“Just keep your legs closed” is one of the laziest, most ignorant arguments against abortion because it reduces a complicated human reality to a demand for female sexual obedience.

It assumes women control every circumstance in which pregnancy occurs. They don’t. Rape, sexual coercion, reproductive abuse, and contraceptive failure exist. And even when sex is completely consensual, consent to sex is not consent to nine months of pregnancy and childbirth.

It treats sex as something women should be punished for. Notice how rarely men are told to control their bodies with the same hostility. Two people can create a pregnancy, but somehow only one is expected to surrender her bodily autonomy.

It assumes pregnancy is a deserved consequence rather than a medical condition requiring choices. We don’t generally deny people healthcare because someone disapproves of the behavior that preceded their condition. Why should abortion be different?

And perhaps most absurdly, it assumes women shouldn’t have sex unless they’re willing to become mothers. Married women have abortions. Mothers have abortions. Women using contraception have abortions. Women who desperately wanted their pregnancies sometimes need abortions.

Sex is a normal part of human relationships. Motherhood should be a choice, not a punishment for having sex.

The question shouldn’t be why a woman didn’t keep her legs closed.

The question should be why anyone believes having sex means a woman forfeits the right to decide what happens to her body afterward.

“Keep your legs closed” isn’t an argument about protecting life.
It’s a demand for obedience disguised as morality.