James wakes up one morning feeling really heavy. He looks at himself and sees that he has an enormous abdomen. No, he is not mutating into a cockroach… he is pregnant. He is only one amongst others as an epidemic of pregnant men spreads throughout the country. He would like to abort, but, oh, he is too late in his pregnancy to do so. He was supposed to be promoted that day, but, oh, his non-pregnant female colleague receives the promotion. This dystopian story is a mockery of a post-Roe v. Wade America where men would finally realise what they are imposing on women by even thinking of overturning this decision. Quite funny, even if the potential reality is not.
“As the days became weeks, a few things were clear. Women, trans men and non-binary people who menstruated were no longer betting pregnant, neither were trans women. It was cisgender men only, men who had, one could argue, less experience knowing what it viscerally meant to be a woman. Bodies and reproductive systems that hadn’t evolved to carry foetuses suddenly were. And they were tangled in the web of the laws they had made, the lies they had told and the mess they had made.”
Listened to as an audiobook