Has anybody noticed that women are disappearing?

Where are all the women? It wasn’t that long ago that the world had a lot of them. They lived in our neighborhoods and even in our houses. They were thought to be rather indispensable, amounting to more than half of the entire human population. Back before their disappearance, we all seemed pretty certain they were necessary to human reproduction, possessing, after all, the wombs from which babies would emerge. Throughout human history, most of them also fed their babies from their own bodies. Men were pretty certain we could neither give birth nor nurse babies. That was before everything changed.

The big change came in the last couple of years. Even two years ago, major activist groups, including pro-abortion organizations, said they were all about the rights of women. Now, they are increasingly about “pregnant people.” Now, all women are people, but not all people are women. Evidently, people who are not women can now be “pregnant people” and, brace yourselves, even “chest feeders.”

The tortured logic of the transgender revolutionaries has now reached the point that major abortion groups now speak only of “pregnant people” and not of “pregnant women.” Of even greater concern is the fact that the medical establishment seems ready to march in lockstep with the transgender revolution. Now, as human beings, we are to arrange ourselves on a vast “non-binary” spectrum. We are each to determine our own gender identity and terminology of choice. The medical community is told to refer to us as “pregnant people,” “individuals with a cervix,” or “persons with a prostate.” I will not report here on even more colorful new terms coming into use. You can thank me now.

The New York Times recently took note of all this, with reporter Michael Powell telling us that the American Civil Liberties Union, “whose advocacy on reproductive rights is of more than a half-century vintage,” has evidently lost touch with the fact that it is women who become pregnant. Powell reports further: “This was not an oversight, nor was it peculiar to the language favored by the ACLU. Language has been changing fast, even as the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn a constitutional guarantee to abortion rights and progressives face the task of spearheading opposition.”

Thus, “pregnant people.” The Times report notes that the speed of this change is remarkable. Back in the old days of 2020, the pro-abortion group NARAL Pro-Choice America instructed abortion activists to use the language of “a woman’s choice.” Other groups insisted that political advantage suggested the terminology of “a woman’s reproductive health.” But now NARAL’s guide for activists insists on the use of “gender-neutral language.” Back in 2020, even NARAL believed in the existence of women. Barely two years later, women have disappeared.

The Times also lets us know that progressive politicians are having a hard time with the language. The Biden administration recently referred to “birthing people” in a budget request. “Conservatives pounced,” the Times reports. I will merely note that more than a few of those pouncing conservatives were women. The liberals seem to have lost women, but conservatives, fossils that we are, still believe in them. Many conservatives actually are women, who have often shown more courage in the great battles of our day than have men. Conservatism depends upon both men and women. So, for that matter, does the human species.

We are told by Michael Powell that a couple of researchers have concluded that, even as many young progressives reject the binary of male and female in toto, one of the scholars had to admit “the reality is that the larger society is not there yet.”

That would be because of creation order and the fact that even a child can tell the difference between a boy and a girl, and that same child, at some point, comes to understand that if you want a puppy you are going to need a male dog and a female dog. To the glory of God, most boys and girls love puppies and want someone to arrange whatever is necessary to get one. Most of them would be glad to have a little brother or sister as well. Few children, we assume, refer to Mom as their own personal “formerly pregnant person.”

Christians must recognize that we are dealing here with a particularly deadly nonsense. When women disappear, humanity itself disappears. When truth is denied, you end up with “pregnant people.” When sanity departs, society goes along with this nonsense. If you go along with this insanity, you are the problem—pregnant or not.