“Playing God.”
That’s what they say. When a woman decides she will not carry a pregnancy. When she decides her body is her own. When she decides she will survive.
“You’re playing God.”
We play God every day. We just don’t call it that when it saves a man.
Chemo kills cells that God made. We call it treatment. Transplants move organs that God placed. We call it miracle. Ventilators breathe for bodies that God let fail. We call it life support. IVF creates life in a lab. We call it blessing. C-sections cut women open to save mother and child. We call it medicine. Every intervention is playing God. Every single one. We celebrate them. We fund them. We pray for them. No one stands outside an oncology ward with a sign that says “Let God’s will be done.”
But when a woman decides she will not be pregnant, suddenly we’ve crossed a line. Suddenly we’ve interfered with the divine plan. Suddenly we’re playing God.
Bullshit.
The gender of God isn’t an accident. Men play God with war and we call it leadership. Men play God with capital and we call it innovation. Men play God with women’s bodies and we call it law.
Viagra helps men fuck. God’s will.
Birth control helps women choose. Playing God.
The pattern isn’t subtle. When men intervene, it’s divine providence. When women intervene, it’s sin.
This isn’t new. In 1847, a doctor named James Young Simpson used ether to ease the pain of childbirth. The clergy lost their goddamn minds. They called it blasphemy. They cited Genesis. God told Eve that she would bring forth children in sorrow. Pain was the curse. Pain was the punishment. Pain was God’s will. To remove it was to defy the Almighty. Simpson was attacked from pulpits across Scotland and England. Women were meant to suffer because God said so. The argument hasn’t changed because the purpose hasn’t changed. They just found new ways to say it.
The purpose was never life. The purpose was control. It has always been control.
Josseli Barnica died in a Houston hospital in 2021. She was seventeen weeks pregnant. The fetus wasn’t viable. She was dilating. She was miscarrying. The doctors could have intervened. They could have emptied her uterus. They didn’t. Texas law SB 8 had made them afraid. They waited. They watched her die on a schedule written by men who will never have to face it. They sent her home. She came back with a fever. Sepsis. She died three days later. She left behind a husband and a daughter. She died because men in a legislature decided that her life was worth less than a fetus that was already dying.
Nevaeh Crain was eighteen years old. Texas. She was six months pregnant. She went to the emergency room with a fever. Three different hospitals. Three chances to save her. Each one sent her home. The fetus still had a heartbeat. They couldn’t intervene. By the time they could, she was in septic shock. She died. She was a child herself. She died because the state decided her suffering was holy.
Amber Thurman was a mother in Georgia. She took the abortion pill. Complications. She went to the hospital. She needed a D&C. The doctors waited. Georgia’s six-week ban had just taken effect. They were afraid. By the time they operated, she was dead. She left behind a six-year-old son. She died because politicians called her death protection.
These aren’t tragedies. These are executions. The weapon is the law. The trigger is the pen. The blood is on the hands of every man who signed the bill and every preacher who blessed it.
The blade falls harder on some than others. Black women die in childbirth at three to four times the rate of white women. College-educated Black women die at higher rates than white women without a high school diploma. The “playing God” argument is applied with extra force to women of color. The history is a double wound. The state played God when it cut into Black women’s bodies without consent. Fannie Lou Hamer was given a hysterectomy without her knowledge in 1961. She went in for a minor procedure. She woke up missing her uterus. Mississippi appendectomies, they called them. Three out of four Black women at that hospital were sterilized without consent. The state played God when it decided Black women shouldn’t have more children. Now the state plays God when it decides they must. The control is the constant. The method changes. The master doesn’t. Forced sterilization for women they don’t want reproducing. Forced pregnancy for women they do. Either way, the woman doesn’t choose. Either way, the state decides. Either way, she’s the vessel, not the human. She’s the field, not the farmer. She’s the property, not the owner.
Class sharpens the blade.
Rich women will always get abortions. They always have. They fly to other states. They pay cash. They have doctors who will list another diagnosis on the chart. The laws only punish poor women. The wealthy play God with impunity. The poor die playing God at all. A woman with money makes a choice. A woman without money makes a call to a crisis pregnancy center where a volunteer with no medical training tells her Jesus has a plan for her baby. No one asks if Jesus has a plan for her.
Follow the money. The adoption industry is worth billions. Crisis pregnancy centers, funded by your tax dollars, don’t offer medical care. They offer guilt. They offer Jesus. They offer a path to giving up the baby. Politicians fundraise off the issue. The industry needs women pregnant and desperate. The industry needs them to believe they have no choice. The industry plays God and calls it charity while it harvests infants from the poor and sells them to the rich.
The counter-argument comes. “But abortion ends a life.” So does chemo. So does pulling the plug. So does war. So does the death penalty. So does denying healthcare. So does poverty. They don’t mourn the cells in the petri dish at the IVF clinic. They mourn the control they lose when a woman decides for herself. The standard is applied to one procedure. One gender. One purpose. The standard isn’t about life. It’s about who decides. And who is never allowed to.
The same institution that blessed the slave ship, blesses the forced pregnancy. The same theology that told women to submit tells them to carry. The same men who claim to protect life send women home to die. The power has never been about the fetus. The power has been about the woman. About making sure she knows her body isn’t her own. About making sure she knows her life isn’t her priority. About making sure she knows that someone else gets to decide if she lives or dies.
They play God every day and call it medicine. They deny women the same right and call it morality. The blood is on their hands. The bodies are in the ground. The children are growing up without mothers.
“Playing God” is a weapon used by people who are already playing God. They just call it law. They call it faith. They call it protection.
They call it anything but what it is.
Control.
And women are dying for it.
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