The Monopoly of Pregnancy
How social liberalism maximizes women’s control over reproduction while externalizing its costs
In social-liberal societies, the abortion debate is generally presented as a conflict between two clearly defined camps. On the one hand are the pro-life advocates, who consider human life to begin at conception and therefore oppose the voluntary termination of pregnancy as a matter of principle. On the other are the pro-choice advocates, who instead believe that the decision to continue or terminate a pregnancy belongs to the realm of individual freedom.
Yet this dichotomy is misleading. By focusing on the status of the fetus or on an abstract conception of freedom, it conceals a much more fundamental question: whose choice, exactly?
To understand the importance of this question, the reader is invited to imagine a somewhat dystopian thought experiment. Imagine a society that, while legalizing abortion, applied the principle of sex equality literally. In such a society, both prospective parents would possess exactly the same rights regarding whether a pregnancy should be continued or terminated. Two egalitarian models would then be conceivable:
An egalitarian pro-choice position: if either prospective parent wishes to terminate the pregnancy, it must be terminated, including against the wishes of the other.
An egalitarian pro-life position: if either prospective parent wishes to continue the pregnancy, it must be carried to term, including against the wishes of the other.
In the first case, each parent possesses the power to initiate an abortion. In the second, each parent holds a right of veto over abortion. Each of these cases thus makes one part of reproductive law symmetrical, in accordance with the universalism to which modern societies like to appeal.
Yet both options immediately offend common sense. Why? Because they imply, on the one hand, physically forcing a woman to undergo an abortion against her will; on the other, forcing her to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. Intuition further suggests that forcing a woman to undergo an abortion is even worse than compelling her to carry a pregnancy to term. If one absolutely had to choose between these two positions, the egalitarian pro-life position would therefore appear to be the less inhumane of the two. In the debate opposing pro-life and pro-choice positions, the moral burden thus seems to reverse through this simple process of equalization.
When it comes to coercing the father, by contrast, the discomfort almost entirely disappears. Forcing a man to relinquish a child he wanted or, conversely, compelling him to assume responsibility for a child he did not want seems far more readily acceptable. These are, moreover, precisely the positions that social-liberal societies have adopted with regard to abortion: only the pregnant woman possesses both the power of initiative and the right of veto. The reproductive law of modern societies therefore does not eliminate coercion; it merely transfers it onto the man.
To justify this asymmetry, many will reply that the standard pro-choice position rests on a principle entirely different from individual freedom: bodily autonomy. After all, it is indeed the woman who carries the child. This objection makes sense, yet it still fails to explain why the law goes so far in erasing the father. The law could, for example, allow the woman to undergo an abortion provided that she had consulted the prospective father, or even require her to notify him either before or after the procedure. It could even establish a “paper abortion,” allowing the father legally to renounce paternity and the obligations accompanying it. None of this exists, however, in social-liberal societies. The choice of whether or not to keep the child belongs exclusively to the woman, with the man granted no say whatsoever. Hence the slogan “her body, her choice.”
Moreover, if bodily autonomy is truly the prevailing principle, how can one explain that it ceases to apply outside reproductive matters? The use of performance-enhancing drugs, in particular, as well as the sale of one’s own organs is prohibited in most modern societies. Even vaccine mandates contradict bodily autonomy.
It is here that the true purpose of this article emerges: to show that the decisions made by social-liberal societies regarding reproductive rights obey a single hidden principle. This principle is the female monopoly of pregnancy. The term pregnancy must be understood here in a broad sense. It does not refer merely to the nine months of gestation, but to the reproductive process as a whole: partner selection, contraception, the legal definition of rape, abortion, access to reproductive technologies, and the establishment of legal parentage. Even decisions relating to breastfeeding, marital obligations, divorce, or child custody must be understood as extensions of this expanded conception of pregnancy.
More concretely, the female monopoly of pregnancy is embodied in laws and cultural norms that seek to maximize women’s decision-making power at every stage of the reproductive process, while externalizing the responsibilities that should logically accompany that power.
This interpretation of reproductive law follows directly from the Left-Female Equivalence, or LFE. The LFE postulates that leftism, understood as the abstract limit toward which social-liberal societies converge, is the political expression of natural female interests and behaviors. Conversely, natural female interests and behaviors are the individual expression of leftism. It follows that, if women do indeed seek to monopolize pregnancy, social-liberal societies should naturally seek to institutionalize this monopoly at the societal level.
In the first article, the LFE was justified through examples drawn from everyday life and unrelated to reproduction. The present article instead applies the LFE to reproduction, and for good reason: whereas female preferences are generally contextual, and therefore contradictory, the monopoly of pregnancy displays remarkable consistency. This consistency makes it possible to derive leftist choices directly from a single principle, without having to understand female preferences in detail. That principle is precisely the monopoly of pregnancy. It is therefore as though evolution had encoded a cold rationality into female preferences relating to reproduction. The fact that these matters are, in practice, discussed in the language of emotion changes nothing.
If this hypothesis is correct, the grand principles of leftism would not be the true driving forces of reproductive law. Whether bodily autonomy, the non-commodification of the body, or the best interests of the child, these principles would serve only to conceal their actual function: maximizing female choice while externalizing its costs.
Returning to abortion, France, for example, decided to enshrine it in the Constitution even though it was not seriously under threat there. To do so, the clause introduced into the Constitution by President Macron explicitly contains the word “woman”. France thus decided to break with the sex-neutrality it ordinarily holds so dear in order to guarantee women a monopoly over abortion.
The maximization of female choice can also be seen in the evolution of the notion of what counts as living. On the one hand, the category of living beings continues to expand in modern societies, encompassing ever more animal species. Even certain insects favored by women, such as bees or ladybugs, are now perceived as sentient beings worthy of protection. On the other hand, the threshold at which the human fetus is regarded as living is pushed ever later. Abortion was once limited, for example, to twelve weeks. Today, social-liberal societies extend it to sixteen, eighteen, or even twenty-four weeks. Moreover, when an abortion is performed beyond the legal time limit, leftism ensures that the woman concerned risks nothing: only the physician who performs the procedure is punished. In France, Article L2222-4 of the Public Health Code goes so far as to specify that “under no circumstances may the woman be considered an accomplice” to an illegal abortion.
Of course, the monopoly of pregnancy would make no sense without control of pregnancy in its literal sense. To guarantee that control, social-liberal societies must therefore eliminate the responsibilities accompanying it. Recognizing the fetus as a legal person in its own right would, for example, make it possible to prosecute a mother for negligence during pregnancy. This would, however, create the risk of convicting the 2% of pregnant women who still allow themselves at least one glass of alcohol per day. The same would apply to pregnant women who use drugs, or who engage in risky behaviors liable to affect the unborn child.
To preserve this female monopoly, leftism must consequently refuse to treat the fetus as a full legal person. This is exactly what France does. This absence of full recognition then produces two complementary effects:
immunity for the pregnant woman, who cannot be held responsible for harm inflicted upon her unborn child, whether that harm results from negligence or malicious acts;
the exclusion of the father, who possesses neither decision-making power, nor a right to information, nor any remedy when his future child suffers harm. Nor, for that matter, any prenatal visitation right or any right to be present at the birth.
These two asymmetrical principles already structure the law of social-liberal societies. In Canada, for example, the ruling in Dobson v. Dobson explicitly refused to recognize a mother’s civil liability toward her unborn child. On what grounds? Because such recognition would place all pregnant women under judicial surveillance. In Germany, a person suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome attempted to obtain compensation as the “victim of a violent act” committed by her mother. Here again, the courts refused to classify alcohol consumption during pregnancy as an offense, on the grounds that intent could not be proven. While a few conservative American states, such as Alabama or South Carolina, depart from this logic by prosecuting drug-dependent pregnant women who refuse treatment, leftist states, such as New York or California, unsurprisingly conform to the European model of maternal deresponsibilization.
Yet this deresponsibilization of mothers does not mean that no one is held responsible. In certain cases, fathers themselves are (civilly) prosecuted in the mothers’ place. Not for having directly harmed the fetus, but for having failed to control their partner’s behavior. A report by Pregnancy Justice thus identified 56 cases across fourteen American states in which men were accused of neglect for failing to prevent their pregnant partners from using drugs. The man therefore possesses no rights over the pregnancy when it comes to protecting his future child, yet he may nevertheless be convicted for failing to supervise the mother sufficiently. Even to the point of being deprived of his parental rights.
The asymmetry becomes more obvious still when the fetus dies after the legal abortion limit. Two scenarios then arise. If the mother is directly responsible for the death, leftism must show leniency, going so far as to grant her de facto immunity. If, by contrast, the death results from the actions of a third party, for example, in a road accident or an assault, the criminal response must immediately become more severe. In this particular case, the fetus, although deprived of full legal personhood, miraculously becomes visible once again in the eyes of the law.
These are the policies that apply throughout the Anglosphere. Under English law, for example, the killing of a viable fetus beyond 28 weeks constitutes the offense of child destruction. An offense theoretically punishable by life imprisonment. When the act is committed by the mother, however, the sentences imposed remain weak or symbolic. When the perpetrator is a man, by contrast, custodial sentences are handed down, sometimes extending to life imprisonment. In England and Wales more specifically, no pregnant woman may now be held responsible for the death of her fetus. English law has therefore undergone leftization in perfect accordance with the LFE and the monopoly of pregnancy. In the United States, the related concept of feticide, recognized in a majority of states, follows a similar logic: the fetus is legally protected against third parties, but generally not against its mother.
Since 2022, California has even explicitly written this asymmetry into its law. Pregnant women are protected there from all civil or criminal liability for the death of their unborn child. This remains true even when the child dies shortly after birth as a result of the mother’s negligent conduct during gestation. More specifically, AB 2223, codified in the Health and Safety Code sec. 123467 provides: “a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty” based on their own acts or omissions concerning a pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion. In other words, the death of the fetus in itself does not trouble leftism. What troubles it is that the death might be caused by someone other than the mother. Thus, more than the intrinsic value of the fetus, it is the identity of the person who infringes upon the monopoly of pregnancy that determines the criminal-law response.
For the monopoly of pregnancy to make sense, it must also grant women total control over conception. If the LFE is correct, social-liberal societies must therefore criminalize reproductive deception asymmetrically. In this respect, there are four simple theoretical cases:
Case 1: The man deceives the woman and exposes her to the risk of an unwanted pregnancy. This is stealthing in the broad sense: non-consensual condom removal, failure to withdraw as agreed, or any other maneuver exposing the woman to a pregnancy she believed she was avoiding.
Case 2: The woman deceives the man and exposes him to the risk of unwanted fatherhood. This is the female analogue of the first case: lying about taking the pill, sperm theft, or feigning infertility.
Case 3: The woman deprives the man of a pregnancy he believed they both desired. This is pregnancy deprivation by the woman: a concealed abortion, secret contraception, tubal ligation without informing her spouse, or concealment of known infertility. The man believed he was participating in a shared plan for parenthood that did not, in fact, exist.
Case 4: The man deprives the woman of a pregnancy she believed they both desired. This is pregnancy deprivation by the man: a secret vasectomy, lying about his own fertility, or a concealed refusal to impregnate her when the woman had entered the relationship in pursuit of a shared plan for parenthood.
If social-liberal societies genuinely seek to institutionalize the monopoly of pregnancy, behaviors that compromise female choice, Cases 1 and 4, must be criminalized. Conversely, those that give effect to this monopoly, Cases 2 and 3, must be protected. This is the direction observed in modern societies.
First, Case 1. In Canada, England and Wales, and Spain, case law now classifies stealthing as sexual assault. In New Zealand, the act is even directly classified as rape. In France, recent proposals likewise suggest formally incorporating this behavior into the definition of rape. The man who violates the monopoly of gestation therefore faces a severe sentence.
Conversely, how do social-liberal societies avoid treating Case 2, forced fatherhood, as an equivalent sexual assault? By invoking one of their grand principles: bodily autonomy. This, at least, is the approach adopted by the courts in Canada, the United Kingdom, and France. Yet if a man’s lie about wearing a condom invalidates the woman’s consent to the sexual act, why would a woman’s lie about taking the pill not invalidate the man’s consent? The explanation lies in the LFE: it is the risks of pregnancy consented to by women, and by women alone, that determine the validity or invalidity of sexual consent. In other words, the monopoly of pregnancy dictates the contours of the offense. Not bodily autonomy.
Case 3 enjoys even stronger protection. The law guarantees women the right to use contraception in secret or to undergo an abortion without consulting, or even informing, the man who believed he was participating in a shared plan for parenthood. This remains true even when the man is her husband. Bodily autonomy therefore prevails unchallenged here, sacralizing the woman’s choice and excluding the man entirely from the decision of whether or not to have a child.
As for Case 4, pregnancy deprivation by the man, it currently escapes any specific criminalization. For how much longer? If the hypothesis of the monopoly of pregnancy is correct, the leftward drift should eventually fill this gap. To introduce a criminal asymmetry where none yet exists, leftism will most likely invoke arguments disconnected from the question of consent. It will rely, for example, on the natural asymmetry of reproductive time between the sexes: female fertility declines earlier and faster than male fertility. This difference could then be used to justify a harsher penalty against a man whose deception costs his partner part of her fertile years. Activist discourse on social media is already pushing in this direction.
The preceding paragraphs show that social-liberal societies do indeed grant women a monopoly over conception and gestation. For the monopoly of pregnancy to be complete, however, it must extend beyond the birth of the child. This is where paternal filiation comes into play. Why is this so important? Because filiation transforms a more or less uncertain biological fact into a legal obligation, thereby guaranteeing the child access to the father’s resources.
Evolutionary psychology, moreover, reminds us that women naturally seek to secure the investment and resources of the fathers of their children. After all, it is women who bear the greater reproductive cost, from pregnancy to postnatal care, not to mention breastfeeding. Social-liberal societies should consequently institutionalize this female demand. In fact, they already do so through matrimonial law, family benefits, and the various support payments that follow a divorce. France even has a forced-heirship rule that prevents parents from freely disinheriting their children. Establishing paternal filiation thus guarantees a transfer of resources from fathers to their children, even beyond the grave.
For the monopoly of pregnancy to live up to its name, however, the establishment of paternal filiation should primarily be a matter of the mother’s choice. Since women control conception and gestation, any pregnancy carried to term therefore amounts to an implicit female choice: the choice to make a man a father. This explains why, in modern societies, paternal acknowledgment is effected through a simple declaration, without verification and with no time limit. It remains to examine the four possible cases concerning the establishment of paternal filiation. France is, in this respect, a textbook case.
Case 1: a married woman conceives a child with her husband. The mother may then simply allow her husband’s presumption of paternity to operate. Once automatic and difficult to challenge, this presumption now functions as a default rule. The mother may therefore circumvent this rule at her sole discretion. To do so, she need only omit her husband’s name from the child’s birth declaration.
Case 2: an unmarried woman conceives a child with an unmarried man. If the man refuses to acknowledge the child, the final say once again belongs to the mother. Several options are then available to her. First, she may choose to do nothing and thereby retain exclusive parental authority. She may also bring an action for financial support: a procedure that compels the biological father to pay maintenance to the mother without granting him any rights over the child. The mother thus gains access to the father’s resources without losing her monopoly over parenthood. Finally, she may force the man to acknowledge the child by bringing an action to establish paternity. She has the entire duration of the child’s minority in which to do so, that is, eighteen years.
If the mother chooses this last option, French law further provides that biological testing is available as of right. The judge will therefore, in principle, order a DNA test to establish filiation. If the man refuses to undergo the test, the judge may even interpret that refusal as an admission of paternity. The man who becomes a father against his will therefore has no way out.Case 3: a single woman conceives a child with a married man. If the man decides to assume this extramarital paternity, the law allows him to acknowledge the child without having to inform his wife. If he refuses, his mistress then finds herself in the same position as in the previous case: free to demand financial support or to force the establishment of paternity through legal proceedings, that is, through a DNA test. The unfaithful married man is therefore entirely exposed to his mistress’s choice.
Case 4: a married woman conceives a child with a man other than her husband. This case includes paternity fraud. If the mother decides, for example, to conceal her adultery, she need only allow her husband’s presumption of paternity to operate. The child is then automatically recognized as the deceived husband’s. If he subsequently raises the child as his own for five years, the filiation becomes irreversibly locked in under the doctrine of “possession of status.” Once this period has elapsed, the fraudulent paternity can no longer be challenged. This five-year period contrasts sharply with the eighteen years granted to the mother to force a man to acknowledge a child he did not want. Incidentally, in France, private genetic tests are prohibited by law. Officially, to preserve family peace. Unofficially, to preserve female choice.
If the adulterous mother instead wants her lover to acknowledge the child, the law once again makes matters easier for her. The lover may, for example, acknowledge the child before birth through a prenatal declaration of paternity. Even without this, the mother is free to exclude her husband by omitting his name from the birth certificate. She then finds herself in the situation described in Case 2: free to bring an action to establish paternity in order to compel a reluctant lover, or to content herself with an action for financial support. Once again, it is therefore female choice that determines the father of the child.
There is, in fact, a fifth case: one in which the mother ultimately decides not to assume responsibility for the child she nevertheless carried to term. The law then grants her the right to abandon the child entirely legally and in the strictest anonymity, through anonymous birth. Even a married woman may use this procedure without having to inform, or even consult, her spouse. The abandonment moreover becomes final barely two months after the child’s birth. Once this period has elapsed, the law prohibits either parent from acknowledging the child. Fathers who wish to assume their responsibilities are thus forced to anticipate the existence of a child whom the mother is legally entitled to conceal from them. Responsibilities therefore last two months on one side, and eighteen years on the other.
More striking still, in the name of “the best interests of the child,” modern societies now consider it essential that everyone should be able to know their origins. In France, for example, the 2021 Bioethics Law allows children conceived through gamete donation to learn, upon reaching adulthood, the identity of their donor. Yet, in 2024, the European Court of Human Rights took care to reaffirm that this right of access to one’s origins did not apply to children born through anonymous birth. Not even after the death of the mother. A woman who abandons her child may therefore do so under anonymity guaranteed by the state. Suffice it to say that the best interests of the child carry little weight against the monopoly of pregnancy.
To summarize, in France, every woman controls the conception of her child, the conditions of its gestation, and the establishment of its filiation. Every woman also possesses the exclusive right to abandon her child under anonymity guaranteed by the state, with the abandonment becoming final only two months after birth. Although the legislation discussed here is French, the LFE predicts that social-liberal societies will gradually align themselves with all of these norms. If this hypothesis is correct, modern societies therefore seek to maximize women’s decision-making power at every stage of the reproductive process, while externalizing the responsibilities that should logically accompany that power. In other words, they seek to grant women a monopoly of pregnancy. By contrast, the only means these same societies grant to a man wishing to protect himself against any possibility of fatherhood is abstinence.
However, by granting the mistress rights equivalent to those of the legitimate wife, social-liberal societies expose the latter to a dilution of her family wealth in the event of her husband’s infidelity. Such a loss of resources is obviously unacceptable. To prevent this dilution, social-liberal societies could recriminalize adultery, but under two conditions: first, that the deception result in the birth of a child; and second, that this illegitimate child be acknowledged by both adulterous partners. More than the infidelity itself, it is therefore the event responsible for diluting the family estate that would be criminalized. Yet because women control both their pregnancies and the establishment of paternal filiation, they could easily avoid falling within the scope of this offense. Unfaithful men could not.
More generally, the rules governing new reproductive technologies should themselves submit to the female monopoly of pregnancy. Only practices that respect female choice at every stage of the reproductive process should therefore be permitted. Conversely, those that weaken or circumvent it should be strictly regulated, or even prohibited outright.
Allowing a woman to reproduce without the explicit assent of any man, for example, remains perfectly compatible with the monopoly of pregnancy. Nothing therefore stands in the way of single women, infertile women, or lesbian couples using such reproductive technologies. This is precisely the function fulfilled by medically assisted reproduction (MAR) through anonymous sperm banks. As an added benefit, this technique also satisfies the principle of the non-commodification of the body. The anonymous pooling of gametes does not, however, fully maximize female choice, since it deprives the woman of the ability to select the donor directly. From this perspective, directed donation, in its altruistic form, would embody the most leftist position in the LFE sense. To avoid violating the non-commodification of the body, it could moreover be required that the donor and recipient know one another personally. No catalogue-based MAR, at any rate.
The same principle would, of course, apply to surrogacy. If this practice were to be legalized in social-liberal societies, it would be only through its supposedly “ethical” form, that is, its non-commercial and altruistic form. Here again, to avoid catalogue-based surrogacy, the surrogate mother could be required to know the intended parents personally. Moreover, if this ethical surrogacy were accompanied by egg donation, the gamete donor should ideally be a woman different from the surrogate mother. Conception would thus be separated from gestation, while remaining subject to the explicit assent of a woman at every stage of the process.
But what of men? Whether single heterosexuals or homosexuals, the female monopoly of pregnancy requires that fatherhood always arise from a female choice. Their access to reproductive technologies must consequently remain conditional upon the explicit approval of a woman willing to transfer her powers to them. Under such “ethical” surrogacy, a single man would therefore have to obtain the assent of not one, but two women: the egg donor and the gestational carrier. Given the nature of relations between the sexes, a man capable of securing this double female agreement would indeed deserve to become a father.
What, however, would happen if technology made it possible to dispense with women entirely? The creation of artificial oocytes from male cells, combined with ectogenesis, that is, gestation in an artificial womb, would theoretically allow a man to become a father in complete autonomy. In other words, to become a father without relying on either the assent or the body of any woman. No commodification of the body, no violation of bodily autonomy, no forced abandonment of a child. Yet by circumventing female sexual selection and gestation, these technologies would oppose the very foundation of the monopoly of pregnancy. They should therefore be prohibited by leftism.
Unsurprisingly, social-liberal societies have already begun to guard against them. In France, for example, research on the human embryo in vitro is limited to its first fourteen days of development in the name of bioethics. Curiously, this ethical limit of fourteen days becomes fourteen weeks when it comes to authorizing abortion in utero. Does the nature of the embryo change depending on whether it is located in a test tube or in a uterus?
There is one final reproductive technology that modern societies firmly prohibit: cloning. Better still, self-cloning using an artificial womb. Although theoretical, this practice violates none of the grand official principles of modern bioethics. Bodily autonomy? Preserved, since the individual would be using his own genetic material. The non-commodification of the body? Respected, since the procedure would be performed with, upon, and for oneself. As for the best interests of the child, the law already permits MAR for single women: how could it suddenly decree that the absence of a second parent is harmful in this case? Moreover, adopted by its older copy, the clone would be raised by the only being in the world capable of understanding it intimately and anticipating its every need.
Yet precisely because it circumvents female choice, cloning is prohibited everywhere. French law has even made it a “crime against the human species,” punishable by life imprisonment and a fine of 7,500,000 euros when committed by an organized group. A harsher penalty than that prescribed for femicide, then. For our modern societies, creating a life while circumventing pregnancy is therefore more monstrous than taking one.
Modern societies nevertheless grant single men one unconstrained route to fatherhood: adoption. Why this exception? Quite simply because adoption violates no stage of the monopoly of pregnancy. If a child is eligible for adoption, it is only because every reproductive choice has already been made by the same woman. First, she chose to conceive a child with a man, once again of her own choosing. She then chose to carry the pregnancy to term. Finally, she chose to relinquish the child. The man therefore intervenes only at the very end of the chain, once every decision has already been made by the woman. The only power that leftism thus deigns to concede to single men is the power to care for someone else’s child.
Social-liberal societies thus institute a genuine female monopoly of pregnancy. This monopoly does not merely grant women more rights than men. It genuinely seeks to maximize women’s decision-making power at every stage of the reproductive process, while externalizing the responsibilities that should logically accompany that power.