6 December 2005 - 4:21pm
The abortion debate: when men battle over their property
Maria Luisa Tucker puts it quite well:
This week, men debating abortion in the so-called "liberal media" have taken a giant step into the dark ages. The men in question are all pro-choice—that is, they are in favor of men making the reproductive choices for their property. Oops, I meant to say, their women. Sometimes I get those two confused.
As many women have noticed, it's often the men who are talking about "reasonable" restrictions on women's reproductive rights. To them, it's all quite reasonable to control women's bodies only a modest amount -- only enough to force pregnancy and childbirth.
Tucker describes the "all-male debate over abortion" of the past week, starting with Dalton Conley's idiotic claim that if the man makes a financial commitment to the prospective child, then the woman is bound and obligated to give of her body, health, blood, time, pain and emotion to carry the pregnancy to term and give birth.
Tucker then notes how Salon's Farjad Majoo declared that man's siring privilege reaches beyond forced childbirth to include forced abortion as well:
Conley's call for fathers to have a greater say in whether an abortion occurs really means two things: One, that the father should have a right to veto an abortion, but also that the father should have a right to veto a pregnancy by insisting on an abortion. And to this second scenario -- giving a man a right to an abortion -- I say, Why not?
That's right -- he's claiming a man's right to an abortion.
What's interesting is how that simple claim sheds light on the whole paternity privilege claim: If a man can force childbirth upon a woman, he must also be able to force abortion upon a woman.
That also means that if the government can force childbirth upon a woman, the government can also force abortion upon a woman. And when you put it that way, it all starts to sound too much like Mengele and Nazi medical ethics.
Tucker puts it in perspective:
To frame forced childbirth and forced abortion as "fatherhood rights" is more infuriating than I can possibly express. Women -- not men -- began the call for responsible fatherhood. The only thing that women can force men to do is hand out some money for parenting. Women have never had control over men's bodies, and I think most men would balk at the idea of women getting court-orders for their boyfriends and husbands to get vasectomies or vasectomy reversals (which would be much less invasive than, let's say, strapping a woman down for a forced abortion, or 20 hours of labor pains and childbirth).
And I wonder if Conley or Manjoo thought about what their ideas could mean in practice. In a likely situation, it would mean angry ex-boyfriends filing injunctions to have women grudgingly carry their pregnancies to term. Or in the worst case—of forced abortion -- it almost surely would mean scenes of would-be mothers being handcuffed and carried kicking and screaming into abortion clinics, being forcibly anesthetized, clamped to the stirrups and scraped out. Is that what men want?
Sadly, it seems so.
Of course, to men of privilege sitting in their comfy chairs sipping a cocktail while their wives make supper, all this must seem like hysteria. In fact, today, the Atlantic Online is running a National Journal article by Stuart Taylor, Jr., with the teaser pitch:
As is usual in abortion battles, the interest-group hysteria and media hype overstate what's really at stake in the cases currently before the Supreme Court.
Of course, what is Mr. Taylor going to be able to tell us about "what's really at stake"? (Fork over some cash and you can buy access to this presumed wisdom. Be calm. There is time. Slowly reach for your credit card. Take deep breaths....)
It's all just an academic exercise to the most liberal-minded men, while for others, it's a matter of enforcing patriarchal privilege over all that hey surveys -- or fucks. And to be robbed of that privilege, well, darn it, that's just unfair to men, isn't it?
Tucker closes with some advice for these poor suffering souls:
Oh, and just a tip for men who worry about their "fatherhood rights" -- wear a damn condom every time you have sex and you'll have about a 98% chance of not running into this problem.
And guys, if you don't like that, you can go under the knife. It's up to you. After all, it's your body, right?
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Comments
Condoms are a great idea anyways - std's and such. That aside I am firmly in favor of those men who claim they don't want kids - put up or shut up. Having a vasectomy doesn't emasculate anybody - forcing the onus of prevention on your girlfriend does. It would be great if men could take a birth control pill but no such beast exists - yet. Short of that a vasectomy is a great place to go - if you have it done by a competent doctor they are nearly always reversable and it ensures you won't reproduce until your financialy viable - at least to the extent you can fork over a few grand for the procedure. More men should consider this alternative. . .
For decades, whenever someone has raised this issue that a husband, boyfriend, father should have a right to tell a wife, girlfriend, daughter that she can't get an abortion, I've said this means he would also have the right to tell her she must get an abortion.
Usually, that shuts them up.
(Proud owner of a vasectomy since 1991.)
Limiting reproductive rights to women is gender-specific and is therefore unacceptable. We believe in equal rights, and thus we need to recognize men’s equal reproductive rights and equal right to privacy.
We need to change our vocabulary to eliminate prejudices and negative connotations, and to put a positive slant on these neglected rights of men. Therefore, “rape� and “child molestation� will become the more positive “drive fulfillment�; “domestic violence� and “child abuse� will be appropriately called “anger redirection�; and “victim� becomes the non-prejudicial “facilitator�.
I personally am against drive fulfillment and anger redirection, but every man has the right to choose.
The laws that currently repress these freedoms must fall in landmark Supreme Court cases. Men should educate themselves, recognize their empowerment, and become activists. Society should shrug off the negative connotations of “rape�, “molestation�, “domestic violence�, etc., and these rights must no longer be exercised furtively in back alleys but allowed to be enjoyed in the full light of day, free from disapproval and intolerance. Politicians at all levels should be supported or not based on their support of gender-neutral reproductive rights. After all, it’s my body -- government, keep your laws off it!
We should be prepared to counter the attacks of narrow-minded special interests, who may make claims such as “rape is wrong�, “child abuse is violence�, etc. We can easily poke holes in their arguments, for example by simply countering that if they don’t like “rape�, then they don’t have to have one. In the case of drive redirection via minor (formerly called “child molestation�), it’s obvious that a minor is a post-natal fetus, and a fetus has no rights. The issue of pre-term vs. post-term falls before the more fundamental right to privacy.
Please join with me in embracing this progressive cause.
We'll call it the Lorena Bobbit law. Women are free to snip off the penises of their husbands. After all, he married her, right? She should have a say in what his penis can and cannot do.
And I'm all for egality when it comes to aborting a pregnancy. Men should be able to abort pregnancies they're carrying, too. Absolutely.
I just joined this site this morning and I'm so glad to see something posted on this. This issue makes me more furious than you can imagine. I recently posted a diary on this very subject, including some talking points to use when arguing with the "Men's Reproductive Rights" set. Here's and excerpt:
The whole diary can be found here.
"I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or prostitute."
~ Rebecca West
Great points here, too.