What will happen when Woke Ideology meets abortion restrictions?

I don’t normally write something in reaction to a just-happened current event, as I prefer to let all the furor settle down enough that I can see the issue clearer. And I’m not going to weigh in on the issue itself—which is a leaked court opinion which will likely overturn Roe vs. Wade—but rather pose a discussion question for you all.

Because it’s hard not to notice the strange moment we’re in. The ‘right to an abortion’ enshrined in Roe vs. Wade (which is technically not the enshrinement of a right at all, only a federal ban on state laws regulating “pre-viable” terminations of pregnancy) has existed for several decades. If it’s overturned, then individual states can make their own laws according to the “will of the people” of the state. That means they can either ban abortion, make it fully legal up to the last day of pregnancy, or anything in-between without the federal government interfering.

What’s most interesting to me is that this is happening at a moment when “woman” is not seen as a biologically or politically relevant category. In fact, I’ve already seen quite a few progressive journals try to use any one of the various Woke euphemisms in lieu of that most controversial and verboten phrase, “pregnant women.”

The problem for them, as you probably know, is that some non-binary people can get pregnant too. So also can trans men. But trans women, who are ‘fully women,’ cannot get pregnant. Thus, if you say ‘a woman’s right to an abortion,’ you have just excluded non-binary people and trans men, while wrongfully included trans women.

Thus, we have phrases such as “pregnant uterus-havers,” “gestators,” or “pregant women and other pregnant people,” or just “pregnant people.”

I have no certainty about how all this will go, but I’m thinking we may see a resurgence in the insistence that it’s okay to say “women” and maybe not at all necessary to clarify that you also mean “people born female who do not identity as women” and do not mean to include “people born male who identity as women.”

In other words, the more concrete political urgency of the matter for many people will make the more esoteric (and often really clumsy and ridiculous) language and theory become both irrelevant and unwelcome.

Because honestly, it’s going to be really hard to rally people with phrases like “protect a pregnant uterus-haver’s right to choose,” or “trans-women, cis-men, and assigned-male-at-birth non-binary people should not be allowed to make decisions on what trans-men, assigned-female-at-birth non-binary people, and cis-women do with their bodies.”

We’ll see, huh? Either way, glad I’m not in the United States for all this.

Tell me what you’re thinking about all this, but please be nice and assume good faith. I’ve just as many far-leftist atheists reading me as there are traditional Catholics, so please read each other’s comments with curiosity rather than anger. Maybe even make a new friend. 🙂