Michelle Obama’s Strange Vision of the Female Reproductive System » The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

This week, during a new episode of her podcast, Michelle Obama put forward a perspective on the female reproductive system that can only be described as odd. “The least” of what the female reproductive system does, Obama said, “is produce life.”

It’s quite a funny thing to say when the elements of the female reproductive system are quite clearly intended for, well, reproduction. The uterus, for instance, isn’t sitting around just for kicks. Turns out it’s there to nurture and safeguard unborn children.

But in Michelle Obama’s version of reality, the female reproductive system’s role in the generation of new life is nearly shameful. She wants women to be only about themselves, and definitely not tied to their child-bearing capacity. In fact, any part of a woman that is geared toward the bearing of children must be repurposed to being primarily about the woman.

“Women’s reproductive health is about our life,” insisted Obama in her podcast. “It’s about this whole complicated reproductive system, the least of what it does is produce life.”

Obama claimed that pro-lifers, which she stereotyped as clueless men, only care about unborn babies, and pay no regard to women. She contrasted this to her vision, in which reproductive health is only about “our life,” that is, about women.

“We haven’t been researched, we haven’t been considered,” she said, “and it still affects the way a lot of men lawmakers, a lot of male politicians, a lot of male religious leaders think about the issue of choice, as if it’s just about the fetus, the baby, but women’s reproductive health is about our life.”

Obama connected these claims to speeches she gave on the campaign trail last year, the most prominent of which was an address she gave in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in October. The speech, which the New York Times described as “striking,” was in reality a scare-tactics-laced screed based on the false premise that women are dying because of laws against abortion.

“[Trump] could take actions that effectively ban abortion nationwide,” said Obama, “which will put all of us in danger no matter what state we live in. We will see more doctors hesitating or shying away from providing lifesaving treatment because they are worried about being arrested.”

This argument, that women will not receive treatment after experiencing a miscarriage or when facing an ectopic pregnancy due to laws against abortion, is simply not true. This is basic health care provided in all 50 states. It’s true that a couple of women have claimed they were denied care for ectopic pregnancies as a result of Dobbs, and they filed federal complaints with an abortion activist organization on that basis. However, in at least one of those cases, the issue, it seems, was that certain doctors didn’t diagnose the woman with an ectopic pregnancy, which can be difficult to catch.

Nonetheless, Michelle Obama has led the charge of baselessly claiming that laws against abortions are causing women to be denied basic medical care. “Your niece could be the one miscarrying in her bathtub after the hospital turned her away,” she said in that speech.

Obama took things very, very far. She painted an (implausible) scenario of a woman bleeding out while delivering a baby and doctors not being able to save her because of laws against abortion. “If your wife is shivering and bleeding on the operating room table during a routine delivery gone bad, her pressure dropping as she loses more and more blood or some unforeseen infection spreads, and her doctors aren’t sure if they can act, you will be the one praying that it’s not too late. You will be the one pleading for somebody, anybody to do something.” In fact, there is no medical scenario in which this would happen because killing the baby on the way out would do nothing to help the woman delivering him.

And yet, Obama followed this up by saying, “[Y]ou just might be the one holding flowers at the funeral. You might be the one left to raise your children alone. See, these are just some of the ways women die during childbirth.” She then famously claimed, “If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women will become collateral damage to your rage.”

This speech followed the September publication of a ProPublica investigation into the death of 28-year-old Amber Thurman, who died after having a medication abortion. After Thurman’s child died from the abortion, not all of his or her body parts exited her uterus, thus causing an infection. A Georgia hospital then failed to quickly follow the proper course of treatment of removing the remaining body parts from Thurman’s uterus, thus resulting in her death. The story is quite obviously a demonstration of the dangers of medication abortion, and is in no way, as Democrats and the media have portrayed it, evidence that laws against abortion are endangering women’s lives.

Yet Democrats such as Obama have jumped onto Amber Thurman’s story and spun up the narrative that unborn babies are pitted against women’s health and safety.

And that’s how we arrive at Michelle Obama’s perspective that a woman’s reproductive system has little to do with babies. For her, unborn babies are dangerous parasites occupying a space that does not pertain to them.

It’s logically incoherent and scientifically false, but it allows abortion activists to beat down dissent quite easily. In this understanding, women “become collateral damage” when we legally protect the lives of unborn children. Essentially, people who want to save babies want women to die.

What’s lost in this viewpoint is appreciation for the beautiful capacity of a woman to uphold the life of her unborn child while he or she develops in her womb. What should be understood as a relationship of self-gift is seen by people like Michelle Obama as an unnatural and dangerous inconvenience that threatens a woman’s independence.

READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes:

Francesca Gino and the Rot at the Heart of Elite Academia

The Bizarre Phenomenon of Celebrity Transgender Children Confronts Changing Attitudes

The Messed-Up World of People Who Believe Abortion Is Love