The Casual, “Acceptable” Misandry Of Pro-Choice Activism

When I wrote “The Democrats Who Cried Wolf,” mentally, this was the next column. Alas, life. You have been in good hands, I know.

Let me drop a bomb: half of all pro-lifers are female. It’s probably growing. I don’t mind; even if it’s sophistry to somehow suggest that men can’t make a judgment on this vital human rights issue, I am happy to let my “sisters” handle it. The truth always wins out.

Though some aberrant religious sects may indeed have control of women and their bodies on an agenda, I do not. Nor do I think religion is necessary to make the pro-life argument, or to sustain it. Reason is so sufficient here that it needs no extra aid. Reason and conscience tell us intentional termination of pregnancy is wrong.

Christ tells us punishment in hell awaits evildoers who don’t repent. But, the ethics of the situation are unaltered by religion, whether present, or not.

We do know that no coherent system of human rights can be sustained if a human being is one in act, as Aquinas would have it, rather than also one in potency. In plain English, you don’t have bodily autonomy and dignity, if you have to use force to keep it. Your dignity is not inherent because you are human, in this view; you’re only a person as long as someone else decides not to kill you.

Spare me the prattle about the evils of “late-stage capitalism,” if personal liberty hangs on the merest whim. People are already being euthanized in Canada so their organs can be used by others. If the wrongness of aggression is that it violates bodily autonomy, why do we permit things like this? Non-aggression is not sufficient for a workable ethics, but it’s a good start.

And what’s really galling about this casual misandry is that it’s highly selective. Not too many people are embracing celibacy and sexual abstinence on account of men. This “reproductive right” is apparently only the right to kill the products of their conception.

Do you still pretend not to know that is a person?

Perhaps the hypocrisy and immorality of certain political figures and parties clouds your vision. Fine; notice all the people on the Left who used to agree with me.

I’m not here for a political agenda; various fools have made partisanship a luxury of chosen ignorance. I’m just asking: has something changed fundamentally in the last 40 years? Or has the love of money infected those who fancy themselves defenders of the weak?

White supremacy is a great evil; wouldn’t the worst tragedy be if bigotry and racism won by default? I leave you to your thoughts.