Womb with a View

Claiming to be a victim is not a sign of virtue.
It's a strategy for narcissists.

— Adam Grant

The day after the news broke that the Supreme Court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade, Stephen Colbert quipped, "Congratulations, ladies, your decisions are being made by four dudes and a woman who thinks The Handmaid’s Tale is a rom-com."

That pretty much sums things up.

In this week's edition of Crisis Magazine, walking womb and resident wacko Samantha Stephenson argues that the two of three Americans who want the Court to uphold Roe, by disagreeing with the Court's decision, are "persecuting" pro-life Catholics. 

Poppycock.

Pro-life Catholics are not the victims of persecution; they're narcissists claiming to be so. If they want dominion over women, they should move to Afghanistan.

Not content with martyrdom, Stephenson further argues that Roe is "deeply damaging to women," because the right to an abortion is damaging.

"Abortion is not an equalizer," she says, "but an assault."

Again, poppycock.

Has any female patient ever said she felt assaulted by an abortionist?

Stephenson grounds her arguments on an essentialist claim: women are by definition child-bearers. 

Given this, any law that suggests otherwise must be "oppressive" and "coercive."

Roe not only sanctions abortion, Stephenson says, but makes it "increasingly difficult to opt out of its use." 

The law's real purpose, she claims, is to compel women to have abortions and "forgo childbearing."

"Instead of fighting for the freedom of women to be women—whose fertility and desire for motherhood are integral parts of their identity—abortion advocates insist that our liberty can only be found by muting our fertility and forcing our healthy bodies to mimic those of men," Stephenson says.

And there you have it: essentialism at its finest.

Women are by definition mothers. 

Roe compels them to be otherwise.

Therefore, Roe is wrong.

Essentialism has a long history of abuse by narcissists like Samantha Stephenson.

In fact, two and a half millennia of abuse.

Essentialism has been used to defend religious wars, slave-trafficking, colonialism, pogroms, and segregation. 

Now it's defending the overturn of Roe.    

Essentialism holds that everything has an essence—a set of attributes that make it what it is.

In other words, for any kind of thing, there exists a set of attributes all of which the thing must have to be correctly called by its name.

A man, for example, by definition walks on two legs, not four; uses tools and language; and is born, grows old, and dies. 

Those attributes define a man—and, by extension, every man. Every man shares in common what we call "human nature."

Ethical essentialism insists there are "essential rules" (absolutes) by which we live. 

The moral absolutism Samantha Stephenson favors claims that a law like Roe is wrong absolutely, because it contradicts a natural law and victimizes a whole class of citizens.

I don't buy that.

Women—non-Catholic ones, anyway—aren't just walking, talking wombs.

They're citizens. 

Roe protects their rights; it doesn't restrict them.

People like Stephenson who cry victimhood simply feel entitled.

In her case, she feels entitled to have children—three so far.

That's fine.

But she wants a trophy for it.

Narcissism engenders her feeling of entitlement. 

And narcissism makes Stephenson an aggressor and predator.

Not quite a wolf in sheep's clothing—more like a psycho in sackcloth.

What an insult to women's dignity.