Sometimes I just can’t.
I’m the Outreach and Events Director for the National Right to Life Committee, and I also participate in our international affairs, as well as work with our state affiliates. A lot is going on now, which means I receive a lot of emails. Lots and lots of emails, and every day, as soon as I have had my first daily dose of Cuban Coffee, emails are the first thing I tackle each morning.
Today I opened one that trotted out the dusty old tired line: “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be legal everywhere.” OK. Once my eyes rolled back to the front of my face, I thought, “Fifty years later, and this is still the best they can do?” Please. It is lazy, it is sexist, and it is embarrassing for anyone still pretending it is clever.
Seriously, it’s not clever and it assumes that men hold all the power. It erases the fact that women (if pro-abortion groups and their sympathizers could ever bring themselves to define what one is) lead the pro-life movement at every level. State directors. Lobbyists. Attorneys. Organizers. Governors. Real leaders with absolute authority. I mean, tell Kay Ivey in Alabama or Kim Reynolds in Iowa that women have no voice in shaping abortion law. They signed laws protecting the unborn with more conviction than most male politicians can muster.
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The origin story makes it even worse. In the early seventies, pro-abortion zealot Florynce Kennedy repeated what she claims was a Boston cab driver’s alleged quip about abortion being a “sacrament” if men could get pregnant. Then Gloria Steinem parroted it soon after her abortion, and it has been bouncing around ever since.
In 2022, Julia Louis-Dreyfus dragged it out again on a protest sign quoting Veep: “If men got pregnant, you could get an abortion at an ATM.” That kind of line is sluggish for a “cutting-edge” sitcom script, but it’s not a serious debate.
They don’t come out from behind their keyboards and their handmade protest signs because they’d lose the debate, as the data do not support their all-too-ridiculous claim. Polling from Pew and Gallup shows both men and women are divided on this issue. The gaps are small, and they change depending on party affiliation or question wording. So no, even in their dystopian world, where men got pregnant, abortion would not magically become untouchable.
The fight would look the same, because the issue has never been about who carries a pregnancy. It has always been about the humanity of the child, something those who shill for abortion profiteers have never understood.
The pro-abortion side also loves this line because it shifts the conversation from ethics to power. It lets them rant about patriarchy instead of facing the simple fact that abortion ends a human life. They want slogans because they cannot stand on substance.
That fixation on “the power of gender” and “taking down the patriarchy” is precisely what opened the door for corporations to join the chorus. If the narrative being promulgated says women need abortion to get ahead, then big business can slap on the slogan and call it support while dodging any real commitment to mothers. It is empty rhetoric recycled as workplace policy.
Because now we have corporations tripping over themselves to prove their loyalty to the cause. After Dobbs, they lined up to announce abortion travel perks. Buy the ticket, take the trip, end the pregnancy. This option is cheaper than offering paid leave or daycare. If this is what they call empowerment, then women deserve better than a plane ticket, a dead baby, and a pat on the head.
So yes, I roll my eyes every time this slogan crawls back into the conversation. It is sexist to the core. It is insulting to women who actually lead in this movement. And it is a cheap dodge from the real question: who is the unborn, and do they deserve protection? The answer is obvious.
The unborn child is human, and abortion kills that child. No slogan can erase that.
I will now enlighten the person who emailed me that old trope this morning by forwarding them this post. Bless their heart.
LifeNews.com Note: Raimundo Rojas is the Outreach Director for the National Right to Life Committee. He is a former president of Florida Right to Life and has presented the pro-life message to millions in Spanish-language media outlets. He represents NRLC at the United Nations as an NGO. Rojas was born in Santiago de las Vegas, Havana, Cuba and he and his family escaped to the United States in 1968.
