So long as people think abortions only happen to people they don’t know, they’ll continue to limit our choice.
It is a truism that it’s much easier to discriminate against a class of people whom you have never met. Justice Powell, prior to ruling in support of an anti-sodomy law, is famously said to have remarked to his closeted law clerk that he didn’t believe he knew any homosexuals. This issue was a large part of the rationale behind encouraging gays to come out publicly, and it is behind the nascent movement encouraging women to talk about their abortions.
This is particularly important when the vast majority of people making legislative decisions about reproductive rights are men (83% of Congress, about the same as Libya’s new democracy). What is their personal experience with abortion? How many of them have sat with a partner in an abortion clinic?
The answer should be simple of course. One out of every three women in the United States will have an abortion. No responsible man (and I mean responsible in both senses of the word) would leave his partner to face such an emotionally traumatic event on their own. So that means that 33% of legislators have been inside an abortion clinic and had a relationship with the women whose choices they are eliminating. And 33% of the men reading this article have had to help make the momentous decision of whether to bring a new person into the world, or wait, perhaps, until a better time.
But of course, it’s not that simple, is it?
Some of those abortions are happening precisely because some of those men (but not my readers, I’m sure) weren’t there to provide support. And in many others, the full weight of the decision and its consequences fell on the woman alone. Abortion isn’t something that anyone wants to consider, but only the man is given the option to avoid facing it at all. Also, some clinics don’t allow men; they have valid concerns about abusive partners who may want to interfere with the decision process, in one direction or the other. So a man’s participation may end at the door.
Given the rising tide of anti-choice legislation, I feel it’s very important for us to “humanize” those involved in the decision for an abortion. It needs to be clear that the people who have abortions are your neighbors, your friends, and your partners. And in that process, I believe that the men involved also have a responsibility to tell what it’s like for them. We are one in three too.
So let me tell you what it’s like to be one of those men.
When I was in college, I met a girl. We went out. We got closer to each other. We decided to have sex. It wasn’t the first time for either of us, but it was our first responsible time.
We were safe sex fanatics. We tried the pill, we tried the diaphragm, and we tried condoms. We were open to people about our relationship, and we were open about using birth control. This was pretty novel in the 70′s, and the college health center even referred people to us who had questions about our experiences with different methods.
We went out for about a year, but although we liked each other, we fought a lot, and it obviously wasn’t working. In November, we tearfully broke up.
A month later, she discovered she was pregnant.
We talked about it. It was clearly her decision to make, and she was not at a point in her life where she was ready to have a baby. She wasn’t sure if she ever wanted a baby. She decided to have an abortion.
We were at a small college in a rural state, but there was a city an hour away, and it had a clinic. We decided I would take her to the clinic, and then to a relative’s where she could recover over Christmas vacation. We scheduled the appointment for the first day of vacation, and I told my parents that school got out a day later than it actually did.
The day came, and we drove to the clinic. I don’t remember a lot about the trip. It was a somber occasion, and we weren’t going out with each other anymore; there wasn’t a lot of talking. We parked. We walked into the clinic. She checked in, and I sat in the waiting room waiting for her to be called. While I sat there, I got to see what kind of women go to a clinic for an abortion.
Remember, this was a rural state. I doubt there was another clinic in a two hundred mile range. I was an hour from my college, and two hours from my home town. Who did I see?
I saw my ex-girlfriend, of course; nervous but determined that she was doing the right thing for her life and her career.
I saw the older sister of a friend from elementary school; just a few years older than us, who was always the responsible one in her family.
I saw my high school English teacher; the woman who had written on my report card how she thought I was the next O’Henry.
I saw women just like the women in your life; strong people making a hard decision, but one they were sure of, and firmly believed was correct.
When the procedure was over, she came out. I helped her to the car, drove to her relative’s, and watched her walk unsteadily to the front door and step inside. And then I made the long drive home.
Some thirty years later, I still stop and think about it occasionally. I wonder what he (for some reason, I visualize a boy) would be like today. And I think about what our alternatives were. Two people who didn’t get along, raising a child that neither wanted, with no money, and no college education. I have two grown daughters now, and I’m more proud of them, and how they were raised, than anything else in my life. They were children who were brought into the world when I was ready, and when they were wanted. I always wonder about the path I might have taken, but I never regret it.
A number of the new anti-abortion laws work on the false (perhaps intentionally so) theory that a woman seeking an abortion doesn’t fully understand the ramifications of what she is doing, and that if she did, she would change her mind. There’s a myth that people treat it like a trip to the dentist to take out a tooth. As a man who went through the decision, I know that nothing could be further from the truth. It wasn’t true for me, it hasn’t been true for any of the men I’ve known who have had to make the decision, and it certainly isn’t true for the women.
So long as we remain quiet about our experiences, we allow others to shape the discussion, frame women as victims, and remove the agency of women and men who need to make this important decision for themselves. We need to speak up. We need to tell our friends, our neighbors, and our legislators, that yes, people just like us have abortions.
Read more on Abortion.
Image of woman selecting magazine in medical waiting room courtesy of Shutterstock
About Kee Hinckley
Except Kee, you never made any real decisions did you, because by law, your opinions were irrelevant, you might think you had a say in all this but you didn’t . AND that is the point some are trying to make. Your partner may have made it seem like you had any say, but sorry, you didn’t. If you partner had decided to have the child, you would have no choice, if she aborts, again, you don’t have a choice, if she decides (and she is even half way intelligent) to not have an abortion and give the child up for adoption, again, you have no choice. So for all the nice “Pro Choice” you talk about it, in the end , you are supporting an anti choice stance, your own “I don’t have a choice” stance.
One more thing, this whole “It’s my body” is just a red herring, if she had decided to keep the child and keep it out of your life, again, (if she is half way intelligent), you have no choice BUT, guess what, she (and the baby) will use your body to support themselves, all without you having any input into those decisions. For the next 18+ years, you will be forced (under threat of jail, again, really hard on the body and mind) to work and give a large portion of the money to her to offset the costs of her choices.
I really don’t want this discussion to turn into a debate about men’s choice, so let’s see if I can address your comments and present my stance on this, and then we can move on and focus on the issues I actually discussed.
1. If your partner doesn’t share your views on choice (men’s or women’s), then you shouldn’t be having sex with them. End of story. Why on earth would you do that?
2. We all make decisions with other people every day. They are no less real because they aren’t enforced by a law. Red herring.
3. My partner didn’t “make it seem like I had a say”. You are putting words into my mouth that are the exact opposite of what I said in the article. I said, “it was clearly her choice.” If you prefer, read that as “*I* believe it is clearly her choice.” Yes, that means if she says “I want to have the baby” then I’m on the hook to support my child (for longer than 18 years, I can assure you, I have two daughters past that now). I believe that’s my responsibility. That’s what I understood to be the case when I had sex.
I can completely see how horrifying it might be to have someone abort a child that you wanted. You should, by all means, date people who agree with you. It’s not a foolproof solution, but this isn’t a problem that has a one right answer that can make everyone happy, and the legal system sucks at managing grey areas. The legal system has made a decision which sides with benefit for society, and the personal integrity of a woman’s body, and I happen to agree with those priorities—I’m not particularly interested in prioritizing the personal integrity of my sperm. If you don’t agree with the current model, then I think you need to choose your partners very carefully. But that doesn’t mean you should, anymore than anti-abortion supporters should, enforce your ethics on other women’s bodies.
That’s my opinion. I made my view of the situation clear in the article, please don’t twist my words to suit your argument.
Thank you.
I think what john is saying is that if those decisions are enforceable (by law) they aren’t real and that is a fact. If you and a love one decide to do something and the other person changes their mind (or lied to you to begin with) and you have no recourse but to go along with what their final decision was, your so called decision and your place in that decision isn’t real.
I think what Kee is pointing out is that what you need to do in that case is make the decision before hand. I.e. If you would wish to abort should she get pregnant then say that before you have sex, and if you don’t want to have a kid and want to use birth control, but also would want to keep any potential kid, then say that.
I can’t actually remember if I did that initially, but I have had a few discussions along the way with my partner about how he and I would feel at various points along our relationship, and also about how we would decide/have that discussion if we disagreed.
In regards to your decision idea: I see it as a bit like a king and an advisor. The advisor does have a part in the decision that is ultimately made, and is free to make suggestions and come up with ideas and generally encourage the decision to go their way, even though they don’t have final say. They still have a place in the decision and in the process of making the decision.
That said, I do believe men should have the right to ‘abort’ their responsibility for a child and sign a contract to that effect before the child’s birth. This would relive them of their responsibilities but also rights as a parent, and would have to be committed to within the time frame of a legal abortion, so that it could also be part of the woman’s decision.
In other news, Kee, ‘traumatic event’ is a pretty dubious description – it is serious, but not ‘traumatic’ for a lot of people. I think the idea that people need to know that they know people who have had abortions is a good one, however. Your gender gives you more freedom to prove that point, I think, as you are less likely to be vilified.
“This is particularly important when the vast majority of people making legislative decisions about reproductive rights are men (83% of Congress, about the same as Libya’s new democracy). ”
And who votes those men in? Women make up the majority of voters, and polls find they are just as likely as men to oppose abortion.
@ GudEbuf
The fact that women make up the majority of voters doesn’t mean that 83% men is ok. It also doesn’t mean that there isn’t sexism at work in voting behaviour. Women have also internalised the association between ‘men’ and ‘leadership’ that disadvantages women in elections. It’s also highly likely that many voters were not given the option of voting for a female candidate. Where only male candidates are fielded, you’re going to get a man elected. Where a majority of male candidates are fielded, you’re going to get a majority of men elected.
ok- so when are women actually responsible for anything in your worldview?
1. Women make up the majority of voters.
2. More women than men vote.
3. Women are not restricted from running for office.
Reminds me of the old lyric from Cracker- “If you want to change the world, shut your mouth and start to spin it…”
@Texpat That’s a long discussion about privilege, and really better for somewhere else. But imagine a mostly male party apparatus deciding who to support as a candidate, who to give money to, and who to invite to the get-to-know-potential-candidate meetings. They naturally pick people they know and whom their friends know, and whom they’ve done business with or socialized with. Needless to say, there aren’t a lot of women in that list. Intentional bias isn’t required, it’s all a huge chain of relationships which were biased years ago, and which will take many more years to recover from unless people go out of their way to be more inclusive.
Sorry- doesnt ring true. Look at how many candidates run unopposed at the municipal and local levels. These are the springboards to larger platforms. Municipal and local races can be won with resonant grass roots campaigns- it doesn’t take a ton of money or influence.
If women (as a group) wanted to elect more women they have the absolutely overwhelming power to do so. They aren’t doing it. They are electing the same candidates they have been all along. Those who hold the power shouldn’t be cloaking themselves in victim’s robes.
I’ll talk privilege when it comes to race and class- there are a million measureables that exhibit it but when you try to paint a picture of a non-reciprocal gender privileged system you’re just playing a shell game.
@Texpat I’m going to drop this as off-topic. I can provide references if you want to discuss it elsewhere.
He’s right, the decisions are made by those who show up.
Have you stopped to think about your two daughters and how if their mother had decided they wouldn’t exist the guess what , they wouldn’t exist. Your opinion didn’t count.
There are some things wrong with this post:
“So long as people think abortions only happen to people they don’t know, they’ll continue to limit our choice.”
Assuming you, like I, don’t have an uterus it is not your choice (according to the prevalent moral standards), but the potential mothers with the fetuses right to live as the only possible constraint.
As the potential father has no say whatsoever in the decision to abort or not, he cannot have any responsibility, it is the woman’s body. He has though a parent’s responsibilities towards the child, in case it gets to be born and live. Hence a man is responsible in this regard, if he only has sex when he is ready and able to father a child.
“One out of every three women in the United States will have an abortion. No responsible man (and I mean responsible in both senses of the word) would leave his partner to face such an emotionally traumatic event on their own. So that means that 33% of legislators have been inside an abortion clinic and had a relationship with the women whose choices they are eliminating.”
That is just bad reasoning. Of the 33% aborting women, some could be pregnant from the same man, so the number of men could be lower. There is little reason to believe that the male politicians in Congress and Senate are representative for all men. Even if they would be chosen randomly, there would be a significant chance, that their rate is much lower.
“We talked about it. It was clearly her decision to make, and she was not at a point in her life where she was ready to have a baby.”
If she was not ready to have a baby, maybe she should abstain from intercourse; we hold men to this standard.
Addendum:
“A number of the new anti-abortion laws work on the false (perhaps intentionally so) theory that a woman seeking an abortion doesn’t fully understand the ramifications of what she is doing, and that if she did, she would change her mind. There’s a myth that people treat it like a trip to the dentist to take out a tooth. As a man who went through the decision, I know that nothing could be further from the truth.”
And this is just awful reasoning, just because you know about one case, doesn’t mean you have any knowledge of any other case.
I agree. I know women who’ve had abortions – I even a friend the cash she needed to get one (and no; not mine). That doesn’t change the fact that I don’t support abortion for the very reasons you outline (I know that there’s some hypocrisy there, but what can I say? you support your friends even when you don’t agree with them. That’s why they’re your friends). This is the only way to be fair.
I probably wouldn’t even look that well on such an act. I don’t look well on abortion itself, either. It’s an act of weakness in most cases – someone messed up, and now they want to escape the consequences of their action (however, what I approve of should in no way be the metric by which laws are decided. People have the right to mess up, and people have the right to do the wrong thing). But the fact that the current regime is so one-sided – and the fact that the people who rant and rave about quality don’t even pretend to care when it doesn’t affect them, or when true equality would hurt them – bothers me so much more than abortion itself ever could.
Either you believe in fairness, or not. Either you believe in equality, or not. They aren’t entirely the same things – I care more about the former than the latter – but they are very closely related.
Do you also look badly upon people who get medical care for other health problems? After all, they didn’t take proper care of themselves, so they “messed up and now they want to escape the consequences of their actions” by heaving a bypass, cancer treatment, a bone set, etc? No? Then you’re judging women about sex, not about messing up and escaping the consequences.
I know almost exactly where you are coming from sir, I had a very similar situation a few years back. My best friend (female, as are most of my friends) dated some guy against almost everyone we knows advise and got pregnant. This guy, being the douche that he was, just walked away when he found out. So being the person I am, I volunteered to take her to the clinic and be around the next day. The whole thing tore her up for months. I agree that these laws assume that the women going in somehow don’t understand the ramifications of that decision and that is complete bullshit. Every woman I know that has gone in took a good long while to think through her options and make a decision.
You’re a good man, Jack, to do that for your friend. And completely correct in that it’s ignorant to think that most women don’t take time to think about the decision and weigh the consequences. Or that they aren’t affected at all by it. Abortion is a last resort, not something taken lightly or used as a form of birth control.
@ Kee … I’m gonna be blunt here … “1. If your partner doesn’t share your views on choice (men’s or women’s), then you shouldn’t be having sex with them. End of story. Why on earth would you do that?” If you’re not ready to handle having a child, then why on earth are you having sex with a women you don’t plan on spending your life with?
You claim to be a fanatic about birth control …. She got pregnant! What went wrong?
The 33% most definitely includes women who have had multiple abortions.
What legislation is anti-choice? If you’re talking about not wanting to pay for an abortion through my tax dollars, then yup, I don’t want to pay for it.
Would like to see something written where a women, post-abortion has struggled with regret. Lot of them out there.
er…not me.
Me neither. It was hard, it was sad, it was necessary and I have never regretted it. It is reprehensible that there are clinics who’s primary purpose is to take advantage of a woman’s ( or girl’s ) mental state at a vulnerable moment, and try to influence her to feel worse about it, and to make decisions that she herself doesn’t want to make.
I heard a story once about a friend who visited a pro-life ( or anti- choice, we are all pro- life ) picket line with a contract, asking any of them to sign it, agreeing to pay for the child they did not want aborted until it was 18. Amazingly, there were no takers.
These articles are always heartfelt and real. I’ve been through this and I have my own views.
You debate-freaks ruin a good article just like the twelve-year-old internet thugs ruin my favorite music videos.
Read, stay cool, open your mind. Show respect.
Yes Drew: Heaven Forbid, someone might have a different opinion.
The thing is, if you’re against abortion, don’t have one. Don’t make your partner have one. Like gay marriage. If you don’t like it, don’t marry someone of the same gender. Why is it so important for you to force your opinions into other people’s lives? The woman, and often times the man, are going through something very tough in their lives. The woman is going to be affected more physically, mentally, and financially…but the man might be suffering from guilt, worry, not being sure how to support the woman, etc. Why add to their pain? Why not educate on how to prevent this from happening again? Make sure everyone is knowledgeable about birth control and has easy and affordable access to it without shame.
Thank you for this. Wonderful story. As for making this a conversation about men’s choice. I do believe that the argument about a financial abortion is a legitimate one. I’m on the fence about it, but I completely understand why it could be done in a certain period of time. The woman could get the man to say whether or not he would support the child within 3 months of the pregnancy, and if he says no, she would still have time to abort or chose to keep the child as her own. Although, I do think that if the man opts out of fatherhood, he should pay for half of the abortion. I don’t think that this is unfair, because they were each half involved in the conception, and ultimately she will be the one suffering the bodily toll–nausea, bleeding, pain, depression, hormonal imbalances, invasive ultrasound in the vagina, horrible cramping.
As for forcing a woman to carry to term a baby that her body isn’t ready for…that’s just wrong. The ‘what if you got aborted’ argument doesn’t fly. What if your mother made a last minute decision to take art history instead of psych–the class where she would have met your dad? What if your dad had masturbated before that date with your mother and the sperm that would have made you ended up in a tissue? What if your mom’s dad caught her sneaking out to meet your potential father and he ended up banging another girl and marrying her instead? What if your parents caught food poisoning from bad shellfish on the night you were supposed to be conceived? What if your mother got a free extra shot the night she and your father met and was just sloppy enough that your father lost interest? There are so many reasons why that particular sperm would never reach that particular egg.
Yes, late term abortions are disgusting and cruel. It needs to be done early and safely. More women than you would think have abortions on the down low. I JUST had a married, very conservative friend with two kids already (who was very pro-life beforehand), confide in me that she had just had an abortion. A third child just wasn’t an option in her situation. You’d be surprised at what women you know have had abortions…professors, friends, accountants, family members, girlfriends, etc.
As for the taxes–you’d be paying a LOT more if an abortion didn’t happen than if it did. A 500 dollar abortion versus welfare for a child for many, many years? Medical care, food, education, etc. What about lawyer and police costs to chase down the father for child support? What about the prison costs if he doesn’t pay up? What if the cycle continues and the child becomes a single parent?
Isn’t it better that people have children when their bodies, wallets, and minds are ready for it?
Don’t you think that it would be an even better idea if, given that there is contraception which is 99% effective and easy to access, that the people who aren’t ready for children would use contraception before having sex so conception doesn’t occur?
@Candy Remember, 99% means just that; 1 out of the 100 times you have sex, you are likely to get pregnant. Furthermore, the options that are in the 99% range (pill, UID, implant) are not cheap and not always easy to access. The IUD, for instance, is pretty awesome, but can cause severe cramping in some, and costs hundreds of dollars up front. Never mind that some doctors refuse to give it to people who aren’t in a long-term relationship (because it can aggravate STIs). Not everyone can deal with the side-effects of the pill, and I’m not even sure if implants are available in the U.S., if so, they certainly aren’t commonly available. Which brings us back to condoms and related solutions, which are *not* 99% effective, and which depend on being careful, pulling out quickly, using lube if necessary, and of course, put the woman’s safety and future in the hands of the guy.
Short of permanently removing the procreative ability of one of the partners, you can’t have sex without the possibility of getting pregnant. That’s just the current state of the art. So you have to consider it.
“As for the taxes–you’d be paying a LOT more if an abortion didn’t happen than if it did. A 500 dollar abortion versus welfare for a child for many, many years? Medical care, food, education, etc. What about lawyer and police costs to chase down the father for child support? What about the prison costs if he doesn’t pay up? What if the cycle continues and the child becomes a single parent?”
Tax dollars to pay for a women who has no husband/partner is another topic all together and not a reason for abortion. Goes back to what I said in the first place and that is why are people sleeping around if they aren’t ready to take financial and emotional responsibility? As the writer stated, they were fanatics about birth control but I guess not fanatic enough?
Chase down the father for child support? Wow, doesn’t that ring true? It’s not the need for the dad to be a “dad” but rather the cash cow.
With respect to our liberal neighbors to the north of us … “This week’s figures released by Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo reveal how many modern women are using abortion, not as a last resort, but almost as a form of contraception. Statistics show that last year 1,300 women had at least their fifth abortion. Almost 950 of those having a termination had already had four previously. Almost 200 had already had five, 110 had had six before and 54, like Angela, seven or more.”
And here in the USA? According to DCD’s latest numbers …. 47% of women have abortions had at least one previous abortion.
Not used as birth control?
Since when was having sex with one person, with whom you are in a relationship, become ‘sleeping around’?
According to the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6015a1.htm?s_cid=ss6015a1_w)
36.4% and 8.0%, respectively, had previously had either one to two abortions, or three or more abortions, so I’d be interested to see your statistics. I would also like to point out that women are fertile from about 15 to 45. Two abortions over 30 years does not suggest to me that it is being used as contraception – certainly I am using contraception a heck of a lot more than that.
Yes, that 8% may be a concern. I would suggest that they are probably also a concern in many other ways and areas of their lives.
You mean you had your first sexual encounter when you were ready to have children? Most humans become sexually ready well before they are ready for children. That’s just basic biology. And accusing everyone who had sex when they were not ready to raise children of sleeping around is ridiculous.
At the age of 10, I lived in Madrid. The first thing I remember about the event was watching my mother carry a basin-full of blood out of our housekeeper’s room. There was so much blood, and it scared me. The Spanish doctor came, and I heard he and my mother shouting at each other. He was screaming that Angelita (our housekeeper) was just a stupid peasant girl who got what she deserved. Then he stomped out of our apartment, slamming the door. An hour later, a tall African American was at the door. He was a doctor from the US airbase. He went into Angelita’s room and spent hours with her.
What I came to understand later was that my housekeeper had become pregnant. Her fiance was still doing military service and wasn’t allowed to marry, and so, because abortion was illegal in Spain at the time, she had gone to a backstreet abortionist who had almost killed her. When she made it home, she was hemorrhaging badly. My mother called our Spanish doctor who refused to treat her. Finally, she called an American she had only ever met once, and that brave doctor came up from the base, risked his career and probably jail-time, and saved her life.
14 years later, despite practicing birth control fanatically (you can imagine, considering my childhood experience), I became pregnant. Despite the fact that I was with a man I loved, I decided – in consultation with him – that neither of us were ready to commit to a life together or to have a family. I went for an abortion. My lover came with me. Sat with me. Held my hand. Asked me, just before I went in whether this was truly what I wanted.
The doctor was an older, spry, witty woman. She was businesslike but very kind. When she had finished the D&C, I asked to see the fetus. She was surprised, but agreed. A lovely, brawny nurse helped me down from the chair and I hobbled, still cramping, over to the counter to look at the small collection of cells in the jar. For me, it was important to acknowledge exactly what I had done. I didn’t want to allow myself the opportunity to ignore the consequences of my actions. Although I have always been pro-choice, I have never entered into the debate about when life starts. To me, this is a non-issue. In that jar, life of some sort had clearly started. This did not cause me to regret my decision, or second-guess my motives for the abortion. It simply made me cognizant that I had done a serious thing and it was important that I take cognitive and moral responsibility for it.
25 years later, I am still with the man who held my hand in that waiting room. We have never had children, because neither of us have ever felt the call to have them. He has no desire to be a father, I have never had a desire to be a mother and, in addition, I carry a strong genetic marker for something quite nasty which I do not want to be responsible for passing on.
I still don’t regret having the abortion, but acknowledging the graveness of the act has caused me to be far more vigilant and informed about the birth control I practiced.
My challenge to anyone who is morally offended by abortion is: show me you really care about ALL the lives involved by being a strong and vocal champion of sex education and easy access to safe and reliable birth control. By far the best and most civilized way to reduce abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.
Until Christian conservatives in the US put their efforts into preventing unwanted pregnancies, instead of abusing the people who have abortions or the people who facilitate them, I will doubt their REAL sincerity that they are ‘all about life’. Until then, to me, they will simply be ‘all about dogma’.