A common tale is the man who gets a girl pregnant, and then pressures her into having an abortion. For men just looking to screw around and avoid commitment at any cost, abortion is the perfect solution. Abortion allows them to use a woman and then leave her, have sex and still avoid any kind of consequences or responsibility for their actions.
But what about the other side of the coin? The man who grieves at the abortion of his child, who wants to step up and take responsibility and make a commitment, is not often mentioned in the abortion discussion. When he is, he’s oftentimes mocked and told that he has no right to speak up. Such men are also smeared as misogynists who don’t care about women and want to force a life of misery and servitude onto their unwitting partners. Yet, strangely, these same people will insist that if the woman does want the baby and the man doesn’t, he should be forced to financially support the woman and her child for almost two decades against his will. Seems slightly hypocritical, no?
With that in mind, let’s check out this plea for advice, where a man wrote into a newspaper expressing his anguish and hurt over his girlfriend’s decision to have an abortion.
I’m really confused right now and as I can’t talk to anybody else I’m trying the anonymity of the news paper.
I have a relatively new girlfriend – it’s only a few months since we got together – and as a result of her having a virus, and vomiting all the time, the Pill wasn’t effective, and now she is pregnant.
She wants to have an abortion because she says we don’t know each other well enough to be parents, and I can’t think of anything worse than aborting an unborn child.
All the controversy going on right now doesn’t help, and I am at my wit’s end.
None of our parents has a clue as to what is really going on.
I’m in my late 20s and she is a few years younger. What are your thoughts?
While the newspaper columnist does, in fact, tell the man that the decision is solely the woman’s to make, she also points out that he could tell her that adoption is a choice, and that he can and should make his feelings known to her. Another pro-abortion blogger picked up on this plea for advice, though, and her response was slightly more offensive.
Dear Anonymous,
Unlike you, I can think of something worse than aborting an unborn child: a woman who is unwilling to put her health and future at risk and commit to 18 years of parenthood with a near-stranger so that a grown-ass man doesn’t ever have to feel confused or sad about a decision he will never have to make for himself.
What an awful position you’re in, being physically unable to be pregnant and yet knowing exactly what pregnancy is like, and specifically what your girlfriend should do about hers! So many pregnant people experience complicated emotions about unplanned pregnancy and bodily autonomy, while you’re cursed with the absolute knowledge of what’s best for all pregnancies, if only everyone would just listen to your penisfeels for a minute.
But you’re helpless to force every pregnant person ever to carry every pregnancy to term, which is the right thing to do because you personally can’t imagine anything worse than something you literally cannot imagine because it literally will never happen to your body. O, cruel fate!
What can you do? Make a lot of frowns at your girlfriend so she sees how sad you will be if she doesn’t spend the next nine months, and potentially 18 subsequent years, attending to your emotional wellbeing, the most delicate and precious thing on the earth (besides zygotes).
What would the reaction be if a male blogger were to respond to a woman expressing her feelings of guilt, confusion, and anguish over having an abortion to mere “vaginafeels”? Apparently, the idea is that not only must a man let his partner have an abortion without any complaint, but he isn’t allowed to have any personal feelings on the matter, either.
We also see, yet again, the argument that because men can’t get pregnant, they can’t possibly be capable of understanding what pregnancy is like and therefore have no say on the issue. Does that mean that only the Chinese can speak out against the inhumanities of China’s one-child policy and the human rights abuses currently going on there? That the only people allowed to speak about the Holocaust should be Jewish? Issues of human rights have no race, creed, or gender. But pro-aborts need a way to shut down the argument.
Perhaps most disturbing about this viewpoint on men and abortion are the two common views that pregnancy will forever ruin a woman, and that men should actively seek to avoid responsibility for their actions. Women are told, over and over again, that an accidental pregnancy will destroy their lives and their futures, and that their only reasonable choice is to have an abortion. Having the baby will curse them to slave away in poverty, miserable and alone, forever; putting the baby up for adoption is rarely, if ever, mentioned. As for men, they’re shamed and derided when they actually step up and accept the consequences of their actions.
After all, pregnancy isn’t a mystical condition that just mysteriously happens to an unsuspecting woman one day. It requires sex – sex which, most of the time, is consensual – and that requires two people. Having sex, even if you’re using birth control, means you are willingly accepting the risk of becoming pregnant. Yet when men choose to react to their actions by rising to the occasion and accepting responsibility, they’re lambasted by pro-aborts.
This is what we have come to: a world where a man taking responsibility for his actions is portrayed as a bad thing. Yet we also complain about the breakdown of the family and the epidemic of absentee, deadbeat fathers. Is it really that difficult to make the connection? Not only are men given the option of avoiding responsibility for their actions, but they’re encouraged to do so, so how can we then be surprised when more and more men shirk their responsibilities as fathers? Meanwhile, the men who do want to step up and be…well, real men are mocked, insulted, and silenced.
It seems that men are in a lose-lose situation. If they choose to not be involved with their children, then they’re punished. If they choose to step up and be a father when it isn’t what the woman wants, they’re punished. They’re slaves to the whims of women, and if they step out of line at all, then they’re horrible human beings. Is it really that difficult to see that there’s a problem here?
