Men must speak out for abortion rights

It’s important to know when your voice isn’t needed.

When news broke of the U.S. Supreme Court’s impending plan to overturn abortion rights nationwide, the immediate aftermath seemed like a good time for men to shut up. It’s women, after all, who are directly affected by the coming ruling. It’s women who could be forced to be pregnant and give birth against their wishes, possibly at the risk of their health, in states where abortion could be prohibited, which is about half the country. Men could sympathize, but it wasn’t the time to take center stage.

But there quickly comes a point when such silence becomes self-perpetuating. This isn’t my problem, in other words, so why should I say anything?

Polls show most Americans support abortion rights, but there are many surveys and many interpretations. What seems to be the case is that most people want abortion to be legal, but they don’t want to have to think about it. They get squeamish about the details.

Anti-abortion activists have taken advantage of this by focusing on late-term abortions, which are rare and nearly always happen because the mother’s life is in danger. But it’s worth focusing, too, on the details of what happens during pregnancy and childbirth, because men are far too often oblivious, even as they are, biologically speaking, responsible for every pregnancy.

You don’t need to be a medical expert to understand this, you just need to have spent time around mothers. Pregnancy and childbirth can go smoothly, but often don’t, and they are inevitably life-altering in all kinds of ways. There are physical changes and mental changes. It can be incapacitating or dangerous, even with 21st-century medicine. To force someone to go through with something as potentially traumatizing as pregnancy and childbirth against their will should strike people as monstrous.

This is where people will chime in about the supposed monstrousness of abortion. Everyone is familiar with the arguments, and no one is likely to change their deeply held views. What can change is reluctant supporters could become vocal. It’s long past time for that to happen.

Without access to abortion, women can see their entire future change on the government’s say-so. Meanwhile, men who cause pregnancies can mostly go on with their lives as if nothing has changed. Even heavily involved fathers don’t bear anywhere near the weight that mothers do.

That’s why it’s so important for men who broadly support women’s rights to get over their squeamishness and speak out. Even if a hypothetical scenario doesn’t directly apply to you, respecting the rights of everyone is part of being human. Women’s rights must be everyone’s rights.

It’s not just men who oppose abortion, of course; plenty of women do, too. But it is mostly men in the position to make laws, and it was a man who wrote the draft opinion of a decision to change abortion laws. They are speaking of something they can’t possibly understand.

One thing everyone needs to stop doing is talking about what comes next. Abortion isn’t the end, leading Democrats have been saying all week — next they’ll be coming for marriage equality and contraception, or maybe Brown vs. Board of Education.

This is all true, but it’s also not the point. What is happening already needs to be enough, even as we brace for more outrages to come.

There’s also a lot of talk about what this means for the midterms. It’s possible this could be a boon for Democrats, who are otherwise looking at major losses in November.

But no one knows. One might once have thought an attack on the Capitol blessed by the president would be enough to turn people against Republicans, but that hasn’t happened.

What too many analysts ignore is that voting isn’t enough. Voters chose Hillary Clinton in 2016, just like they chose Al Gore in 2000. Neither became president (and, yes, I’m aware of how the Electoral College works). The two popular vote losers in those elections chose the Supreme Court justices poised to overturn rights for millions of women. At the same time, Democrats need to win millions more votes than their opponents to control Congress thanks to gerrymandering. Telling people to simply vote is telling them to have faith in a rigged system.

This is still Connecticut, where abortion laws not only stand, but have been strengthened this year. That doesn’t mean anyone’s rights are safe. A national ban on abortion could seem far-fetched, but so did a lot of things until recently. Everything is on the table.

Which is why everyone needs to speak up. Even if you’re not directly affected, this needs to matter. Men are far too often able to skip past the consequences of their actions even as women pay for those decisions with the rest of their lives. For the good of everyone, it needs to change.