Day 9

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Abortion Arguments Series: Day 9 of 10

"You don’t have a uterus, so you don’t get an opinion."

Almost every argument we’ve examined so far has been about the child or the mother: biology, rights, personhood, and the law.

Then comes today’s category. It drops all pretense of discussing the child or the science. It is entirely about disqualifying the speaker.

“No uterus, no opinion.” “Mind your own business. How does her pregnancy affect you?” “This is really about controlling women.”

Different phrases, same move: don’t engage the argument, disqualify the person making it.

Let’s take them apart.

Start with the obvious history: Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 by a Supreme Court of nine men. Seven of them were in the majority. I have never once heard “no uterus, no opinion” applied to the men who legalized abortion nationwide.

Notice that pro-choice men are never told to sit down. Nobody tells a male senator sponsoring an abortion-rights bill to stay in his lane. Nobody tells a male celebrity tweeting his support that his body isn’t involved. The rule only appears when a man disagrees, which means it was always about silencing opinions you don’t like.

Second, millions of pro-life women exist. Go to any pro-life march or pregnancy center and you’ll find women leading, organizing, and speaking. Polling has never split cleanly by sex; the gender gap on abortion is tiny compared to gaps across religion or party. Are those women disqualified too? Are they “misogynists”?

Third, we reject this standard everywhere else in human rights. If you must personally experience an injustice to oppose it, then men can’t oppose female genital mutilation. Women couldn’t have views on the military draft. And white abolitionists should have stayed silent about chattel slavery.

Furthermore, "How does it affect you?" isn't a principle anyone actually holds.

Nobody tells a straight person advocating for marriage equality that it doesn’t affect them. Nobody tells a man at a domestic violence rally to go home. These same people shouting “no uterus, no opinion” turn around and praise people who speak up for others; they have an entire vocabulary of “allyship” around the duty to care about harms that don’t touch you.

The question only works if you assume there is no one else affected. If an unborn child is an innocent human being, asking "how does it affect you?" makes as much sense as asking why a neighbor cares about child abuse across town. It doesn’t touch you directly. That’s why we have laws.

The accusation underneath all of this is that pro-lifers just want to "control women."

But if that were true, the movement wouldn't be led overwhelmingly by women. It wouldn't spend its resources on diapers, formula, and housing assistance.

Furthermore, the law already reaches men when the child's life is at stake.

Federal regulations for teratogenic medications like thalidomide legally mandate barrier contraception for male patients (even those with vasectomies) and ban sperm donation to protect the unborn.

When a Texas man secretly poisoned his pregnant wife's drinks with abortion pills, the state charged him with injury to a child.

The law knows there is a second party affected. It isn't trying to police a woman's body; it intervenes because an innocent human life is on the line.

Notice what none of these slogans say. None of them prove the unborn child isn't a human being. They just attack who is asking.

The question was never who has permission to speak. It’s whether that child is one of us."