Faith & Spirit Quote by Clare Boothe Luce

A line like this doesn’t argue so much as it detonates. Clare Boothe Luce frames the debate over women’s autonomy as a clash between biology and intellect, then rigs the outcome with a single, sharp question. The rhetorical move is classic Luce: take an opponent’s premise (God, design, “natural” roles) and flip it into a trap. If you insist on divine intention, she implies, you have to account for the inconvenient evidence of women’s minds. The joke carries a blade.

The intent is provocation with purpose. “Think with our wombs” is deliberately coarse, almost vulgar, because the underlying social expectation is itself demeaning: that a woman’s political and moral judgment should be derived from reproductive destiny. Luce’s phrasing turns that expectation into something you can hear and recoil from. It also refuses the soft-focus language that often surrounds “women’s issues,” insisting that the stakes are about personhood, not etiquette.

The subtext is a critique of paternalism disguised as piety. She’s not just taking aim at religious arguments; she’s skewering the way “God’s will” gets deployed as a ventriloquist’s dummy for male authority. As a dramatist, Luce understands timing: the question lands because it’s unanswerable without conceding her point.

Context matters. Luce moved in political and cultural circles where women were expected to be ornamental or maternal before they were rational agents. The line reads like a rejoinder aimed at a room that’s been smiling politely while denying women full citizenship. It works because it’s funny, yes, but because it makes the opposition’s worldview sound absurd in its own words.