Patriarchy is a social system that is practiced and upheld by both women and men, and the evangelical Christians who are driving these laws are particularly engulfed in patriarchal hierarchies. Scoffing at and mocking the women who say that patriarchy has a huge part in the draconian laws that are being enacted is to misunderstand what that term means and to turn a blind eye to what is actually happening because that is exactly what is taking place. Overwhelmingly these laws are being enacted by legislative bodies made up nearly exclusively of men who firmly uphold and endorse the social system of patriarchy, and so even though there are women who might also support these laws, they are ipso facto not the ones putting them into place. His failure to separate out opinions on abortion and legislation about abortion is a huge failing on his part, as is his mocking disdain for the "angry white women" who are up in arms and stalking Justice Kavanaugh, etc., but that’s what he frequently does — conflates two things that are not equivalent or sometimes, even related. BTW, that's what Act Up used to do, as per my gay rights friend. Much of the advancement of gay rights took place in the courts, and they would stake out judge's homes and loudly protest. It was highly effective and part of the free speech rights enshrined in the Constitution. If it turned anyone against their cause, it wasn’t enough to counter just how much this sort of advocacy worked.
As already noted, not everyone who dislikes abortion is a part of this dynamic, but pretty much everyone who wants to force it on others is - and it is a patriarchal dynamic. Additionally, as one commenter pointed out about D's objection to the term slavery, "Nobody should use the word “enslaved” in this context, but forcing a girl or a woman through 40 weeks of pregnancy, then childbirth which often causes lifelong injuries, then 18 years of raising a child is close. Not to mention the death rate for pregnant/birthing women in this country is very real: 23 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies. Forcing little girls raped by their uncles to go through pregnancy and childbirth is absolutely barbaric and disgusting, yet plenty of “prolifers” would LOVE to see that happen. To them, the fetus’ life matters more than the pregnant person and that’s not an exaggeration."
It certainly is a type of involuntary servitude and a complete loss of authority over your own body (which are both major components of slavery) so although that word may not be the best, his disdain for those who are using it without any recognition of just how similar enforced pregnancy is in many ways is callous and condescending — particularly in light of how devastated the women who are saying that feel right now.
This last sentence of his is probably what pushed my buttons the most: "Listening to the two extremes screaming at each other about who is murdering women and babies is getting a little tiring." This is the ultimate display of privilege, that he is tired of hearing about a topic that is causing so much anguish and distress. It's rhetorical for him, but it's not for the distraught women who feel absolutely gut-punched by all of this and are reacting accordingly. They don't have the option to be tired of hearing about it because it is very literally affecting their lives in the most personal and visceral way imaginable. They have had it made clear to them that their lives are secondary to those of potential lives and he's tired of hearing about it.
I don't know how to make this any clearer to you than what I have already said about imagining how you'd feel if you were Black and had just been told that segregation, after 50 years of being dismantled, was now up to the states and a whole bunch of them had trigger laws ready to reinstate it. I am not kidding that it is that exact same level of despair and horror that so many women felt. Even though I knew the ruling was coming, it was still devastating when it was really made real. I didn't even cry for 5 days because I just couldn't even go there - it was just too overwhelmingly dehumanizing and I didn't want to have to face it. This level of pain is what Dancova is complaining about without any notion of how insensitive and callous that is. And he's making up stories about the impact of that pain being expressed which have no basis in discernable fact just that he can sneer at these people who are hurting.
People can be against abortion; that doesn't make them evil. But the people who are forcing that on others deserve most of the things that they are being called — and if there is a bit of hyperbole that is in direct proportion to how upset and enraged these women are. And as already stipulated, there is no evidence whatsoever that this shocking failure on the part of so many women to take their dehumanization stoically has driven any moderate person away from supporting whatever position that they already held.
