, 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members in 2024.
The result of domestic abuse is clear. But proving abuse is much more complicated. Many women are too afraid or ashamed to report sexual abuse even though it is not their fault, often because our culture looks for ways to blame the victim. In the Dominique Pelicot trial, some defendants argued that Gisele Pelicot was participating in a sex game, or that she was only pretending to be asleep.
As we have seen from new abortion restrictions across the country since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, forcing women to prove abuse in order to permit abortion has not worked out well -- for women. For the people who want to force women to continue a pregnancy and give birth to their rapist’s child, sure. It’s been grand.
Speaking of abortion, the Heritage Foundation plan also calls for protecting life “from fertilization,” meaning abolishing abortion and IVF, since the practice includes discarding some embryos. It also would mean no access to the morning-after pill and some kinds of birth control.
Many women have already died as a direct result of abortion restrictions, either because abortion was denied during life-threatening pregnancy complications, or because other care was denied due to a pregnancy, like in the case of Ciji Graham. Other women have lost the chance to have a future pregnancy due to delays and bans on abortion care.
The Heritage Foundation thinks we need more babies to raise the birth rate and save the family. But it doesn’t want that family to be created with surrogates or same-sex partners. In fact, it flatly insists that children are best served by a mother and father, i.e., a cis man and a cis woman. It also doesn’t want more babies to be created using artificial wombs or other technology. But don’t take any of these proposed policies as proof that it cares about women or the children of women who do not adhere to their ideas about family.
These policies mean women will die due to medical complications. They will die at the hands of abusive husbands. They will die without the freedom to access emergency medical care or divorce or even adequate welfare if they are not married. And these women often have children that will be left motherless. None of this is about protecting the family.