Friday, January 8, 2021

Sexism And Abortion

Abortion and sexism are issues that do not overlap whatsoever on their own, but certain people make it necessary to specifically clarify the exact relationship between the two.  It is indeed possible for sexism against women or men to constitute part of the framework in which some people assess abortion, but this is not due to a genuine conceptual link between the two, as it is individual stupidity and cultural pressures that have led to this perceived, non-existent connection dawning in the minds of random people.  Perhaps one of the most fallacious defenses of abortion related to this is the assertion that no one would condemn abortion unless they were at least partially motivated by misogyny.

If both men and women could give birth and yet people encouraged or discouraged abortion strictly for one gender or the other, sexism would obviously lurk behind their selective condemnation.  However, this is not the case.  It follows that it is not sexist to contemplate the morality of abortion despite the fact that men cannot bear children.  When it comes to this particular issue on its own, one of the only ways someone could be sexist towards women would be to literally denounce abortion solely because it is a woman who carries a baby--not because of the nature of abortion itself.

The far more outwardly common kind of sexism displayed in discussions about abortion is the claim that only women should be allowed to talk openly about or hold moral positions on abortion.  This is such a blatantly sexist idea that the tendency for Western culture to ignore sexism against men is the reason it is not refuted more frequently.  That is not to say that there are not misogynistic pro-life advocates whose pro-life positions and sexist attitudes against women are not mistakenly regarded as things that belong together.  Of course this could be the case!

Sexism might be directed at either gender within the stances certain people have on abortion.  Perhaps some who oppose abortion truly do despise women and see pro-life philosophy as a way to express their own personal misogyny.  Pro-life ideas are still about the rights of unborn humans, not about oppressing either men or women.  Perhaps some who support abortion truly do despise men and see pro-choice philosophy as a way to express their own personal misandry.  The validity of a concept or belief still does not have anything to do with the identity of the person who proclaims or believes it.

In either case--and nothing about being sincerely pro-life has to do with the gender of the adherents--the sexist attitudes are the product of stupidity and are irrelevant to the philosophical issues related to abortion.  To say that abortion is immoral with the goal of restricting women just because they are women is to take advantage of a consistent philosophical idea for the sake of a philosophically invalid one, and to say that men should not discuss or condemn abortion because they are not women is to take a philosophically invalid idea and use it to protect another fallacious idea.

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