The Hobby Lobby decision appears to be seen as a major victory in the culture wars. The faithful have turned back Leviathan government — but it’s also seen as a triumph over abortion. There’s a reason, after all, that the woman with the sign in our photo was standing in front of Planned Parenthood in Lancaster, which has nothing to do with the Hobby Lobby case. Indeed, the Planned Parenthood here doesn’t even perform abortions. That doesn’t stop pro-life types from picketing it regularly, and it isn’t surprising that those folks should be ecstatic about the Hobby Lobby ruling. Because for them, the case was about religious freedom and also about abortion; and while their opposition to abortion is surely based on the belief that “it’s a child, not a choice,” as the bumper sticker proclaims, there’s always been another aspect to the opposition — social control.

That is, the desire to control women’s sexual choices, their sexual license. Conservatives frequently seem to date the beginning of our national decline to the advent of greater sexual liberty. First the pill, then abortion made it possible to have “consequence free sex,” and as a result of this we — the nation, as a whole — has become unmoored from a traditional morality that preached discretion and modesty.

You’ll notice, in this narrative, that the entire burden for this “immorality” falls on the shoulders of women. Women who use contraceptives; women who might want to end a pregnancy. It’s always women who must have their choices constrained, for the sake of social order.

The five justices who voted in favor of Hobby Lobby/Conestoga Wood’s “religious freedom” were — astonishingly, right? — all male.

And there really does seem to be this belief on the right that we can put the genie back in the bottle. That the Supreme Court, and state legislatures that pass measures designed to restrict access to abortion, can reverse moral decline by ensuring that those who choose to have sex suffer the “consequences” of it.

And this, the thinking goes, will lead to a more virtuous society, because people — women — will re-embrace chastity in an attempt to avoid the consequences.

And then all will be well. At least in this handmaid’s tale.