Are Men Really as Toxic as We’re Told?
When’s the last time a man killed his own baby because it was inconvenient?
For decades, we have been told that men are the problem. Men are aggressive, dangerous, and incapable of genuine care. Women, on the other hand, are described as natural nurturers, protectors of life, and the moral foundation of society.
It is a neat story. It fits easily into political speeches, social media slogans, and school curricula. It is repeated so often that many accept it without question. But a story repeated often is not the same as a fact.
If we are going to make serious claims about the nature of men and women, we should be willing to compare those claims with reality. And reality is not always kind to popular narratives.
When is the last time a man killed his own baby because it was inconvenient? Men commit violence, yes. But most of that violence is directed outward, often toward strangers or in the course of defending something. Abortion, on the other hand, is the deliberate killing of one’s own child. It is a decision overwhelmingly made by women.
The Narrative vs. the Numbers
In the United States, women are the decision-makers in the vast majority of abortions. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 92 percent of abortions are performed in the first trimester. The top reasons given are:
“Having a child would interfere with my work, school, or other responsibilities” (74 percent)
“I can’t afford a child right now” (73 percent)
“I don’t want to be a single mother” (48 percent)
Life-threatening medical conditions account for well under 2 percent of abortions. The overwhelming majority are not about survival but about avoiding inconvenience or difficulty.
Contrast that with male violence. Men commit roughly 77 percent of all homicides in the United States, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. But those crimes overwhelmingly involve strangers, acquaintances, or rival associates. They are not typically acts against one’s dependent children. When a man does kill his child, it is seen as an unthinkable violation of paternal responsibility.
In war, where most killing is done by men, the targets are usually other combatants. However brutal war is, it is often undertaken with the stated aim of defending territory, securing resources, or protecting one’s people. That does not make it good, but it is in a fundamentally different moral category from terminating the life of one’s child for reasons of convenience.
The contradiction is apparent. We condemn men for violent acts, often against strangers, while celebrating or excusing women for ending the lives of their children. If the word “toxic” is to mean anything, its application should be based on the nature of the act, not the gender of the actor.
Violence and Purpose
Men’s capacity for violence has historically been tied to protection. In virtually every civilization, men were the ones sent to defend the community from outside threats. This pattern is not cultural bias; it is biological and historical reality. Men have, on average, greater physical strength and higher levels of risk tolerance, traits that made them the first line of defense when survival was at stake.
Wars, as destructive as they are, have often been justified on grounds of defense or survival. In World War II, for example, the Allied forces — made up overwhelmingly of men — engaged in a global conflict to stop the spread of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The immediate objective was to prevent conquest and atrocities on a scale that would dwarf any single battle. American men left their families, risked their lives, and in many cases never returned, not because they disliked peace, but because defending their nation required it.
This pattern appears even in smaller-scale conflicts. When cities and towns have been under threat — from Viking raids in medieval Europe to tribal warfare in pre-colonial Africa — the men stood between the attackers and the home. The purpose was clear: protect the community, protect the women and children, protect the means of survival.
Violence in criminal contexts tells a similar story, though in a far more negative light. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting data, men commit about 77 percent of homicides. Yet even here, the vast majority of victims are other men. Violence between men is most often tied to disputes over resources, territory, dominance, or criminal enterprise — none of which is morally noble, but all of which are external. Intragender violence between men may be destructive, but it is rarely aimed at the deliberate killing of one’s biological offspring.
This is where abortion stands apart. It is not the defense of one’s family, but the destruction of it from within. It is not an act of desperation against an invader, but a calculated decision to end the life of one’s dependent child — often under peaceful, stable circumstances where both mother and child are physically safe.
When men commit the rare and tragic act of filicide — the killing of their child — it is treated by society as one of the most horrifying breaches of moral duty. Legal systems across cultures have viewed it as particularly egregious because it violates the natural order: parents are supposed to protect, not destroy. Yet when women do the same thing through abortion, it is framed as a right, even a moral good. The principle has been inverted.
In short, male violence, whether justifiable or not, has historically been directed outward — toward perceived threats, rival groups, or in defense of a cause. Abortion, as practiced overwhelmingly by women, is directed inward, at the most vulnerable member of one’s own family. That moral distinction is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of the relationship between the killer and the killed.
The Betrayal of the Nurturer
Biology equips women to sustain life. From conception onward, the female body begins constructing an environment designed to protect and nourish a developing child. The womb is one of nature’s most secure shelters. The mother’s body regulates temperature, provides oxygen, delivers nutrients, and guards against external harm. After birth, the body is prepared to feed and comfort the infant, creating a bond that is both physical and emotional.
Across history and cultures, this capacity has been seen not just as a biological function but as a moral role. Ancient societies often venerated mothers as symbols of continuity and protection. Even in times of scarcity or danger, mothers were expected to sacrifice for the survival of their children. Literature, religion, and oral traditions all reflected this — from biblical accounts of mothers willing to give up their own lives for their children, to folk tales where a mother’s care ensures the hero’s survival.
That expectation was not just sentiment. It was rooted in reality: human survival depended on it. An infant abandoned by its mother in pre-modern societies had little chance of survival.
Abortion turns this role upside down. It takes the very environment designed for protection and makes it the place of execution. The life-giver becomes the life-taker.
This inversion is not rare. It is common and legally sanctioned. According to CDC data, over 600,000 abortions occur each year in the United States alone. Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, more than 60 million abortions have been performed. The Guttmacher Institute reports that the majority of these decisions are made not because of threats to the mother’s life or health, but for reasons tied to lifestyle, finances, or personal preference.
The contradiction becomes even sharper when viewed through legal standards. If a man assaults a pregnant woman and causes the death of her unborn child, many states prosecute it as homicide or feticide. That is, the law recognizes the unborn child as a victim when the harm comes from someone else. But if the mother chooses to end the same life voluntarily, it is classified as a protected right. The moral identity of the act changes not because of the child’s humanity, but because of the identity of the person ending it.
This double standard would be unthinkable in other contexts. If a firefighter set a building ablaze, the crime would be greater because his role is to prevent such destruction. If a doctor harmed a patient intentionally, the betrayal would be compounded because the very purpose of the profession is to heal. In the same way, when a mother — the one person biologically and socially charged with protecting the child — becomes the agent of death, the betrayal is profound.
Modern politics has sanitized this reversal with language. “Choice.” “Reproductive rights.” “Healthcare.” These terms obscure the reality that abortion ends a distinct human life. They also shield the act from the moral scrutiny applied to nearly every other form of violence. A soldier who kills an enemy combatant will still face questions of justification. A mother who ends the life of her child under legal abortion will face applause from political leaders and cultural institutions.
The image of women as default nurturers survives only by ignoring what these statistics reveal. When the role designed for protection is used for destruction, it is not nurturing. It is betrayal. And it is a betrayal society has chosen not only to tolerate but to celebrate.
Why This Matters to Me
This issue is not abstract to me. It is personal.
I am adopted. As far as I know, my biological parents were young, unmarried, and unprepared. By every cultural standard used to justify abortion, I was an accident. In the language of the present day, I was “bad timing.” They were too young. Not married. Still in school. Not the right time. Going to ruin our lives.
If abortion had been as accessible and socially accepted then as it is now, the odds are high that I would not be here to write these words. That is not melodrama. It is a recognition of how these decisions are made.
It is sobering to think that my existence may have been weighed against the convenience of others and found wanting. That someone could have looked at my life before it began and decided that it was better for their plans if it never happened.
But my life has not been a net loss to anyone’s plans. I have been there for people in moments when they thought they could not survive. I have been the one they called when they needed help. I have been a bridge for messages of encouragement, hope, and direction — messages that often did not start with me, but that would not have reached the right person without me to carry them.
Life is not just the sum of one’s accomplishments. It is the sum of the lives touched, the moments changed, and the good that is passed along without fanfare. Every human being has that potential. When a life is ended before birth, all of that potential is erased — not just for the child, but for every person they would have influenced.
I was not bad-timing. I was not an inconvenience. I matter to this world. And so does every child that our culture dismisses as disposable.
The Political Shield
The abortion industry and its political defenders rarely describe abortion in concrete terms. Instead, they operate in the language of abstraction. The focus is on rights, autonomy, and personal circumstances. The child is almost never mentioned.
This is not an oversight. It is a strategy. When the discussion stays on concepts like “choice” or “reproductive freedom,” it is easier to avoid confronting the act itself. When abortion is discussed as “healthcare,” the public is encouraged to think of it in the same category as appendectomies or blood tests — routine, benign, and morally neutral.
The reality is different. In a second-trimester dilation and evacuation abortion, the child’s body is dismembered piece by piece. In chemical abortions, a combination of drugs stops the heart and induces labor to expel the dead child. In some late-term procedures, a lethal injection is administered directly to the heart before delivery. These are not political talking points. They are descriptions from medical literature and abortion providers’ procedural manuals.
The need for euphemism becomes clear when you examine public opinion. Polling consistently shows that Americans are far less supportive of abortion when they are told what the procedure entails. A 2023 Marist poll found that while a slim majority support legal abortion in the first trimester, that number drops sharply when second-trimester and third-trimester procedures are described in detail.
Politicians and advocacy groups know this. That is why the conversation is framed around slogans rather than specifics. It is why legislation like the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act — which would require medical care for infants who survive abortion attempts — receives near-uniform opposition from pro-choice politicians, even acknowledging the existence of a living infant post-procedure risks undermining the narrative that abortion is about “choice” rather than ending a life.
The result is a moral shield. Not a shield for the unborn, but for those ending their lives. The language protects the act from the same scrutiny that would be applied to any other form of killing.
Behind the Curtain of “Healthcare”
In 2015, undercover journalist David Daleiden attended a National Abortion Federation trade show hosted at one of Texas’s largest Planned Parenthood facilities. What he recorded stripped away the euphemisms and revealed the business reality of abortion.
“Partial birth abortion… the baby is being birthed, legs out, and as the head and neck are still in the womb, they snip the back of the neck and suck the brains out.” – Undercover recording, National Abortion Federation, 2015
The footage shows senior Planned Parenthood staff casually discussing the harvesting and sale of fetal body parts, even “freezing conjoined twin babies as prize specimens.” Far from being a rare abuse, this was described as standard practice — five to six “samples” a week from a single facility.
When the videos were released by the Center for Medical Progress, rather than prosecuting the people involved, the state raided Daleiden’s home and seized the evidence. Planned Parenthood remains taxpayer-funded, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Flipping the Script
We are told to fear “toxic masculinity” as a defining social threat. The term is used broadly to encompass aggression, dominance, and any behavior deemed insufficiently sensitive. Yet the largest mass killing in modern America is not war, gang violence, or terrorism. It is abortion — an act carried out overwhelmingly by women, most often against their own children.
The statistics are staggering. Since 1973, more than 60 million abortions have been performed in the United States. That is more than the combined deaths of Americans in every war from the Revolutionary War through today, multiplied several times over. In recent years, nearly one in five pregnancies in the United States has ended in abortion.
If men were responsible for such numbers against their own offspring, it would dominate every headline, every campaign speech, and every public school curriculum. It would be held up as definitive proof of male moral bankruptcy. Instead, the numbers are met with slogans, marches, and political applause.
If men are so dangerous, why are they not the ones ending the lives of their offspring by the millions? If women are the moral compass, why are they responsible for the most intimate and irreversible form of violence more than any other group?
The answer is not that one sex is inherently good and the other evil. It is that human beings, regardless of gender, are capable of both. The difference lies in what society chooses to condemn and what it chooses to excuse. And right now, our culture excuses — even celebrates — a level of destruction that would be unthinkable if the genders were reversed.
The question is not simply whether men are toxic. The question is how much destruction we are willing to ignore when it is committed by the gender we have been taught to regard as morally superior.
Arnell’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. I don’t run ads. I don’t hide my work behind paywalls. Everything I write is for everyone, especially the people no one else will speak for.
If you value this work, you can help keep it going:
Become a Paid Subscriber: https://mrchr.is/help
Join The Resistance Core (Founding Member): https://mrchr.is/resist
Buy Me a Coffee: https://mrchr.is/give
Sharing and restacking also helps more than you know.