Emily Albrecht responds to the pro-choice claim that abortion is necessary for women’s equality. The results of sex seem incredibly unfair, so does that justify abortion?
I saw this meme on the internet the other day: “During labor, the pain is so great that a woman…can almost imagine what a man feels when he has a fever.”
Anyone watching who has been through childbirth is both rolling their eyes and is slightly offended right now.
As absurd as the joke is, it alludes to something deeper that many pro-choice advocates point out: THE RESULTS OF SEX ARE INCREDIBLY UNFAIR.
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If a man and a woman engage in sexual intercourse, the woman is the only person capable of caring for the inherently needy child they created for 9 months, AND she is the only person who can go through the incredibly painful process of childbirth. This is simply a biological fact. After the child is born, she can choose to have no further obligation to it, but before that she is stuck—stuck with a serious commitment of time and energy which the man, who engaged in THE EXACT SAME ACTION, doesn’t. Furthermore, her obligation to that child during pregnancy and childbirth may prevent her or make it significantly more difficult for her to do the things that men can do in that same time frame, such as finish school, continue working up the corporate ladder, or even campaign for office. Thus, according to the pro-choice advocate, abortion is necessary for women’s equality because it “gets rid of” the fetus that the woman is naturally burdened with, essentially putting men and women on a level playing field after sex.
Regardless of whether or not it’s “unfair” that women are the only ones who get pregnant, the facts remain: the woman IS the only one who carries the fetus after sex, and she only has two options when she finds herself pregnant: she can allow this human to remain in its natural state in her body for 9 months, or she can have the human killed through an abortion. If there was a way that we could Star-Trek-beam the fetus into an artificial womb so that she wouldn’t have to be pregnant anymore and the fetus wouldn’t be killed, I would at least be willing to entertain that idea! But we simply don’t have that technology, so her only options in pregnancy are to allow the human to exist in her womb or to kill the human, and I believe that killing another innocent human is wrong, the kind of wrong that should be illegal.
There is an old pro-life adage that says “When our liberation costs innocent lives, it is merely oppression redistributed.” Pro-choice advocates have tried for years to disguise abortion access as part of women’s equality, but killing innocent people should never be an acceptable option. We are simply redistributing this so-called oppression elsewhere by allowing other humans to be killed. If you don’t agree that the fetus being killed should be categorized as a human with rights, check out our video on the Equal Rights Argument. Link in the Description.
This doesn’t even touch on the extremely problematic way that equality is being defined by pro-choice advocates in the first place. If you claim that abortion is necessary for women’s equality, then you are necessarily asserting that women’s healthy and natural bodily functions are inferior; that men, their bodies, and how they function are the “correct” and “desirable” way to be. It is incredibly misogynistic to say that women have to become like men in order to be equal; that assumes that men are the perfect standard to which we should all be held. I shouldn’t have to conform to be an equal; the idea is outright offensive.
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Please note: The goal of the comments section on this blog is simply and unambiguously to promote productive dialogue. We reserve the right to delete comments that are snarky, disrespectful, flagrantly uncharitable, offensive, or off-topic. If in doubt, read our Comments Policy.