The Abortion Debate

Procreation is the order of the day. By all appearances, if you listen to the agonized and agonizing public debate about abortion rights, the only sex that counts involves a man and a woman. Not a trans male and a trans woman, but a biological male and a biological female, where procreation is either risked or desired.

It was not too long ago that we had supposedly overcome, not only the gender binary, but the notion that sex and procreation were intimately intertwined. 

You might imagine that all of those young people who were hooking up were engaging in coitus, but, in truth, they had discovered, for having taken sex education in kindergarten, that life offered up a panoply of sexual activities that, we will say, offer foolproof contraception. No one ever got pregnant from having oral sex. The same is incontestably true of gay sex. And dare we mention, no one ever got pregnant or impregnated anyone by watching porn. 

For some reason, as we have reported, people today, for all of their sexual sophistication, are effectively having less sex. So says the science, and we are not going to argue with the science.

Besides, haven’t we all been told that privileging heternormative procreative sex is totally and completely homophobic. It is so obvious that it does not merit mention. Didn’t we all learn in college that the only reason cultures privilege heteronormative coitus is that they are severely bigoted against homosexuality?

And then there is the trans movement. Yes, one understands that a trans male whose female sexual organs have not been neutralized can get pregnant. And that a trans female whose male sexual apparatus still functions can still impregnate a human female. 

But still, if we offer children puberty blocking hormones in elementary school and if we subject them to what is gingerly called gender affirming care, pregnancy will no longer be a major concern. Genital mutilation makes procreation impossible. Moreover, those who have undergone it, and who poison their bodies with opposite sex hormones do not even want to perform any sex act whatever.

Among the more compelling sidelights to this debate is the assumption that men are burning up with desire to commit acts of carnal intercourse with all or most women. The abortion debate is underwritten by the notion that women are irresistible to men. This might not feel like an affirmation, but it certainly counts.

Dare we mention that the debate over abortion mostly, but not always, involves extramarital sexual relations. Of course, it does happen that a married woman will choose to end a pregnancy, but still, her being in a committed and publicly recognized relationship must count for something. 

And yes, rape and incest do matter here, but, the Mississippi law that was just overturned does allow for abortions during the first fifteen weeks of pregnancy.

So, we as a culture have, in the space of a couple of months gone from a condition where a candidate for the Supreme Court could not define the word “woman” to a condition where being a woman seems fundamentally to be based on procreative risk. 

And we have seen the airwaves filled with discussions about the horrors of pregnancy, the horrors of giving birth, the ultimate horrors of having to raise a child. Biology may not be destiny, but it is hardly irrelevant. All of our sanctimonious blather has not repealed reality.

Of course, those who are pro abortion rights seem mostly to be motivated by a sense that a female should be able to walk away from the consequences of an act of coitus just as easily as a man can. To many minds this proves, beyond any doubt, that God is sexist. But still, even if abortion becomes the order of the day, it remains a far more radical solution than what a man can do to avoid responsibility for his actions.

As many women have pointed out, this feels totally and completely and utterly unjust. And yet, it is also built into the biology. And when you fiddle with biology you might find yourself facing some unexpected outcomes.

You might believe that a woman cannot disembarrass herself of the consequences of coitus because of the vagaries of the anatomical difference between the sexes. And yet, didn't they tell us that anatomy merely a social construction, designed by the patriarchy to keep women out of the workplace and off the battlefield?

Anyway, now the states will decide. In my home state, New York, precisely nothing will change. Abortion will still be available, basically on demand. The Mississippi law articulates the standard that is available during the first fifteen weeks of pregnancy. Which happens to be the standard in most civilized countries-- though if you listen to the ravings of the brain dead celebrities who seem always to lead such debates, you would not know it.

Surely, in Mississippi and elsewhere the pro life faction has compromised by allowing abortions in the first fifteen weeks. And yet, the pro choice contingent undermines its case when it insists on abortion up to and including the moment of birth.

In any event, contraception is still available. And those sex acts which count as foolproof contraception will still be on the menu.

At a time when we have supposedly overcome the gender binary and have found a myriad of ways to avoid conception, the sole and defining issue in this intellectual maelstrom involves plain old copulation, the old fashioned kind, with a man and a woman, genitally, without any contraception. Go figure.

The debate over the difference between the sexes, and how much of it can be attributed to biology, will continue to rage.

Heck, some women, short on little gray cells, have suggested that women go on a sex strike, by withholding sex. This means, obviously, withholding a certain kind of sex. Strangely, they are acting as thought one and only sex act that counts and that men are extremely desirous of committing it with them. Is this what the national conversation about sex has become?