Much like a snake that begins to eat its own tail and doesn’t stop there, wokeness has begun to eat itself.
That’s not surprising, considering that the woke — whose mindset is to complain about almost everything — inevitably will complain about themselves, too.
Consider the case of gender-neutral pronouns. For a few years now, the rest of us have been instructed that our instincts to identify the human beings we see around us as men or women is bad behavior, as is requiring gender identification on college applications or even birth certificates.
But in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson, a case in which the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the word “women” is front and center once again.
Contrary to a histrionic reaction, the Dobbs court did not “ban abortion.” Rather, the majority concluded that abortion never should have been deemed a constitutional right (in the Roe ruling) in the first place. The court held that the individual states may create abortion laws as they see fit, and did not exclude the possibility of Congress passing a federal law making abortion legal (or illegal) throughout the entire country.
The 213-page case is a worthwhile read that contains multiple opinions. Perhaps folks ought to invest the time to read it before they condemn it.
Moreover, the focus of Dobbs — Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks — is more liberal than the abortion laws in 75 percent of the countries throughout the world, which ban it after 12.
But a main argument of those outraged by the ruling is that, apparently, men have once again dictated what women can do with their own bodies.
I, in turn, am outraged by their argument — not about the merits of their pro-abortion stance, but about their claim that the pro-life movement is predicated on toxic masculinity.
Is leftist ideology self-contradictory?
First, by an overwhelming majority, the staunchest pro-life advocates I’ve ever encountered have been women. The same goes for a lot of people I know, and probably for a lot of folks reading this column.
Oh, it’s not that men don’t care about the unborn, but it’s women by leaps and bounds who cringe at the thought of a fetus being killed; I really believe their maternal instincts cause them to have deep concern about the unborn babies of total strangers to an even greater extent than their male counterparts.
Second, what about the men in blue states who continue to promulgate laws protecting abortion; aren’t they “controlling women’s bodies,” too? Such as the bodies of the unborn female babies whose termination they legalize?
And what about Justice Amy Coney Barrett and other pro-lifers with power and clout? Would it be better if an abortion ban were imposed by women?
It is worth noting that the perennial feminist argument that “if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament” is not without merit. Sure, it’s reasonable to imagine that if men could find themselves having to carry a baby they didn’t want to term, they might push a little harder to ensure that they’d have the right to abort it. But that has everything to do with self-prioritization, not oppressing women.
By analogy, in 1962, hours before imposing an embargo on Cuban products, President John F. Kennedy purchased 1200 Cuban cigars for himself through an aide. Kennedy did so because he was looking out for his own personal druthers, not to oppress the Dominican, Honduran or Nicaraguan cigar industries.
Besides, there are plenty of men in power who, like pro-life women, would never have an abortion themselves (if they could get pregnant) and don’t think anyone else has the right to one, either.
As for the woke crowd, they can’t have it both ways; they cannot on the one hand expunge gender classification from conversation and on the other make gender inequality the centerpiece of their abortion argument. Lest, like the snake, they continue to eat themselves.
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