Should women have to rely on abortion to succeed?

On December 1, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health regarding Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban.  One argument put forth by the pro-abortion side was reliance.   In other words, the so-called right to abortion must be preserved because women have come to rely on it.

In her opening statement, Department of Justice Solicitor General Elizabeth Prologar said, “The Court has never revoked a right that is so fundamental to so many Americans and so central to their ability to participate fully and equally in society.”

Can Prologar hear herself? Can she hear how profoundly anti-woman this argument is? She, and by extension our government, claims that abortion, the deliberate killing of one’s own child, is necessary for women to participate “fully and equally in society.”

Women can’t succeed without abortion. Is there a more misogynistic statement?

It is this line of thinking that allows Hollywood producers, Wall Street executives, and corporate management to tell women facing an untimely pregnancy to “get rid of it.”

It is this warped mentality that encourages men to wash their hands of their responsibility as fathers, protectors, and providers.

It is this pathetic worldview that says a woman’s fertility is a barrier to success. In order to compete with men, she must “apologize” for her own completely natural life-giving super power by killing her own child.

Furthermore, this reliance mindset damages efforts to offer true support to women and families. Why offer paid maternity and paternity leave, remote work options, affordable child care, academic alternatives, or material and emotional support to women and families, when motherhood could have been “avoided” via abortion?

What kind of society have we created that some women feel they cannot acquire an education, advance their career, or find fulfillment unless they sacrifice their unborn child’s life?  This is pitiful progress in terms of the women’s movement.

Rather than removing the child from the sanctuary of the womb, we should be removing educational, vocational, and economic barriers for the women nurturing the next generation.

Shattering glass ceilings should not require shattering human lives.

While Prologar says the Court has never before revoked a right so fundamental to Americans as abortion, she is wrong. What could be more fundamental than the right to life itself?  In Roe the Court revoked that right, tragically denying “full and equal participation in society” to 62 million preborn Americans.

During arguments, Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that the South once relied on segregation in creating a society based on white supremacy.  It was an improper reliance, he acknowledged, based on an egregiously wrong understanding of what equal protection means.

The same can be said for abortion.  It is an improper reliance based on an egregiously wrong understanding of the law.  No one should have to rely on sacrificing a precious human life in order to participate fully and equally in society.