Josh and Amanda Zurawski thought they had achieved the American dream; they had been married a year earlier and bought a beautiful house in Austin, Texas, overlooking a lake and a golf course. And Amanda was pregnant; they were excited about their first child.

And then they ran afoul of the tradwife obsession that motivates the Texas Republican Party.

Amanda’s zygote had not attached to the uterine wall, but was growing in, on or near her fallopian tube. This is called an ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancies lead to the death of the woman in almost 100% of cases if they are not terminated early.

But when Amanda went to the hospital, she was turned away because a bundle of cells in the microscopic zygote was twitching in what the anti-abortion movement calls a “fetal heartbeat” for traditional women (but in reality, the heart wasn’t there yet). And a doctor in Texas who performed an abortion when a “heartbeat” was present faces 91 years in prison.

Three days later, she was literally dying, having developed sepsis and was only hours away from death when the hospital finally relented and removed the “baby,” to use Sam Alito’s words from the Dobbs Decision. Her fallopian tube was destroyed and if she now wants to have children she will have to resort to an expensive, invasive and extremely painful IVF procedure.

While many in the anti-abortion movement claim that they are simply trying to “save (unborn) lives,” their behavior reveals a much darker side of their motivation. Their true goal is to disempower women and increase the role and power of men in the home, workplace, and politics.

The argument of these Republicans is that American women should become traditional wives, devoted entirely to the needs of their husbands, setting aside their life goals in favor of running the household and raising children, and living a life of economic and political impotence.

Let’s establish right from the start that there is nothing wrong with a woman wanting to become a traditional wife. It is a lifestyle with a long history that goes back to the roles of women laid out in the Bible.

In the conservative social media world, there is a whole tradwife movement that is strongly represented on Reddit and Facebook, among other places.

My mother was a traditional wife – she stayed at home most of her life and raised four boys (and then two grandchildren) – and seemed to love the life she and my father had. It was her choice, not something my father forced on her.

And that is the key: choice.

It is one thing to argue that American society accepts and should accept a wide range of lifestyles for men and women, from academic careers to professional life to life as a traditional wife. But it is quite another to reorganize society in such a way that one of these lifestyles is imposed on people by law.

And that is exactly what the Republican Party is trying to do.

From Trump’s statement: “If Hillary Clinton can’t please her husband, why does she think she can please America?” toesquire From telling the magazine that a good appearance is essential for a successful businessman (“You know, it doesn’t really matter what (the media) says as long as you have a young and nice butt”) to sarcastically calling Kamala Harris a “beautiful woman,” the billionaire has long made his thoughts on the role of women clear.

JD Vance has similarly pushed the Tradwife meme, arguing:

“I think we should fight for the right of every American to live a good life in the country they call their own, to raise a family and have dignity with a single middle-class job.”

This “single job” is the key; he is not talking about the economic advancement of the middle class, but rather propagating the idea that the father should work and the mother should stay at home and cook, clean and take care of the children.

Some Republicans openly say they just want America to return to Leave it to the beaver world of June Cleaver, the happy housewife of 1960s television. What they don’t like to emphasize, however, is that most women in the 1960s didn’t have much choice.

When Republicans say your grandmother stayed with your grandfather and should serve as your role model, they ignore the fact that three generations ago, women actually had little choice unless they had wealthy independence.

As of 1964, employers were not allowed to hire women because of their gender; house sellers and real estate agents were allowed to refuse to sell a house to women until 1974; it was not until 1988 that a law was passed that landlords could no longer refuse to rent to women. Marital rape was not made a criminal offense until 1993.

When Louise and I married in 1972, she couldn’t get a credit card or sign a mortgage without me, her brother, or her father cosigning. She couldn’t serve on a jury, get a no-fault divorce, or enroll in an Ivy League college. And if she had an unwanted pregnancy, she would have been out of luck until 1973. Roe v. Wade Decision.

In 20 states, Republicans have succeeded in stripping women of one of the most important options that allows them to stay in the workforce: abortion of an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. Now they are attacking birth control. And their war on DEI is just another aspect of their war on women, because white women are the primary beneficiaries of the DEI programs they are demanding that corporations end.

Republicans are even working hard to abolish no-fault divorce: As JD Vance said, women should stay at home and serve their husbands, even if their husbands abuse them physically or emotionally.

They ignore the fact that female suicide rates have dropped by 8 to 16 percent since states adopted no-fault divorce laws, that intimate partner violence has dropped by about 30 percent, and that the number of women murdered by their partners has dropped by 10 percent. Or maybe they just don’t care.

Republican lawmakers are also vigorously opposing laws that would ensure equal pay for equal work, arguing again that women should not be in this profession in the first place.

The motives for pushing women into the role of traditional wife vary within the Republican Party:
– Some men want submissive wives.
– Others are white supremacists who believe that traditional marriage produces more white babies (the movement is largely limited to white conservatives).
– Many, like Vance, argue or suggest that women in the workplace drive down wages by competing with men for jobs.

The bottom line is that the traditional female role should be an option for women (and for men too, for that matter: I was a stay-at-home dad for almost two years while Louise ran one of our businesses), but it shouldn’t be the only option.