When a female gets pregnant, from the moment that egg is fertilized, it sets in motion an irreversible chain of events – physiological, emotional, and physical.

Female mammals start out as one animal. When she gets pregnant, she goes through the most energetically expensive processes that a mammal will ever experience. She grows a baby, she gives birth, she lactates… she never returns to her “pre-baby” self in terms of physiology, physicality, emotionality and cognition.

She is never the same animal again.

Motherhood isn’t as simple as “Oh I think I’d like to have a baby now” and you suddenly have a baby and everything is great. It’s an entire identity overhaul.

Some of the changes are great. Our brains become more efficient at multitasking, stress management, and organization.

But we change, completely, as mothers.

Male Mammals and Motherhood

Male mammals rarely take on an active parenting role. They are generally absent at births, which makes sense considering that there really isn’t much (read: nothing) that they can accomplish from it. By the time a mammalian female gives birth, the father of her offspring has likely fathered additional offspring by different females, and it’s unlikely that she will see him again (depending on the social system of the species in question).

Human males should not have any power on deciding when or if motherhood happens for a female. Males provide one cell. Females do the rest.

By virtue of their gender, the men who make legislative decisions about female reproductive biology are doing so based on ZERO experience and understanding of what these processes mean.

It’s ridiculous.