When Rights Shift Quietly
When I started writing The Fatherhood Mandate, my focus was on bodily autonomy and what its loss would mean for families and for society. I did not look closely at other outcomes.
One of those outcomes caught my attention while I was outlining A Ward of the State in 2024: the push from the far right to remove the right of women to vote.
It was never framed as a repeal of the 19th Amendment that guaranteed women the right to vote. It was wrapped in softer language. Nostalgia. We need to go back to a time when men voted for the entire household. We need to make sure wives do not cancel out their husbands’ votes. Some even claimed women did not want the vote at all, that traditional values meant they would gladly hand that power back.
I folded that idea into A Ward of the State. Just a background detail Allison would know as history. Not the focus of her story, but a reminder of how fast a right can slip away.
Now the headlines are not just whispering about it.
In April, the U.S. House passed the SAVE Act, a bill that would require documentary proof of citizenship—such as a birth certificate or passport—before registering to vote in federal elections. It has not cleared the Senate. It is not law. Not yet. But the fact that it moved through one chamber of Congress at all should make us pause.
On paper, it sounds like security. In reality, millions of married women could be cut out simply because their names no longer match their documents.
Wisconsin went further. In April, voters approved a constitutional amendment that locked the state’s photo ID requirement into the Constitution. That rule was already law. Now it is harder to change, harder to soften, harder to carve out exceptions for people who fall between the cracks.
Texas debated similar bills this year. Even some Republicans admitted they worried the laws might block their own supporters. Older women. Married women. People who never thought they would need their birth certificate to cast a ballot. The bill did not pass. Not yet. But the attempt matters.
And Pete Hegseth went further still. In August he reposted a video from pastors who argued that women should no longer be allowed to vote and that ballots should be cast by households instead of individuals. He captioned it, “All of Christ for All of Life.” The Pentagon later clarified his position, but the repost said enough.
This is how it happens. Not with sirens. Not with a headline that says repeal. With softer words. With nostalgia. With a new condition here and an extra requirement there.
In The Unborn Child Protection Act series, rights disappear slowly until one day they are simply gone. Allison cannot remember a time when women had the right to vote. By 2042, that right was history.
This is what I see happening around us now.
There is no countdown. No schedule of states voting to repeal the 19th Amendment or an executive order reducing ballots to properly registered heads of household. The next story begins as the calm disintegrates into the next storm.
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