Tennessee Is Considering Legislation That Will Allow ‘Fathers’ to Prevent Abortions

Until six years ago, I had barely thought about abortion. Once when I was working at a temporary assignment at a law firm in Sydney I had an elderly man yell at me “don’t kill your baby” as I walked through the automatic doors. I later discovered that the Marie Stopes Foundation had its rooms in the same building.

I experienced multiple miscarriages before my only child was born. I had never experienced an unwanted pregnancy but had no negative view towards women who found themselves in this difficult situation. I considered it a matter between a pregnant women, her partner (if she had one) and her doctor.

I didn’t consider it to be any of my business, because it wasn’t.

Then I had an spiritual experience that resulted in an unexpected conversion to Christianity. Suddenly things to which I had never given much thought became front and center issues, at least they were for my new Christian friends.

I sensed an expectation that my love of Jesus went hand in hand with a conservative position on numerous issues.

Issues like abortion.

This was confronting for me because I had not grown up in a Christian home, and the idea of inflicting my opinion on others was foreign to me. It was particularly abhorrent because only weeks after my conversion, a door opened for me to escape my first marriage, a relationship where my husband had gradually assumed control over my life and had become increasingly physically, sexually and emotionally abusive.

For reasons I can’t explain in the early years of our relationships I gradually made my world smaller to accommodate him. What followed was more than twenty years of gradually increasing abusive treatment, motivated by his insidious need to control every aspect of my life.

For more than two decades he had inflicted on me his expectation that I would conform to what he required of me. What he expected was obedience, and a complete shedding of my own ideas and beliefs.

What he required, and would enforce by various means, was a complete erasure of my own identity and an assumption of my role as a mere extension of him.

I guess it comes as no surprise that this new believer, who had only just escaped such oppression, was going to resist, once again, being told what to think.

This is the story I wrote about that journey. I ultimately came to a place where I admit, both as a Christian who believes in the sanctity of life, and a woman who has suffered the heartbreak of multiple miscarriages, that abortion makes me sad.

But the fact that I’d rather abortion didn’t happen is a far cry from believing that Christians have a mandate to enforce our beliefs on others.

In fact, from my own reading of the Bible I’ve come to believe that we don’t have that mandate at all.

We have a mandate to love God, love others, and tell people about God.

Insights from an abuser

Misogyny and domestic abuse go hand in hand. It’s the deep sense of entitlement, coupled with crippling insecurity, that I believe drove my ex-husband to do whatever it took to gain and maintain control over my life.

When I reflect on more than two decades of listening to his ranting, I realize that he has left me with a gift, an insight into how the misogynistic mind ticks, and how I can use my experience to hopefully help other women avoid getting trapped in the web that is misogyny fueled coercive control.

My ex had strong views about abortion, not about the moral right or wrong of the procedure itself, but when it should be accessed.

If the man wanted the pregnancy terminated that’s what should happen. If he wanted the baby, she must go through with the pregnancy. But if she went through with the pregnancy, against the man’s wishes, he should be able to absolve himself of financial responsibility.

In his mind, this was just basic common sense.

In my mind, the idea that men would have the final say in whether a woman had a baby was downright insulting, but I was never brave enough to say that.

My ex was not alone in his views

Scrolling through Twitter this morning this caught my eye. My first thought was fake news.
I wish.

Two Republican men have introduced a bill in Tennessee that would give a man who suspects that a woman may be considering an abortion, grounds to apply for injunctive relief to stop her going ahead with a termination.

The proposed law requires that the petitioner prove that he is the biological father. Sounds difficult given that maternal blood tests to determine paternity are not effective until at least 10 weeks gestation, and are not admissible as evidence.

Never mind, these twits get around that little problem by accepting acknowledgement of paternity as evidence of paternity.

You can’t make this shit up.

A woman who proceeds with an abortion against a court order faces criminal sanctions. The bill contains no exceptions for rape or incest.

You heard that correctly, a rapist could force a victim to have a child who was the result of his violation of her body. A father, uncle or older brother could force their daughter, niece or sister to do the same.

It’s nauseating.

Equality is still a long way off

Fortunately it appears that such an archaic law that so blatantly attempts to allow a man, any man really, to override a woman’s autonomy over her own body would be unconstitutional.

But that does little to reassure women who have been fighting against the oppression inflicted by the patriarchy for centuries, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Women who are trapped with men like my ex, who think women got equality with the vote, and that feminism is cancer.

Women who are dismissed with comments like if you don’t want a baby, keep your legs together and we need to teach women how to avoid getting raped.

Women all over the world who are still being oppressed by certain men with archaic patriarchal views.

Whilst ever young boys are still growing up believing that they are superior and women are subordinate, that their needs and desires trump those of the women in their lives, then this crap will just keep on happening.

It’s time to stop asking why she didn’t keep her legs shut and instead ask why he didn’t keep his pants on.

Because if men want to be in control of whether they become fathers, then the responsibility lies with them.

Maybe they should just keep their pants on.

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Previously published on medium

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