I love the Christian Nationalist memes. They feed my curiosity, and therefore my writing. The meme in question, like all of them, was simple enough. It equates abortion with escaping the natural consequences of sex, likening unwanted pregnancy to swimming into a riptide and drowning or provoking someone with a weapon who then kills you. It’s a consequence of behavior. If you get pregnant, that’s on you. You Made Your Bed Now Lie in It.

This isn’t logical in any way. It’s moralizing using theology to teach us that punishment builds character and suffering redeems the sinner. Beneath its slick veneer lies a worldview that recasts biology as something to be blamed, medicine as judgment on the weak, and state power as an instrument of shame and damnation.

The good thing is, the entire framework collapses the moment we stop moralizing and start paying attention.

In 1989 I was in 10th grade, and my friends and I started going to Planned Parenthood. At first we went to check it out. Soon after we were back for the free condoms from the jar, and eventually got ourselves on birth control pills, which entailed our first pap smears. All without parents, with one another, and for most of us, BEFORE we started having sex. We were very interested in having sex and in protecting ourselves. We took precautions together, as a community of young women. We had lives we looked forward to.

Our Planned Parenthood was stellar. The women there were brilliant, educational, and friendly. I don’t know what we would’ve done without that place. It was a touchstone in a vulnerable time during our coming of age. For me, Planned Parenthood evokes memories of self-reliance, responsibility, and community care with my girls.

Inevitably, a few people got pregnant. That’s what happens. And those few people got abortions, because we were young. It was tragic each time. Abortion was a consequence for all of us in our community, and no one enjoys living with that consequence.

Pregnancy is not a predictable outcome that neatly maps onto human behavior. It is a biological event influenced by numerous variables, including hormonal, chemical, mechanical, interpersonal, and social factors. And despite what moralists might hope, it happens even when people do everything “right.” Birth control methods fail. Condoms break. Vasectomies reverse. Even intrauterine devices (IUDs), one of the most effective options available, can shift or expel without warning.

The idea that every pregnancy is the direct result of careless sex doesn’t stand up to science. It stands up only to the desire to blame the woman.

That desire is nowhere more evident than in the smug phrase: consent to sex is consent to the consequences. It sounds reasonable until you remember what those so-called consequences entail and who they directly affect. Pregnancy is not a stomachache. It reshapes the body. It can cause organ damage, worsen chronic illness, and in the United States, the wealthiest country on Earth, it can kill you. Our maternal mortality rate is appallingly high. It is higher still for Black women. These risks do not end with birth. Some consequences, like autoimmune disorders, high blood pressure, and incontinence, remain lifelong.

In what other area of medicine would we treat this kind of physical transformation as “you deserved it”? We don’t deny treatment to skiers who break their legs. We don’t force drivers to keep their injuries after an accident to teach them a lesson. We offer medical care. Because in medicine, the ethical standard is autonomy, not moral correction.

That standard evaporates when the patient is pregnant.

This collapsing of medical care into judgment becomes even more dangerous when it disregards how many pregnancies result from coercion, stealthing, abuse, or outright rape. The Guttmacher Institute has found that up to one in three people seeking abortions report their pregnancy involved some form of violation. This does not include the many who never disclose their circumstances for fear of being disbelieved or worse, morally disqualified because their experience wasn’t traumatic enough.

The “consequences” argument does not pause for these realities. It requires a brutal sorting. Which pregnancies are “deserved”? Which were the result of carelessness? Which are forgivable? The logic demands that we build a surveillance system, one capable of prying into private bedrooms and pulling apart stories of contraception, fear, trauma, and consent. It is not just invasive, it’s impossible. And it will always punish the most vulnerable first.

We don’t interrogate medical decisions this way anywhere else. We don’t ask people with lung cancer whether they smoked enough to deserve treatment. We don’t follow a liver transplant candidate home to see how often they drink. We certainly don’t ask if someone deserves to avoid dying in childbirth.

Still, the “consequences of choice” framework thrives because it taps into something older and more sinister than policy. It taps into a cultural legacy that views female bodies, and increasingly trans and nonbinary bodies, as moral battlegrounds where power disguises itself as righteousness, punishing anyone who refuses to conform. What happens on moral battlegrounds is never justice; it is performative, state sanctioned violence, and the cost is always paid by the most vulnerable. This framework exists to weaponize accountability. It forces us to prove our societal worth and virtue by suffering.

This theocratic performance erases the most fundamental principle of bodily autonomy: that no one should be forced to donate their body, their blood, or their organs to another person, not even to save a life. We do not compel parents to donate kidneys to their children. We do not demand that dead bodies give up their organs without consent. Yet somehow, we are willing to force a living person to carry a pregnancy they did not choose. 

The real “consequence” is submission. Submission to the idea that sex must carry a cost, that pleasure must be punished, and that anyone who becomes pregnant without wanting to be should be stripped of their human rights and dignity. This is about power and punishing women for rejecting the scripts that bind them to silence, sacrifice, and self-erasure.

Abortion is not an escape from consequences. It IS a consequence. One that reflects autonomy, foresight, and often, immense courage. It is a medical choice made by individuals who have weighed their lives, circumstances, and capacity to parent, and decided not to relinquish control of their bodies to a government or a stranger’s morality.

If we claim to value life, we must start by valuing the lives of those already here. That includes trusting people to make medical decisions without shame. That includes resisting systems that treat pregnancy like a punishment. That includes saying clearly: the state has no place between a person and their healthcare. No Christian Nationalist meme can change that.

Pregnancy is not a moral verdict, and abortion is not a failure. It is a human right that must be defended from those who mask cruelty as a consequence and call it morality. Their aim isn’t virtue, it’s control. And no one should have to earn their freedom by proving they were pure enough to deserve it. 

So, how about this: If you are against abortion, then don’t have one and shut the fuck up.