Hug a Uterus-Haver.
She They Needs Need It.
Abortion supporters love to remind us we all know women people who’ve had abortions. They’re our sisters biologically female siblings. Daughters. Progeny who menstruate. Mothers. Parents with extra estrogen.
Their goal is clear. Reminding us of a woman in our life who has had an abortion, they seek to normalize aborting babies. While a smart strategy, it’s being neutered today by another phenomenon largely from the same sector of society: the obliteration of women.
After all, it’s hard enough to tug on heart strings attached to women when we don’t know what a woman is. But today the situation is even worse than that. Many now seem to have decided there is no such thing as a woman at all. It’s not just that we can’t explain who she is. Worse, she doesn’t exist.
A Spooky Idea (If You’re a Uterus-Haver)
This week, our team returned to Ohio University (Athens, OH), land of such colorful characters as a ninja who decided being beaten once was not enough for an aborted baby, a massive purple “gender-neutral uterus,” and more. While there were fewer costumes this time, there remained plenty of scary ideas just in time for Halloween.
For example, one group of students I spoke with resisted the idea it’s wrong to purposefully kill innocent humans, suggesting only humans with certain functions merit such protection. But they struggled to identify which function that is—initially asserting you need consciousness to be a person, then moving on to feeling pain, and so on.
Finally, I asked them, “What really makes it wrong to kill something?”
While I didn’t get the answer I was looking for, I did get schooled. One of the men in the group declared,
“The difference, though, is that if the woman ... or, the person who has a uterus. I shouldn’t say ‘the woman’ because that is not accurate. Um. The uterus-haver can definitely, indisputably feel pain …”
His point was that preborn people may lack value-giving functions, but surely the women carrying them do not. However, following the woke mainstream dogma as a budding academic must, he found himself simultaneously elevating women above babies while obliterating their existence.
He begins with dehumanizing babies. He ends with neutering women. All in a college day woke.
“That is Not Accurate”
How can a male student, referring to someone who is pregnant, say, “I shouldn’t say ‘the woman’ because that is not accurate,” and receive nods and amens from other students—including women themselves? That question is best answered by the likes of Carl Trueman and Nancy Pearcey, culturally aware professors tracing trends which brought us to the point at which bodies matter far less than what you feel is true in your psyche.
For now, though, it’s worth merely pausing to note that this is the case. This same student, moments earlier, trumpeted the merits of science to me. Then he turned and without a shred of irony deemed it inaccurate to say a woman is a woman.
This is a prime example of linguistic theft—where a word is vacated of its meaning and given a new one in its place, often politically motivated. Think 1984’s “War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.” This project is a favorite of abortion advocates who declare, “Abortion is healthcare,” “Abortion is equality,” and so on.
The latest word to fall prey to the linguistic theft of Progressivism is “accurate.”
Now we seemingly declare, “Deceit is accuracy!”
Girl, Interrupted Erased
After we packed up our signs and returned home, I debriefed with my wife, Aubrie. She noted: “No one ever does this to men. It’s always women being erased.”
She’s right. There are many things to be said about replacing “women” with “uterus-havers.” It’s demeaning. It’s bizarre. It’s genital fixation. But perhaps most shocking is the depth of the irony. For years, we’ve been told how “anti-woman” pro-life people are. But the pro-life movement has built pregnancy resource centers, sidewalk counseling teams, and more to help women. All of this hinges on women being real.
And yet students on campus after campus thrust placards or coat-hangers toward the sky, point at us, and proclaim, “They’re trying to erase our existence!”
But while I understand that they might not like how we try to help women, the fact remains we are not the ones trying to erase them. In fact, the pro-life movement makes no sense if there is no such thing as a woman, a man, and the children they create. Our central philosophy insists that these are real entities with real identities we don’t have the freedom to redefine at will.
Compare that to the pro-abortion movement. See, for example, a recent tweet from Planned Parenthood.
Goodbye, “women.” Hello, “people with breasts.”
Hope for Uterus-Havers Women
The landscape is bleak for the women in our lives. But hope is never lost.
Reality is a stubborn thing. Someone, for example, who believes there is no such thing as doors will be forced to recant once he tries to leave a closed room. Similarly, tossing women into the annals of lore alongside Nessie and Bigfoot is a fool’s errand. It’s an ideology on a collision course with reality. And when you fight reality, you usually end up on the losing side.
Even many of those who play this dangerous game of “let’s pretend” know it.
Consider, again, my conversation at Ohio University. When the man said, “I shouldn’t say ‘the woman’ …” one of the actual women in the group nodded and said, “Yeah.” But then, when he corrects himself with, “Um. The uterus-haver …” something small yet significant happened. It’s blink-and-you-miss it. But when he says, “The uterus-haver,” that same young woman closes her eyes, pulls down the corners of her mouth. She’s starting to laugh. But she quickly stifles it before giving me a side glance, perhaps to see if I’d noticed.
That muffled laugh is telling. Her gut reaction points to what she really knows is true—contrasted with what she says she believes.
She may say the emperor is wearing marvelous robes. But she knows deep down he really is naked.
And since he’s naked, yes, we all know he’s a man. But that doesn’t mean his essence can be reduced to his sexual organs. And the same is true for women. They’re far more than uterus-havers. They’re that complicated, wonderful creation of God’s known as “women.”
That’s a profound, stubborn truth that can’t be swept away. But until sanity returns, women, like their preborn neighbors, need bold advocates unwilling to allow them to be erased from existence.