Men and the Abortion Debate

The extent to which men decide the course of American politics is impossible to ignore, especially when it comes to analyzing the conversations and policies surrounding reproductive rights. And these select few men are ardently supported by tens of millions of other men (some women too, but far less) who firmly believe that they should be able to impose their beliefs on women’s rights to their own bodies. It is difficult and implausible to remove men from political conversations about abortion, but the notion that male-generated policy should not dictate women’s bodily livelihoods is a fair one because men simply cannot assess the issue of abortion in the same manner that women do.

There is a key distinction between the manners in which men and women approach the issue of abortion. Women understand that these issues could, if they haven’t already, personally impact them. Rights or lack thereof pertaining to reproduction then become more real, rather than as existing an almost fantastical, abstract concept. Women are then able to examine the issue of abortion as it is and adequately weigh the ethical questions with its real life implications. Men, however, are detached from this reality because empathy can only extend so far. They do not experience the consequences of pregnancy or childbirth in the way that women do because men can and often do remove themselves from the aftermath of unwanted pregnancies. And, of course, men physically are not those who carry a child through pregnancy then undergo the process of childbirth. The concept of abortion is thus thought of by men as a theoretical matter that can be solely scrutinized on the premise of ethics. There is little to no consideration of, or at least understanding of concrete and real life ramifications.

It could be assumed that if abortion as a practice did not exist, it would be conceptually frowned upon on a wider scale than it is now. And this is because much of the justification for the pro-choice cause is tied to the realities of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting, not claims that abortion is 100 percent ethical. The pro-choice argument that an aborted fetus is “just a clump of cells” not only harms the credibility pro-choice movement, but is not quite valid either. Abortion is not completely, totally, absolutely, indisputably ethical if we were to only examine the act of abortion itself. The key thing to consider, however, is that the ethical implications of terminating a pregnancy do not exist exclusively from reality, and this is what policy makers and the American public must acknowledge by fully allowing women to determine their own reproductive journeys, unobstructed by individual and incomplete assessments of the issue.