Abortion is one of the most contentious topics in American politics. The circumstances surrounding terminating a pregnancy are among the most intimate and delicate in the human experience. The Left's selective war on the First Amendment guarantee of free speech was previewed decades ago with the argument that pro-choice men should be free to push for their agenda, but pro-life men should have no such right. Case in point, I have yet to encounter an argument by feminists protesting the original Roe v. Wade opinion having been authored and joined by seven male Supreme Court justices.
Excluding men from the abortion debate is arbitrary and unjust. Abortion affects the entire human family. The women in my life have shaped me into who I am today. Even though I was adopted at birth myself, I still am my adoptive mother's son, my grandmothers' grandson, my wife's husband, and my two daughters' father. They have influenced me as much as I have influenced them. For that matter, even though I have never met my biological mother, her decision to carry me to term has influenced my very existence more than any other decision touching my own life. I will never be able to adequately repay her for that. But one of the ways I offer that appreciation and respect is to speak out, even as a man, for those as-yet unborn boys—and girls—so that they too may have opportunities to chase their own destiny one day.
Until 1973 and the release of Roe v. Wade, a man in America who got a woman pregnant experienced great societal pressure to provide for the child he helped create.
"Deadbeat dads" who would leave the woman bearing his child on her own with thousands of dollars in bills, forcing a choice between interrupting her earning ability and paying for childcare with no support, was a bad guy.
But Roe seemed to change that. An irresponsible father now could give the expectant mother an ultimatum: take a couple hundred bucks and get an abortion, or if she insisted on carrying her child to birth, deal with it alone. It was, after all, a woman's "choice," and men had no business getting involved.
For pro-abortion activists this was the best of both worlds. Shame the male half of the pro-life population into silence, leaving advocacy for unborn babies to women—while encouraging men who wanted sex without responsibility to speak out for their easy escape. Pro-choice men and pro-choice women had incentives to be vocal, while vocal pro-life men were shamed and vilified, and vocal pro-life women were largely ignored.
Some arguments propose going beyond shaming pro-life men into silence to actually demanding that silence by saying a man should never have a say whether the woman decides to have an abortion. Or, that a man should never be forced to "be a father—or to abdicate his role of father—against his will."
So if a man fathers a child with a strongly pro-life mother, he need not even offer to pay for the abortion in order to wash his hands of responsibility. He could simply remind the mother that she has no right to force him to be a father by having the child against the father's will and walk away.
In other words, under this argument, it is no longer the woman's right to choose to carry a child to term. It is her right to choose to abort, yes. But if she wants to carry the child to term, she can only count on the support of the father if he offers to give support. And if he doesn't, tough luck. When we consider that between 1998 and 2019, there had been only four years in which a majority of women described themselves as "pro-choice"—2004 (52 percent), 2006 (51 percent), 2015 (54 percent), and 2017 (52 percent)—it's evident that the right of an enormous number of women to choose to carry a child to term would be dependent on the father's willingness to commit to the child long-term.
For pro-abortion groups to continue to make policies across the U.S. among the most liberal in the world—and much more liberal, especially in reference to late or partial-birth abortions, than the majority of Americans support—they must push to extend "reproductive rights" to fathers who want their child aborted. They do this regardless of what the mother wants, and extinguish the free speech rights of fathers—and the practical choice of mothers—who want to see their child live and flourish.
Timothy Head is executive director of the Faith & Freedom Coalition.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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