Mary

Church Fathers: Women are actually just defective men because God has a penis, therefore men are more made in the image of God and are better in every way and should have all the power and rule over women, barely-human hysterical birthing pods that they are.

"Good" Christians: Uh... I think you maybe took that out of context?

L communities have been very clear.

I hate so bad when men of color act like they’re more oppressed than women as a class, or like white women created patriarchy. You are the patriarchy.

Like you, you set that system up. African men in their own countries practiced child marriage and polygamy long before Europeans darkened that doorstep. Cases of multiple child brides cooking and cleaning for one man, doing all the domestic and reproductive labor were common in many African tribes pre colonialism.

As a black woman whose experienced firsthand the misogyny black men wield over their communities I hate the noble savage trope men of color are painted with.

No one is convincing women to have abortions. A woman who becomes pregnant while living in poverty, abandoned by the man who got her pregnant, and/or living in a home with an abusive, absent, or neglectful family, will naturally consider terminating the pregnancy. And that woman should have the right to have that abortion.

And a woman doesn’t even have to be in that situation to want an abortion, actually? Giving birth to a child is actually a traumatic and shocking experience for all women—it’s something irreversible that they’ll have to deal with for the rest of her life, and people will expect them to raise their child on her own, because all the “oh, we just need to help women more” talk disappears when people see a woman with a baby in her arms, unable even to take a shower because she’s the only person available to care for that child, when her baby is a child with severe autism, when her baby needs expensive formulas and imported drugs to be alive.

There is no point in convincing this woman that by having an abortion she is committing murder; that is actually extremely cruel. Especially since, throughout the entire first trimester of pregnancy, the fetus is nothing more than a cluster of organs without a brain or spinal cord.

All right, let’s go along with this logic that aborting a fetus is murder. Let’s imagine that abortion really is the same as taking a living child and killing them. Suppose an unknown child in front of you is about to die, and the only way to save them is for you to give them a piece of each of your organs, with the risk that you might die or suffer lasting consequences from doing so—would you do it? I imagine you’d only do it if you were an extreme Good Samaritan, something no one is obligated to be. This is called bodily autonomy, a right every woman is entitled to.

Let’s also address the topic that “abortion is traumatic and hurtful.” I’ve already mentioned that pregnancy, childbirth, and raising a child are naturally traumatic experiences that bring about shocking and permanent changes for a woman. Abortion is a surgical procedure, which can be low-risk if performed legally by a trained doctor in a licensed clinic. The most commonly used method for legal abortion is vacuum aspiration; it is a procedure lasting no more than ten minutes that causes pain similar to menstrual cramps at most. And obviously this woman should also have access to professional psychological support, should she feel it is necessary. In fact, any psychological trauma that an abortion may cause a woman certainly stems from the social shame and religious manipulation she has endured throughout her life and may continue to endure if it is discovered that she had an abortion.

Of course, in a society where there is no poverty, women are treated well, and everyone has access to education, healthcare, employment, and decent housing, this issue wouldn’t even be up for discussion. Studies have already shown that the more academically and financially developed a woman is, the less likely she is to want to get pregnant, and she likely has free access to contraceptive methods more effective than condoms and will likely use them, and she will likely have the means to care for a child if she decides to get pregnant. Well, the OMS has already demonstrated through its studies that developed countries where abortion is legal actually have lower abortion rates and fewer cases of infant and maternal mortality.