Shortly after the recent US presidential election, “your body, my choice” began trending up in online discourse. The sentiment is vile. Those who repeat it, or post memes emblazoned with the phrase, do so to threaten women. The meaning of the four-word taunt is clear: “I will have my way with you, whether you like it or not.”

The phrase is a riff on the decades-old feminist chant “my body, my choice.” Those who twist it to deride women surely intend to repudiate feminism. But the irony of “your body, my choice” is that when it comes to abortion, the meaning of the phrase is exactly the same as “my body, my choice.” The anti-feminists and the feminists agree, it seems, on the selectivity of interpersonal boundaries.

Bodily autonomy is an absolute first condition in sexual relations. “No” means no, period. But things get more complicated when a child is conceived, for then there are three people involved, no longer just two. When a woman uses “my body, my choice” to justify abortion, she is telling the baby in her womb, “your body, my choice,” the same thing that men say when they threaten a woman with sexual violence: “your body, my choice,” or in other words, “Your autonomy means nothing—I get to decide what happens to your body.”

Partly in response to the multiplying online threats, but also as a protest against the outcome of the election—which many women see as the beginning of the end of easy access to abortion—some women in the West have begun to imitate South Korea’s 4B movement. “4B” is shorthand for a list of things that women refuse to do on feminist grounds. Basically a modern version of Lysistrata, the gist of 4B is that women are to have nothing to do with men.

A standoff thus ensues over the double-edged autonomy we can observe in the strange parallel between “my body, my choice” and “your body, my choice.” Both women and men can be seen as insisting on autonomy while refusing it to others. On the one hand, some men claim the right to violate a woman at will, a heinous crime. However, if the rape implied in the crude taunts such men use results in pregnancy, the same men would surely prioritize their own autonomy and refuse to accept responsibility for the new life they created. On the other hand, some women close themselves off from opposite-sex interaction on the grounds that their autonomy is not being respected (which indeed it isn’t). But the same women would also argue that they should be free to disrespect the autonomy of a helpless third party—a child in utero. “My body, my choice” and “your body, my choice”—autonomy is a sword that cuts both ways.

It seems to me that the way out of this impasse is to think in terms of what St. John Paul II taught about sexual relations: love and responsibility. Women are right to refuse to have anything to do with men who act as irresponsibly and unlovingly as the “your body, my choice” trolls proliferating online. But the story cannot possibly end there. Because it is destined not to: Human bodies, male and female, are very obviously created to go together. There is deep meaning in how we are physically made. Yes, sex can be weaponized and wielded in hatred. But that does not mean that sex is inherently evil. It does not mean, as the “your body, my choice” crowd mistakenly believes, that sexual intercourse can never be a loving and responsible act. When a man and a woman give of themselves freely to one another, a most remarkable thing can occur—a new, third person can grow out of the love of two. When we choose to behave selflessly, with love for the other and responsibility for our actions, then two separate bodies become one—“ours”—and a new body—a little “his” or “hers”—can thereby follow. “Your” and “my” are overcome.

Human beings are not made for autonomy, but for self-giving. The body of the female is never, ever to be approached without her complete participation in a mutual act of selflessness. But once autonomy is put aside, we humans find our fulfillment in autonomy’s opposite. Bodies and choices are not weapons and walls, but ways to know the other, if only we will learn to love. It takes tremendous courage to do so. Humility, too. Leaving the fortress of the self—giving up on the “my body, my choice” line and willing the good of the other over the safety of the status quo—is an admission that the self is limited. This is not an easy thing to accept. But we find our true calling only in making the hardest choice of all—to invite the other in, instead of using threats, violence, and chanted slogans to keep the other out.