DEBATENATE

Topics / Life

The challenge

“Men shouldn't have an opinion on abortion”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

Men get an opinion, because arguments don't have a gender. Start with the obvious. Roe versus Wade was decided in nineteen seventy-three by a Supreme Court made up entirely of men. I've never heard anybody call Roe invalid because men wrote it. When Dobbs overturned it, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was in the majority. So the rule only seems to apply to men who disagree. Second, every child has a father. Men aren't strangers to this. They're half of how every pregnancy starts. Third, the question is whether abortion ends a human life, and that's everybody's business. You'll say men never bear the physical cost. True. People who'll never see combat still debate war. Let me ask you this. If a man says abortion is fine, do you tell him to be quiet too? The truth doesn't check your ID.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. If men can't speak on abortion, Roe was illegitimate, because men decided it. Nobody on the pro-choice side applies that rule.

    Roe v. Wade was decided seven to two in nineteen seventy-three by an all-male Supreme Court; the first woman justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, joined in nineteen eighty-one.

  2. Dobbs sent the question back to the people. Every citizen, man or woman, has a vote and a voice.

    Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned Roe in twenty twenty-two, with a majority that included Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and returned the issue to the people and their elected representatives.

  3. Abortion is a question about ending a human life. Defending human life is everybody's job, because every person bears the image of God.

    Genesis one teaches that God created humanity, male and female, in His own image.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Men will never face pregnancy, so it's easy for them to make rules about something that costs them nothing.

Nate: Women carry a weight men never will. That's a reason for men to speak carefully, not a reason for them to be silent. Whether an argument is true doesn't hang on who makes it. And every child has a father. Men are half of how every pregnancy begins.

What he grants the other side

Women carry the physical weight of pregnancy and men never will.

The lines

Sources

  1. Supreme Court of the United States, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)
  2. Supreme Court of the United States, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022)
  3. The Bible, Genesis 1:27

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