Friday, October 20, 2006
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The Morning Vent
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Posted by:
Mary Katharine Ham at
12:06 PM
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The girls are on the couch again. This time, talking abortion. Woo hoo!
Oddly enough, I was in a conversation about abortion just last night at dinner. Gotta love D.C., huh? It was myself and a guy friend arguing with a lefty girl--very cool girl, by the way-- but she pulled out the "you don't have ovaries, so you can't have an opinion" line on my friend about 30 minutes into the conversation.
First, if you think he's not allowed to have an opinion, don't argue with him for half an hour and then pull that out. Let him know what he's in for from the beginning. Second, if a man can have no opinion on the subject of abortion because he has no ovaries; if he is prohibited from even pondering the question of whether taking a human life in the womb is right or wrong, why the heck should he feel any obligation to a child after it's born? After all, he doesn't have ovaries. The child was a choice and you made it. He had no say at all. Why does the child become his obligation once you need child support?
The logic of the pro-choicers has never sat right with me. I've never understood, from a purely intellectual point of view, why the woman's wanting the baby makes it a baby. It either is or it isn't. But, if a pro-choice woman wants a baby, tells her pro-choice friends she's having one, and then miscarries, she and her pro-choice friends are sad, no? Why? It's not a life. Wrong. Of course it is. It always was, and not wanting it doesn't make it less of one. But that's the rationale.
The men-need-not-offer-opinions argument is more of the same. If a woman wants the baby, the man is expected, and legally required to some extent, to be a father. If she doesn't want the baby, he's no better than a turkey-baster. His fatherhood, according to the logic, depends upon her choice. And we wonder why so many men choose not to be dads to the children who are actually born. They're totally pro-choice, too. They just exercise the choice after the baby's born. By choosing not to be fathers, perhaps they make the children not really children at all?
I'm not the only one bothered by this. This conversation comes from a dKos diary, the thesis of which is that because not all Dems support first, second, and third-trimester abortion on demand, the Party is slipping into the back alleys.In the comment thread, the pro-choicers lose an ally:
how men don't get pregnant so we should exclude them from this discussion. I'm saying maintaining abortion freedom has nothing to do with who gets pregnant. It has everything to do with who has the power to keep it safe and legal. Hence my desire to keep men involved. But as the comments upstream clearly indicate, the wimin-folk would clearly rather drown in their own righteousness than get the actual rights they claim to want.
so i'm giving up on this one. I'm a man - abortion is not my issue anymore.
And, that's a pro-choice guy! Another commenter helpfully explains why men should just shut up:
You're right, men do have a stake in this too. But women have a lot bigger stake in it, for at least nine months.
A lot of men don't recognize that fact. A lot of men don't seem to understand how difficult and dangerous pregnancy and birth can be. A lot of men don't understand how frightening pregnancy and birth can be, or how strange it is to have something growing inside you that you will one day have to painfully expel. A lot of men don't understand how horrifying it might be to be forced to carry that for nine months when you didn't want it, hadn't planned for it, and don't know how you will take care of it when it is no longer inside you.
This is why so many women would rather exclude men from the conversation, because a lot of them don't seem to think about or understand all of the aspects involved for a woman.
I wonder how many women understand the pain of a man whose own child can be killed at someone else's whim. I imagine, for a decent man, if could be "frightening," "difficult," and "horrifying." A lot of these women don't seem to think about all the "aspects involved" for a man.
Then, of course, I have issues with the pro-choicers' infantilization of women and their own palpable excitement about killing children in the womb, but we'll leave those for another day. The discussion last night, just as the one in the Vent, was nice and civil, which can be kind of rare when it comes to abortion.
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You make some excellent points here, we do have to work out just how responsible men are or should be in the whole procreation deal, and this is complicated by the enorvous range of responses men can have to impending fatherhood, and women to motherhood.
You also say "The discussion last night ... was nice and civil, which can be kind of rare when it comes to abortion." Yes, we need to promote reasonable discussion about this issue. Most people, even if they disagree with each other, have some reasonable argument behind their positions, and if we try to calm down and show each other a little respect we might even begin to listen to each other. But when you also say "I have issues with the pro-choicers' infantilization of women and their own palpable excitement about killing children in the womb" you're breaking down any possibility for civil discussion. I'm pro-choice, although like most (all?) pro-choicers, I'm far more pro-education and pro-precaution than pro-abortion. I don't even think you really believe that pro-choice women are "palpably excited" about it. They are not all the Wicked Witch of the West simply because they define human life a little differently than you do, or perhaps have a different or less-fervent religious consciousness.
But thanks for at least approaching such an important topic.
Jo
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Men and women may have "responsibilities" when it comes to the creation of life, but only women do the physical work, and take the physical risk, to turn a fetus into a full-fledged human being.
Since nobody, not even pro-lifers, thinks that a fetus is the same thing as a person (if you don't want to punish women who have abortions as murderers, you've admitted that abortion isn't the same thing as murder), we have to ask, what turns a fetus into a full-fledged person? The answer is, it's the woman's work and pain and nine months of that. And that means she has a say in whether or not to do that work.
Your mother did the work and took the risk to create you. Instead of being grateful, you think she should have been forced by the government to do that work and create you. There's a name for forced unpaid work and it's called slavery. Which is why the "pro-life" position is objectively pro-slavery: it's literal enslavement of women.
Oh, and the idea that Planned Parenthood doesn't counsel on alternatives to abortion is a flat-out lie. See:
http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2006/10/failure-to-show-work-rainbow-coalition.html |
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It's refreshing to hear and read comments like this from women like Mary and Michelle for once. I get so tired of only hearing from the extreme female left. |
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One of the most salient points raised on today's "The Vent" was that women, and men, both have responsibilities when it comes to the creation of life. What has always amazed me is how, when it comes to ending that life that both have equal share in creating, only the woman's rights are considered. Literally, the man is held hostage to the decision of the woman when it comes to ending the life of the child or keeping the child and having to support the child for life. |
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"A lot of men don't seem to understand how difficult and dangerous pregnancy and birth can be. A lot of men don't understand how frightening pregnancy and birth can be, or how strange it is to have something growing inside you that you will one day have to painfully expel. "
Of course not, as men are idiots. We can't possibly comprehend pregnancy and birth, despite the fact that this particular man has experienced three pregnancies and births with his wife. And seen the danger. And came very near losing one of the kids in the process. "A lot of men" then would seem to exclude me. But that commenter didn't mean "a lot of men", she meant "men, period". Because we don't have ovaries, see?
I wish the left would debate instead of starting every discussion with an exclusionary whine.
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Most arguments that support legal abortion (they call it "choice" to sanitize it, as if to tacitly acknowledge it for what it really is all along) are not legal arguments at all. They have less to do with freedom than with license. There is a difference.
Freedom means that, in the end, everyone touched by your right to... whatever, is no less free because you exercised it. License is just like saying, hey, I want to do whatever I want. No first-year law student is going to come out of a lecture class alive on that argument. Yet many will make a living defending it. The result means, then, that "freedom" simply means doing what I want. The rest of you don't matter. This is what I want. Imagine a society populated by those with that attitude! It shouldn't be hard, because a lot of Americans (mostly Democrats) are working toward that.
Which means some day we'll all be able to run a red light when it suits us. Oh happy day... |
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I agree that any man who has sex with a woman should be prepared to handle a child should a child come from a sexual encounter, but I believe it's extremely hypocritical that we say this about men while saying the opposite about women.
No one hestitates to say a man should be a man and care for his responsibilities because he decided to have sex with a woman, but we don't say the same about women. We allow them the legal option to make a choice about parenthood after becoming pregnant.
It's sexist to disallow men a right that we grant women.
And as to The Vent, it was incredible. I wish it were on TV for a full thirty minutes. The four of you are fullfilling a dream of mine, political dialogue without insults and yelling.
Also, I believe this one as much better than the last (which is saying a lot). You all seem so much more comfortable with each other and seemed to have a better dialogue going.
And last, to say that nine months of pregnancy is a "much bigger stake" is to basically admit that you're ignorant. People live an average of 70 years. Nine months is nothing in comparison.
Besides, abortion carries its own health risks and should not be considered a safe alternative to giving birth. |
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If you absolutely don't want children, don't have sex. It's really simple and one hundred percent foolproof. For "pro-choice" read "anti-personal responsibility". But hey, what do I know, I don't have any ovaries.
By the way. it's great to see four women (including a self-professed liberal!!!) talking about these issues and making clear that, yes, there are lots of choices made along the way to getting pregnant.
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A little more on the case (as best as I can remember so...).
I believe the woman told the man she was on birth control when she wasn't. He had been up front with her about not wanting a child. When she got pregnant he asked her to abort and she refused. So he said, well if I don't get any say at all in whether you have the baby, I shouldn't be liable if you choose to go ahead.
I have to say this is a tough case for me. If you have sex even if you are using birth control, you need to be prepared that the woman will get pregnant. Nothing is guaranteed. I do believe that if we're truly talking equality, you have to recognize both parent's rights not just one. I don't know how we get there though.
Dean
Mpls, MN |
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A case in Michigan sometime last year, or earlier this, I am not sure which, a guy was suing for the right to not be responsible for his child. His argument, was that since a woman has the ultimate choice regarding the life of the fetus/baby, under the equal protection of the law clause of the 14th amendment, he should be able to exercise a choice of whether he is goign to provide material support for the child. While I think it's a chicken excrement behavior by the guy, the legal reasoning is sound.
I'm a bit of a strange duck when it comes to abortion, I am an anti-abortion/pro-choice libertarian. I think abortion is infanticide at its nature, but as it is the law of the land. As I believe my faith calls me to submit to Godless government, then I must support the right to free will. But I also strongly support counseling groups, like the ones you all discussed in this week's "The Vent." I think that the character of a person is revealed not in forcing someone but in giving someone a right to choose what they want. Then you can see what kind of a person he or she is.
Finally, I think that you are on to something with the idea of guys backing out of their committments to their children in an abortion on demand world. There is a little known Italian philospher, Giambattista Vico, who mused that man and woman developed intimate bonds (specifically marriage) out of fear of a holy God condemning their union out of wedlock (He used the example of a man and woman fleeing to a cave because they feared thunder as the wrath of God and in that cave setting up a domestic relationship). Therefore, when partner relationships began, woman provided the civilizing force, that over time changed men from hunter-gatherer types to cultivators of the land. The desire to provide adequately and more importantly consitently for one's wife and children altered the very nature of man's thought process. Beginning in 1973, women gained the right to kill their infants in the womb. Now the civilizers have become uncivilized. Is it any surprise then that we are seeing a regression of civilized values and the acceptance of responsibility? |
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If somewhat shameless self-promotion.
I weigh in on a related lefty argument at http://ado.townhall.com. See "My response to Looking Left." |
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