Why I Say "Pregnant People"

A response to readers.

Photo by Alexmia from Canva

Today's Substack is going to be different than usual.

A Response to Readers

I've gotten a few emails from people who took umbrage at my use of gender-neutral language (i.e., "pregnant people" and "post-abortive people" rather than "pregnant women," etc.).

Rather than write an individual email in response to each person, I decided to just address it in a Substack post once and for all, so everyone knows my reasons for this, and no further discussion is needed.

My Substack is not about LGBT issues, but about abortion, and, occasionally, other life-related issues such as war, euthanasia, and the death penalty, which will be kept in a different section than the pro-life posts (though I have not, as yet, figured out how to avoid sending every article to every subscriber, so if you're not interested in these other topics, you may have to just ignore the occasional email about them, at least for now).

But the transgender issue is outside my purview, so I don't expect to write about this again. The purpose of addressing it this one time is to respond to people's concerns, so we can, hopefully, move on and focus on protecting the preborn.

Agreeing to Disagree and Keeping Our Priorities Straight

Before I discuss my reasons for using gender-neutral language, I want to say that I hope those of you who dislike my views will agree to disagree with me, and still work with me to protect preborn babies. I'm not forcing anyone to think or write the way I do, but I have certain beliefs and convictions that, although they may differ from yours, I hold dear.

I'd like to remind everyone that we have a common goal—to protect preborn babies from violent deaths and protect their parents from emotional trauma. That should take precedence. We are trying to save lives.

If there was a child trapped in a burning building and you and I were the only people there, you wouldn't quiz me on my views about gender identity and then, if you disagreed with me, force me to sit on the sidelines and try to rescue the child yourself, refusing my help.

If it was your child in the building, you wouldn't ask each firefighter if they support transgender people, and then tell the ones who do to stand by and not help rescue your child. Instead, you would welcome whatever help was offered to save your child's life.

Preborn babies deserve the same consideration.

Hundreds of thousands of abortions are taking place in this country every year, and we need all hands on deck. My pro-life writing is intended to inform and help pro-lifers be better advocates and change hearts and minds.

I want to create a culture that values the preborn through education. I want to do this by exposing the abortion industry. I hope you will still read, follow, and work with me despite our differences.

Now to the issue.

First of all, there are reasons completely unrelated to gender issues for using "pregnant people" and "post-abortive people."

Not Everyone Who Has an Abortion is an Adult

Not everyone who has an abortion is an autonomous, independent adult. Teenagers, even young teenagers, have abortions. The abortion industry does everything in its power to separate these pregnant teenagers from their parents and force them to make the decision (and carry the burden) alone.

These teenagers aren't, strictly speaking, women. They are children. You have likely heard about the ten-year-old girl whose mother took her out of state for an abortion last year. A ten-year-old is not a woman. Neither is a twelve or thirteen-year-old, and they are having abortions in abortion facilities across the country.

The pro-choice movement wants to convey the message that pregnant people choose abortion freely, with no coercion. When we think about abortion, they want us to think about an independent, autonomous adult who chooses through her own free will, carefully evaluating what she feels is best for her. This is often not the case.

It is in the pro-choice movement's best interests to spread the message that only adult people get abortions.

Using "pregnant people" includes children and teens, who must not be overlooked.

Abortion Hurts More Than Just the Mother

As for "post-abortive people," the person having the abortion is not the only one who suffers after the abortion. The biological father suffers. The grandparents suffer. The friends who helped them get an abortion sometimes come to regret their involvement, and they suffer. The aborted babies' siblings suffer. Sometimes, the whole extended family suffers.

And often, pro-lifers suffer too. I don't know if you've ever done any work counseling people considering abortion—abortion-minded people. I have. It is truly a wonderful feeling when someone you're talking to, who intended to have an abortion, chooses life with your help. There is nothing better than knowing you played a pivotal role in saving a child's life.

I have had women send me photos of their newborn babies, thanking me profusely, telling me that if not for me, they would've aborted. There is nothing more wonderful than that. To know that you have saved a life (though, of course, the pregnant person is the actual hero) is a truly amazing thing.

But if you've been at it for a while, chances are, you've lost babies too. Many, often most, of the pregnant people you talk to have abortions, anyway.

When this happens, it hurts. You tell yourself you're not responsible, and you know that's the truth. It was not your decision. You didn't have the power to stop the abortion. You did all you could. You are not to blame.

Nevertheless, you think back on every conversation, on every interaction, wondering what you could've said that would've made an impact. You second-guess every word, wishing you'd thought of something else to say, something that would have changed her mind.

Even knowing it wasn't your fault and that you did the best you could, it still hurts. That's what makes this kind of work so hard, so emotionally grueling. And for me at least, it never really gets any easier.

So, my point is, abortion hurts everyone involved. It even hurts former abortion workers and abortionists who repent and turn away from killing.

Even those who don't turn away often deal with emotional trauma. Sometimes they engage in substance abuse, sometimes they suffer nightmares. I've written about abortion workers and abortionists who suffered from nightmares, depression, and addiction.

Abortion is so terribly destructive it has a wide circle of emotional victims. It brings a great deal of suffering into the world, and that suffering isn't confined to the biological mother.

It's a mistake to only discuss the harm abortion does to the one who carries the pregnancy and not include other victims of postabortion trauma.

Finally, now, I will turn to gender identity.

Trans Men Get Pregnant

First, male-identifying trans people with female anatomy do, in fact, become pregnant, and many of them carry to term.

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association was conducted on 1907 trans men who gave birth. The study found that they had no increased risk of suffering complications. When compared to cis [biological] women, there was no significant difference in the rate of premature births. Or of any harm to the baby.

In one area, they did better. Trans men were significantly less likely to have cesarean sections. (Whether this was because they didn't need them or because doctors were less likely to do unnecessary ones isn't clear). But the study showed that male-identifying trans people with female anatomy do have children, and that being trans doesn't put those babies, or the people having them, at any greater medical risk.

A Physical Cause for Being Transgender

This, of course, doesn't answer the fundamental question—should trans men be considered men, and trans women considered women? Should their gender identity be respected, and should we use their preferred pronouns and accept them as the gender they claim to be?

I believe we should. And I believe so for the same reason I'm pro-life—because of the science.

A study done in a major medical journal compared the brains of young trans people with the brains of non-trans people (i.e., cis people). Their findings were dramatic and consistent.

The study found that the brains of trans people differed from the brains of cis people of the same biological gender in two different ways. One, they were different in structure. Two, they were different in patterns of activity. It turns out that their brains are more similar to those of people of the opposite biological sex—the sex these trans people believed they were.

According to the study, "Brain activity and structure in transgender adolescents more closely resembles the typical activation patterns of their desired gender."

This study was done on adolescents, not adults. Meaning these differences are present from early in life. And some differences are structural. A person is born with a certain brain anatomy.

Of course, the brain grows and develops as the person grows and develops, but DNA controls the basic structure of the brain, like the basic structure of other parts of the body. An act of will can 't change it.

The study says:

These findings suggest that differences in brain function may occur early in development and that brain imaging may be a useful tool for earlier identification of transgenderism in young people.

This study's results were so clear-cut and consistent that the researchers believe in the future, they will be able to identify trans people just by scanning their brains.

Being trans, then, has a physical cause—differences in the brain that one can see. By looking at the brain, scientists can see that a person is trans. The brain looks more like the desired sex—the sex that the trans person feels they are.

This means being trans has a biological, physical cause.

Science and Medical Care

Science shows that being trans is a real thing with a physical cause. A trans person is literally walking around with the genitals of one sex and a brain similar to the other. Transitioning fixes this physical problem. It corrects a medical, visible, physical condition.

Ultimately, it's no different from any other medical intervention. My eyes don't work very well. Structurally, they differ from the eyes of a person with 20/20 vision. Therefore, I wear glasses. Wearing glasses is unnatural. No one in the Bible wore glasses. Glasses are a medical intervention to fix something wrong biologically.

I could, if I chose, and if my insurance would cover it, have laser surgery to fix my eyes. This would not be immoral or inappropriate. Rather, it would correct a medical problem. It is no different with gender reassignment surgery.

The only other way to fix the problem would be to give a trans person a completely new brain. Since the difference is partly structural, nothing else would correct the issue. Brain transplants are unavailable (and, I would argue, never should be). Therefore, gender reassignment surgery would be the treatment.

Trans people are not delusional. They are not mentally ill. Their brains are different structurally, and their brain patterns and activity are also different from other people of their assigned gender at birth. This difference can be seen, studied, and measured.

Having gender reassignment surgery is the treatment for this imbalance, just like laser surgery or glasses would be the treatment for the problems with my eyes.

The Need to Follow the Science and the Cost of Being Pro-Life

Science doesn't care about my feelings, or yours. It doesn't care about what we want to believe. Facts don't change based on what we want to be true.

That's why I am pro-life.

To tell you the truth, I don't really want to be pro-life. Often, I don't like it. Sometimes I wish I wasn't pro-life. Sometimes, in fact, I hate being pro-life.

As a liberal, an atheist, and a lesbian, I don't fit in very well with the mainstream pro-life movement. I'm often rejected by pro-lifers. I occasionally get hate mail from my own side, from fellow pro-lifers who think I'm a terrible sinner, going straight to hell, and/or contributing to the moral decline of this country. And they feel the need to tell me these things.

Once or twice, so-called Christians have told me I should be executed for being LGBT. Many pro-lifers have refused to work with me.

I don't feel at home in the movement. I don't feel comfortable in Republican or conservative spaces because I'm not Republican or conservative.

At the same time, I'm not welcome in liberal or Democrat spaces either. I'm not welcome in feminist spaces. I'm often not even welcome in LGBT spaces. I'm too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals, and rarely feel welcome anywhere. It would be much easier for me if I were pro-choice. I would fit in. I would have my tribe. I would be accepted.

But that's never going to happen, because I will always be pro-life—at least, until someone can convince me that a preborn baby is not human or not alive, and all the medical textbooks are wrong. But the facts about the beginning of life are settled science, and that reality will never change.

I am pro-life because science teaches that life begins at conception. And I firmly believe that human life should be protected. A preborn baby is human and alive and completely innocent. As well as being helpless. And abortion procedures are deeply cruel, either starving or tearing apart a preborn baby.

Ultimately, it's the science—abortion kills a human being. The inescapable conclusion, then, is that I must be pro-life. I can't be anything else.

Being pro-life has cost me friends, even close friends. It's cost me career opportunities. My dream from the time I was very young was to be a fiction writer—a novelist like Stephen King.

I have admitted to myself that that dream will never happen. Not only do I not have the time to pursue a fiction career because I feel compelled to put all my effort into the pro-life movement, but I will never get a traditional publisher because of my pro-life work. I sacrificed my dream career to protect the preborn.

And I did it because of science. I simply can't be dishonest and dismiss the science. I can't pretend life doesn't begin at conception—because science says it does.

I believe this is the right thing to do. Accept the science and accept the cost. Let science shape your opinion. Let it overrule what you simply want to be true. Let the facts dictate what you believe.

And in this case, the facts dictate that being transgender is a real thing with a physical cause and that it can be corrected by gender reassignment surgery.

I encourage you to form opinions based on verifiable, scientific facts and not simply on what you want to believe. This is a challenge for everyone.

A Word About the Bible

I'm going to dive into the treacherous waters of biblical interpretation for a minute. I'm an atheist, but I grew up in a Christian home, and I'm familiar with Christian teachings. And I've read the Bible cover to cover not once, but twice—something I've found that few Christians have done.

And I have not found, anywhere in the Bible, a verse that prohibits changing from one gender to another or identifying as a different gender than that assigned at birth.

The closest we get is Deuteronomy 22:5. This verse is about cross-dressing. It says, in part, "A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing…"

As a woman, I've been breaking this commandment practically from birth by wearing pants. I'm breaking this commandment now because I'm sitting here in a well-worn sweater that was knitted by one of my best friends, and a pair of old (and very comfortable) sweatpants.

If you are a woman and you, like me, have ever worn pants, you've also broken this Old Testament commandment.

Deuteronomy 22:5 isn't the only command in the Old Testament about wearing clothing. In Leviticus 19:19, we read, "Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material."

This means that if you've ever worn a polyester/cotton blend shirt, you've broken another Old Testament commandment. And unless your clothes are all hand-knit, you have. You're probably breaking it right now, as you read this.

Also, in Deuteronomy 20:10-15, literally about a page and a half before the quote above, we find this:

When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 

When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 

This verse is presented as a direct quote from God to the Israelites.

Think about this for a moment. If read literally, this verse commands nations to invade other nations during times of peace and forcibly conscript their entire populations into slavery.

If the people resist, the invaders should declare war. When they win, they need to kill every man, including the elderly and the disabled. And then they are to take the women and children and do whatever they want with them.

This may even mean using the captive women as sex slaves—after all, the soldiers are instructed to take them as "plunder" for themselves and "use" them.

If Russia did that to the people of Ukraine, or India did that to the people of Pakistan, or Iran did that to the people of Israel, what would your reaction be? Would you support them, or would you call for them to be prosecuted for war crimes?

What if China or Russia did that to us?

If you are a man, imagine being forced to go to war and then violently killed. If you are a woman, imagine every man you know  — your father, your husband, your brother, your son  — being executed, and then you and your children are taken away to be the property of the invaders.

Is this really what God wants us to do?

Or is the book of Deuteronomy not meant to be taken literally or used as a guide for how we should live in 2024?

All quotes are from the New International Version.

Intersex People and Those with Different Chromosomes

An estimated .018% of the population is intersex. This may not seem like a large number, but it adds up to 145,800,000 people worldwide.

Intersex people are people whose "chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female."

For example, they may have two sets of genitals, complete or partial. Their chromosomal sex may be male, but they have female genitals, or vice versa. Regardless, they don't fit into the male/female binary.

If the categories of male and female are supposed to be absolute, where do intersex people fit in? Like trans people, they are people who do not neatly fit into either category because of the physical structure of their bodies.

If a person's genitals don't matter, and only chromosomes count, it should be noted that not all people are male or female as determined by their chromosomes. XY and XX are not the only sets of chromosomes people can have.

Those with Klinefelter syndrome have chromosomes that read XXY. Those with Turner syndrome have one X chromosome—X. So, if we go just by chromosomes, there would be four genders, not two.

It should be noted that people with Turner or Klinefelter don’t always view themselves as separate genders. I have been told, in fact, that most of them don’t. Like anyone else, they can have any gender identity. As one person with Turner Syndrome pointed out to me, their community isn’t a monolith, and they don’t all identify the same way.

Logically, however, those who believe that chromosomes are all that matter would have to define them as separate genders since they do not fit into the male (XY) or female (XX) binary, whether or not this seems to be the case. The point is that not everyone fits into two categories of male and female, as measured solely by chromosomes. Nor do they fit according to anatomy. as we’ve seen above.

And adding in these people, people who have chromosomes different from the male or female binary, brings the percentage up to 1.7%.

This means that 575,100,000 people living today, not counting trans people, don't physically fit into the stereotypical categories of male or female.

Many Christians, perhaps you who are reading this, believe that gender identity is a moral issue. If a person doesn't conform to their assigned gender at birth, both in their identity and in who they date or have sex with, they are sinning against God.

A trans person can always refrain from transitioning. A gay or lesbian person can stay single. A bisexual person can choose to only date people of a different sex. Heck, I can even decide only to wear dresses and skirts.

But what can an intersex person do? What can someone whose chromosomes aren't male or female do? What clothes can they wear? Who are they allowed to marry? How can they obey God's commands and not sin?

Why would God create over 575 million people who cannot possibly obey his commands and who are sinners regardless of what path they choose in life?

And if sex and gender are supposed to be clear cut, male or female, black and white, why make 575,100,000 exceptions?

Trans People and Mental Health

Many people attack transgender people with claims that they are mentally ill. In this context, accusations of mental illness are used to discredit trans people and, in a paternalistic way, override their autonomy with claims that others know what's best for them.

Many times, these narratives are extremely ableist and derogatory.

People who are trans do have higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts, as well as actual suicides, than people who aren't. But this is only part of the story.

Multiple studies have shown that when a trans person is given gender-affirming care, their mental health improves.

One study of young trans people found that their chances of suicide and mental health problems decreased "significantly” after they were allowed to take a puberty blocker.

Another study found that the mental health of transgender people improved after gender reassignment surgery. Transgender people who received "one or more gender-affirming surgical procedure[s]" had a 42% reduction in psychological distress and a 44% reduction in suicidal thoughts. They also had a 35% reduction in smoking, which can often be linked to psychological distress.

This study, and others like it, shows that although a very small number of people regret transitioning, it helps the vast majority. The answer to people who regret transitioning is better counseling and screening—not preventing all trans people from transitioning.

One thing that frustrates supporters of the trans community the most is that the people who use the high rate of suicide and depression among trans people against them are the very people who are causing, or at least contributing to, the problem.

One study showed that when those around young trans people use their chosen names, their mental health improves. The study found that trans youth who were surrounded by people who used their chosen name had lower rates of depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts.

According to the study:

After adjusting for personal characteristics and social support, chosen name use in more contexts was associated with lower depression, suicidal ideation, and suicidal behavior.

So those who deliberately misgender trans people and refuse to call them by their chosen names increase their suicidal thoughts, their depression, and their likelihood of suicide.

Other studies came to similar conclusions. The science is clear—proper gender-affirming medical care improves the mental health of trans people, and refusing to accept them and their gender identity worsens it.

That is the reason I'm writing this article.

Why I Wrote this Article

I wrote it because I want to see fewer trans people take their own lives and endure depression. I want to help and support the trans community. I'm following my conscience on this issue.

I know full well that this article will hurt my career. I don't do pro-life work for money, but I still have to pay the bills. I know that if I come out to support trans people, I will lose readers and followers.

People will unsubscribe from my Substack. People will refuse to buy my books. I will lose money. I will lose the positive opinion that people have about me and my work.

From a business standpoint, writing this article is foolish. In my writing classes, they teach you to appeal to your target audience. If my "target audience" is pro-lifers, this article doesn't fit, because most pro-lifers are conservatives, and most conservatives don't agree with me on gender identity.

But one thing I will never do is sacrifice my principles for my career. Not for money. Not for fame. Not to avoid displeasing others.

I said before that being pro-life has hurt the career I wanted to have. Nevertheless, I won't back down from protecting the preborn.

That's something you can count on with me. I may make mistakes. I may misunderstand something. I may feel sick and fail to follow through on something I said I'd do — but I will never go against what I believe in for personal gain. That's not the person I want to be.

If you've read this far, thank you. If you're still not with me, I hope you will take what I said earlier to heart and continue to support my pro-life work.

I will not be replying to emails or comments about this issue. I said everything I had to say.

I want to move on and get back to writing about abortion and other life issues. I don't have the time and energy to go back and forth with people on this in the comments. I have a chronic illness, which leads to limited energy, and I have to be deliberate about what I spend it on.

So, this is my last word on this.

Thank you for reading. I'll be back with another pro-life article in a few days.