With the US Supreme Court hearing the abortion-related Dobbs case this Fall, the topic of abortion will certainly be in the news more. This makes for a great opportunity for debate, not just in a court of law but in the “courtroom” of public opinion. This means pro-lifers need to be equipped to engage in such discussions in a winsome, grace-filled, and compelling way.
To help prepare people, Cy Kellet over at Catholic Answers selected one pro-abortion article and invited me on his show to explain how to break down abortion supporters’ flawed rhetoric and weak arguments. You can view the 30-minute exchange here, but in particular I wanted to draw attention to one point in particular.
The article we were discussing is by Elie Mystal and titled, “The Supreme Court May Have Just Signed Roe v. Wade’s Death Warrant.” At one point, the author writes about pro-lifers (aka “Republican-controlled states”) treating a woman as a “malfunctioning incubator.” In the course of Cy’s and my discussion, this is how I responded to that (around 22:36):
“Let’s talk about incubator. You know, I would love to have fun with that and say ‘Why is that a bad thing?’ And, I say that as a pregnant woman who delights in the fact that I have a child in my body who is dependent on me, who is bonded to me and connected to me in a way that isn’t even connected to my husband, that I have this special relationship with our child by the fact that I can incubate our baby. That’s a joy. That’s a privilege. That’s an honor, to have someone who is so needy and dependent on you. What a delight. So, I would actually say, ‘Hey, maybe that’s not such a bad thing, to be an incubator.’”
Cy responded by observing, “Well, it does seem that the things that women can do and that are special about women have to be denigrated in order to justify abortion. You have to say, ‘Well, it’s not that important, you know, carrying a baby…’”
And I continued,
“Right. That’s a great point. It really is an attack on the feminine and femininity. What sets women apart from men [is] our ability to conceive new life in our very bodies and sustain that life not only before birth but even after birth through breastfeeding. To think that a newborn child [for example], their body is not designed to consume food as we consume it. You can’t just give them a banana mushed up. I mean, if you are going to provide an alternative to breast milk, it has to be formula. It’s not a bottle of water. It’s not cow’s milk. It’s not almond milk or oat milk. I mean, it’s a very specific formulation that is designed for sustaining their bodies. But their bodies really cannot be sustained with much. It is someone else’s body, the breast milk of their mother or a wet nurse, or some very specifically designed formulation that would not harm their bodies.”
In other words, both born children and pre-born children rely on another’s body in a very unique and specialized way. Even someone who formula feeds needs to use their body to provide that nourishment to the baby through holding, bottle-feeding, and burping. Rather than look at this dependence of the youngest of our kind on us as some sort of intrusion, we should celebrate it as a unique privilege and joy.
Finally, if you look at the dictionary definition of incubator it is as follows: “an apparatus with a chamber used to provide controlled environmental conditions especially for the cultivation of microorganisms or the care and protection of premature or sick babies.” Now obviously, on a technical level, a pregnant woman is not an incubator from the perspective of being “an apparatus.” Like our pre-born children, we are subjects and not objects. Having said that, the idea that it is our bodies that “provide controlled environmental conditions” that are all about “cultivation,” “care,” and “protection” should be hailed as a superpower, not denigrated as a burden.