Men and Abortion

My name is Daniel Schnick. By my nature I provide many with what they consider the perfect excuse to ban me from the abortion debate. My great sin?

I am a man, and I am not pro-choice.

Note that just being a man does not disqualify me. I have even offered to remove myself from the debate if they would remove all pro-choice men and their opinions as well, and they are not about to do that. Doing so would mean removing practically all abortionists and disallowing the opinion of Mr Justice Blackmun and his collegues. It would mean that all of those men who encourage women to abort their children would have to shut up.

They continue to render their opinions, I shall continue to render mine.

Part of the rationale for banning (pro-life) men is that since we cannot get pregnant we cannot know what it is like to have these pressures. This is based on the faulty premise that pressures that drive women to abortion are about pregnancy. Frankly they are not: not all pregnant women feel any of these "pressures". The vast majority of women who get pregnant do NOT abort. (For that matter I have seen them argue that those women who have never caved in to the pressures don't know what it is like either. Apparently only those who cave in to pressure are qualified to know whether it is a good idea or not.)

Fact is that the abortion industry and the pressures to abort are all driven by men. Their own studies show this: the Allan Guttmacher Institute study on the reasons that women abort(a study which appears to have been designed to demonstrate the "good reasons" that women have for their abortions) shows that the majority of abortions are sought for social reasons, and frankly most of these social reasons have far more to do with the behavior of irresponsible men than they do with any issue of women. Concede the 7% that are "hard" issues (arguable but for the sake of argument I will concede them) less the 1 point of that 7% that is most distinctly an issue of male behavior (here I am talking about the rape issue) and you have 94% of abortions that are to some degree or another male driven.

Irresponsible men love abortion.

We men need to do something about that. Especially those who are honestly pro-choice (rather than pro-our.own.convienience). After all how can a woman make a choice based on her own moral and ethical considerations when she has to deal with social and economic considerations that we impose upon her?

They tell me I can't "know what it is like to be forced into that position."

Forced? They completely miss the fact that force only exists where someone is doing the forcing. Who is forcing women into these unfortunate positions?

--Men who abandon their pregnant girlfriends. (Hey girlfriend: you are entitled to 30% of his income for child support in most states.)

--Men who impose the glass ceiling on mommies. For that matter women who impose the glass ceiling on mommies: sadly enough there are "liberated" women doing that to their own sisters. The glass ceiling is a major feminist issue, but the availability of abortion makes it less imperative that it be broken for everybody.

--Rapists, spouse abusers, and other obviously evil men, of course, though they are a small minority of the problem.

--Men who treat women as sex toys, and the entertainment industry that encourages men to do this and women to allow it. (C'mon guys, if that is all you want there is a whole industry dedicated to giving you sex toys that **don't** get PMS)

Pro-choice and pro-life agree that women do not want abortions, that they seek abortions for strong reasons. The difference is that pro-choice only asks that we have sympathy for the "choice" to abort, while pro-life asks that we actually look for solutions to the real problems. Guess what, folks? Abortion has never solved any of the problems that drive women to abort. Abortion does not stop discrimination, it does not make men responsible, it does not magically imbue women with the self-confidence to take charge of their lives. It does nothing whatsoever to alleviate rape and incest, in fact it has been known to hide severe cases of the latter. All it really does is kill babies.

Where's that utopia?

I remember pro-choice declaring that the benefits of abortion on demand would far outweigh the problems it would create. I remember pro-life being called fear-mongers for predicting the loss of respect for life itself that would ensue. While I am not about to blame abortion itself for the entire degeneration of society, I will certainly blame the attitudes that enable women to cross the threshold of the abortion facility. We need to change those attitudes. We need to abandon socially approved selfishness and egotism before we find ourselves living in fortresses.

Pro-choice promised a utopia in which birth defects and child abuse were unknown because every child was a wanted child. No country, with or without legalized abortion, has such a utopia today despite decades of the imposition of this grand experiment. "Outmoded" morality (a set of mores based on the observations of several billion people) seems to have been verified, relativist utopia denied.

What can we do about it?

--First we can behave responsibly. This means supporting the women and children in our lives. It means far more than one paragraph can convey.

--And by the way, about that "locker room" talk: can it, butthead. She is not merely a blow-up doll with resistance; that's a woman you are talking about.

--We can stop teaching our children that there is ever a valid reason to kill anybody, born or not. We can stop teaching them that there is ever a valid reason to dehumanize anybody. We can stop teaching them that they are so unique and special that normal morality does not apply to them, that normal consequences will not impose themselves on their actions. This has effects that range infinitely beyond abortion.

--And on a technical note we can throw out certain Supreme Court rulings. The SC has certainly gone beyond its constitutional mandate on several issues, all the way to creating law. It does not take a Constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v Wade, for example: R v W is a Constitutional amendment, merely one that has never been passed by any legislative body (except by default). We need to lobby our representatives to take back the legislative powers that have been usurped.

--Last, but far from least, we can start to apply a few critical thinking skills to our reception of the mass media. The mass media are at the mercy of any PR engine, which is to say that we get exactly the information that well-paid public relations folks want us to get. One of the unfortunate effects of abortion is that it creates a lot of people whose income is derived from supporting this "right" while it creates virtually nobody whose income is derived from opposing it. This means that there is a lot more money available to support "pro-choice" (the very name of which is the product of professional PR) than there is available to support pro-life. Pro-life is supported entirely by the contributions and activities of people who have nothing whatsoever to personally gain from a victory. Pro-choice is suported by organized groups of people who make their living from the pain and suffering of well over a million women a year and the deaths of their babies.

There are a lot of reasons for men to be involved in this issue, not the least of which is that men already are involved. There is much we can do about it, and much we should do. I am not going to abandon women to the predation of the abortionists.

Editor's note:

Unfortunately, Mr. Schnick was tragically struck by a truck and killed in January, 2000. May he rest in peace.

Links of Interest

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