End abortion. Hold men accountable.
As an attorney who practices family law, ending marriages makes up the bulk of my work. The more cases I take on, the more I notice patterns emerging. Chief among these, many whom I assist are mothers trying to fix the damage wrought by an absent, neglectful or abusive man. In each case, my job requires me to ask about the father’s role — or more often, whether he has one.
Eventually, the answers start to run together. Sure, he pays his support, but his children never see him. Or he’s an addict. Or he’s in jail. Or he’s with his new girlfriend. Or maybe they don’t know where he is.
When viewed against this backdrop, it is little wonder some people use words like “trapped” and “forced” to describe the consequences of banning abortion. Taken alone, laws like Georgia’s and Alabama’s, for example, put women in the precarious position of bringing a child into the world without any reliable support system.
I’m for overturning Roe v. Wade
To be clear, as a person who is strongly pro-life, I welcome nearly all efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade. These legislative initiatives are long overdue, and I remain confident that abortion — much like slavery — will one day be regarded as a terrible blight on our nation’s character.
Yet a comprehensive, life-affirming culture demands more than simply abolishing abortion. We must also restore the original support system that made it safe for women to choose life in the first place. In this respect, I’m greatly disappointed by the pro-life movement’s languid approach to emphasizing the other, equally crucial part of the pro-life equation: fatherhood.
The arguments against banning abortion often reflect fear, frustration and desperation — not support for abortion as a positive good. Most notably, pro-choice advocates deride the absence of free health care, free child care and compulsory paid maternal leave. They even call pro-life advocates hypocrites, saying that if we really cared about sparing the unborn, we’d prioritize supporting women making the journey to motherhood alone.
Their argument is correct (although their solutions are harmful). Unwanted pregnancy is not a disease, nor is it remedied by the moral hazard wrought by additional government assistance programs. Restoring fatherhood — nature’s built-in complement to motherhood — is what is needed. And it starts by expecting more, legally and socially, from our men.
At the outset, we should recognize that it takes two to create life and that both parents share in the responsibility. We often hear, for example, of schemes to make abortion a crime for which the mother or doctor should be punished. But when was the last time someone proposed the same for men who father unplanned children?
When was the last time an absent father faced consequences — be it in the form of physical scarring, loss of career advancement or loss of social status — that matched those of a single mother? When was the last time an absent father had to endure the humiliating and disapproving stares of random passersby, or the hurtful comments of someone who has no idea how hard it is for one person to do a two-person job?
Whose unwanted pregnancies?
Popular parenting blogger Gabrielle Blair had some interesting ideas in a Twitter thread that went viral, including castrating men who cause unwanted pregnancies.
“For those of you who consider abortion to be murder,” she tweeted, “wouldn’t you be on board with having a handful of men castrated, if it prevented 500,000 murders each year?”
She meant it as hyperbole (I think), but her point is well-taken. If we are indeed facing a crisis of mass murder in our country, isn’t it about time we ensured everyone is pulling their weight to stop it?
If we ban abortion under penalty of law and expect women to embrace the extraordinary responsibilities of pregnancy and motherhood, can we not demand the same of our men?