Many a mother reminds her growing daughter, from time to time as the youngster is better able to understand her own future and upcoming biological role, "girls get pregnant." I have a brother and I know boys are told "don't get girls pregnant."

Pregnancy may take two people, but once achieved, it is by definition, a strictly female process. There are indeed laws about paternity and child support and laws about a father's responsibility to his children, but the pregnancy - carrying the child and giving it birth - is what makes us females.

That means that 53-percent of the human race carries the young in their bodies - whether or not they choose to exercise that option. Sometimes women are infertile and that is a whole other issue I will not get sidetracked into, but what unites us as women - whether we have ever born children or not - is our collective and overarching social role and many laws about us are written with that biological reality as a backdrop. Many religious codes are written with that as a backdrop. Many social norms stem from that and while I readily agree men rape other men, the crime of rape has a particular significance when it comes to women.

Social institutions such as courtship - let alone marriage - have this biological reality as an under-pinning. Those opposed to "test tube babies" or who see cloning as dangerous and irresponsible reveal their own thoughts on the meta-message about the meaning of the womb.

And as many a mother will, mother will sit down with her daughter and in hushed tones and sober voice explain what happens when a girl lets a boy "have his way." In another era - and maybe even today - if a girl had given access to her birth vault to another, others would not want her and we're not just talking intercourse. A widow (or widowers, as this does include men) or divorced person will find "replacement" mates to sometimes be reluctant to take on the mate-and-brood.

A billion years back in the pre-Cambrian organic soup - or was it Eden, take your pick - simple cell division (like in the "eternal" amoeba) was replaced by sexual reproductions. It was then that everything changed profoundly. There now were "sexes" and sexual reproduction. Once the process was underway, it could not be willed to stop. Once the female was impregnated, short of a gestation malfunction or the female's death - the process ground inexorably to its conclusion.

Humans being what they are, their societies are complex and given the higher brain functions that they have - they are makers of tools - tools that manage and control human sexual reproduction were invented and at the center of this has been the womb - make sure there is no egg there. Make sure the sperm do not arrive. If they do, kill the sperm. If the sperm nevertheless find an ova, remove the ova from the birth vault.

This is a long way from the pre-Cambrian ooze - or if you prefer, Eden.

It is clear that the woman's birth vault is at issue, And as every women knows in a visceral way, it is she who will be carrying the baby inside her body and who will give it birth and suckle it. Sometimes in a woman's life, it simply is a hardship to the woman to do this and she wants the ova removed. For example, she may have been raped - or maybe the barrier devices failed, or maybe she was foolish and took no precautions. It seems the way in which the impregnation happens is important to many people. If the woman is raped, most say the ova can be removed. If she was consenting, yet foolish, then she should "suffer the consequences." And if the condom ruptured, "well those are the breaks."

At this point in the megillah, the usual arguments center about it being solely the woman's right to decide if to continue the pregnancy, or if that at the moment the sperm made its way inside the ova, God got involved and placed a soul inside as well - thus taking it out of the woman's hands But whatever the case, church and state get involved and while there are financial and legal responsibilities regarding the man, the woman is "stuck."

Women's collective psychology on this runs a bit different than the concept cooked up by a group of men who have taken vows of celibacy and live with one another in a huge palace decorated with pictures painted by Michaelangelo.

Many women - especially those who are educated and who live above the poverty line and have access to reasonably adequate health care - plan to give a certain number of births during a certain time and under their own control. The number seems to hold constant at about two or three in cases where the woman can control this number. If the woman is unable to control this number, and she is fertile, it can go much higher.

There simply is no analog for men. Some sultans have harems and take care of many children. Some polygamous societies have a dozen or more children born to sister-wives, but once again, the birthing is spread out within the kith.

A typical pregnancy has physical consequences and later social ones. Like it or not, the nature of many human females is to care for the young. Although there certainly are many exceptions, even predators understand that the young are off-limits - perhaps because if they kill the young of the prey, the young of the predator are likewise endangered - perhaps it is hardwired in. What we all know to be the case is that females (and a great many males) are generally hardwired to take care of the young.

Among some animals the mother takes care of the young until she chases them up a tree. As many a human mother will advise her young female child, "for us, it is much longer." A child may be five years of age before the mother can send it to school, or if she is wealthy, have another female come into the household and care for the children. If the mother has three children spaced over six years, the basic family takes a decade.

Most females who have a choice will choose mates who will be reliable and help create and raise healthy babies. Many a mother will end up - either through desire or hard-wire biology, you decide - caring for the young until the children are at least into their teens. This is a ten to fifteen or even thirty-year project.

And not all women choose it. Many women of my era, hard-wired or not, had valid reasons not to have families and chose not to adopt or bring in surrogate fathers.

These are choices unique to the women's experience and while some mothers will tell their daughters of "the tender trap," and many women feel the most alive they have ever been while bearing and raising children, it must in my view, nonetheless, be a voluntary thing because of the long-term consequences it has on all involved.

Some will say, "but where's the 'baby' in all this?" The human race does not face extinction because a mother chooses to delay or even to never take a pregnancy to term. Yes, there are those who believe the moment that a sperm pierces the ova, it is a "baby." But there are other people who do not believe that. It is interesting that if each sperm in a single human male ejaculation were placed into an ova one-on-one, it would increase the population of the United States by 50-percent. The scale of these numbers somehow seems out of step with the painting on the ceiling where the man in the beard touches the finger of the naked Adam.

Nature is filled with over-capacity and redundant systems and while we can all get sentimental about pictures taken in utero of a "baby" sucking its thumb, it is someone else who has to deal with the reality of the pregnancy.

There simply is no male analog for what the female goes through, but what is central here is that she is the one who is most effected by the birth. She carries the child and usually ends up having to raise it and, in the scheme of things, forgoes other opportunities.

In a recent Supreme Court debate, the principle seemed to be advanced that a government that could prevent abortion, by implication, can also enforce an abortion. This argument, hence, is not about "life," but about power - the power to control the reproduction of the citizenry, specifically women who carry the birth vaults.

Women's society is largely centered around these biological considerations and it is the women whose lives are profoundly altered by bringing babies into the world.

Human reproduction issues are just that...human, but it is the woman who bears the young and bears the greater burden and as we all know, a point of law is that the one who bears the greatest burden ought to have the most say. If it has something to do with one's own body, then the say should be seen as a fundamental human right.

Alas, in the case of women, this seems to be one right too important to be entrusted to them.