This Article reveals how the most common sex equality arguments for abortion—those grounded in anti-stereotype principles—are internally inconsistent because they themselves rely on stereotypes. Equal Protection arguments for abortion rights that assume that compelled motherhood is different than compelled fatherhood, that compelled gestation necessarily leads to compelled motherhood and that compelled child-bearing leads to compelled child-rearing fail to acknowledge that all of those assumptions, however true as a matter of social fact, rely on stereotypes. Arguments for abortion rights cannot rely on differences between how motherhood and fatherhood are experienced without relying on gendered stereotypes about parenthood. Gestation, on the other hand, is not a stereotype. It is a physiological burden that only those with the ability to gestate endure. Unless equality arguments for abortion rights are willing to incorporate stereotypes into their analysis in order to provide opportunity for women who conform to gendered norms, Equal Protection arguments for abortion rights must ground themselves in the physiological, not social, reality of the consequences of gestation.

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