Is the word 'women' being erased from the abortion rights movement?
The end of Roe v. Wade has catalyzed debate among some pro-choice Americans over whether gender-neutral language should be used in the abortion rights movement.
The toppling of Roe v. Wade has catalyzed a heated debate among some abortion rights supporters over whether gender-neutral language — like “pregnant people” instead of “pregnant women” and “chestfeeding” instead of “breastfeeding” — should be used in advocating for abortion rights.
A number of leading abortion rights and civil rights groups, including Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union, and some Democratic lawmakers, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have shifted their messaging in this way to be more LGBTQ-inclusive as an increasing number of Americans identify as transgender and nonbinary. Even the National Education Association, the country’s largest public teachers union, recently proposed changing the word “mother” to “birthing parent” in contracts.
As abortion-rights activism has been amplified in recent weeks following the Supreme Court’s historic decision last month to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion, some pro-abortion rights, cisgender women have taken notice of these linguistic changes — and not all of them are pleased.
On July 3, The New York Times published an op-ed titled “The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count,” in which opinion columnist Pamela Paul argued that the shift in messaging is erasing cisgender women — women whose gender identity matches their birth sex.
“The noble intent behind omitting the word ‘women’ is to make room for the relatively tiny number of transgender men and people identifying as nonbinary who retain aspects of female biological function and can conceive, give birth or breastfeed,” Paul wrote. “But despite a spirit of inclusion, the result has been to shove women to the side.”
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