…when you’re being killed. And I’ve always thought that calling the mandatory funding and legal privileging of the optional killing of baby boys and baby girls–babies, male and female, who just happen not to be born yet–that calling that a “women’s issue” or a “women’s health issue” or a “reproductive health issue” was about the most offensive thing on offer in American politics today.

I still do.

But, hey, now there’s another way that talking about abortion is offensive:

Feminists are now arguing about whether or not it’s offensive to talk about abortion as a “women’s issue” because gender is not that simple and men have abortions too.

“We must acknowledge and come to terms with the implicit cissexism in assuming that only women have abortions,” feminist activist Lauren Rankin stated in July 2013.

Or, as Jos Truitt of Feministing explained: “Trans men have abortions. Gender queer people have abortions. Two spirit people have abortions. People who do not fit into the box of ‘woman’ have abortions.”

In response, abortion funds around the country have already been changing their names and language to be more “gender inclusive.” Last year, “Fund Texas Women” became “Fund Texas Choice,” because, in the words of co-founder Lenzi Scheible, the group “refuse[d] to deny the existence and humanity of trans* people any longer.”

(source: Abortion Is Not a Womens Issue Because Men Have Abortions Too)

By all means, let’s make sure we don’t “deny the existence and humanity” of any human being who bears the image of God.

 

Of course, to affirm “existence and humanity” of all people–a pretty low bar–doesn’t mean we must then also approve or even allow them to rob banks, kill babies, pretend they’re married in impossible combinations, embezzle, slander, become pirates, or demand that society pay for self-mutilation in the service of distorted self-image, though we may occasionally find that a desperately poor person’s stealing was not worth much punishing, and a desperately confused person may well need some accommodation.

But to affirm “existence and humanity” pretty definitely will mean not summarily executing them whenever those most responsible for their care wish to do so.

A low bar–but one we don’t seem able to reach.