Abortion and Men

“My body, my choice” is a common refrain for women in the pro-choice movement. I happen to agree with it. What women choose to do when they get pregnant is truly none of my business.

Yet the abortion debate swirls and twists and roars as if men played absolutely no role in getting women pregnant. As if all pregnancies were some kind of immaculate conceptions.

Our society and culture puts almost all the onus and responsibility (and, often enough, blame) on women for getting pregnant. For pro-lifers, a woman, once pregnant, is then obligated to have a baby and care for it until adulthood, else put it up for adoption.

But what about the father’s obligation? After all, unless we’re talking the Virgin Mary here, she didn’t get pregnant alone. (And even the Virgin Mary had help of a godly kind.)

I’d have a bit more tolerance for pro-lifers if they’d agreed to these rules:

1. The biological father is also responsible, financially and legally and otherwise, for raising the baby until adulthood.
2. If the father isn’t married to the mother in question, and the mother keeps the child, he is legally obligated to pay for child support. For argument’s sake, let’s say he’s obligated to contribute 20% of his pay until the child reaches the age of eighteen.

If men were held legally and morally responsible for all the children they fathered, and this was strictly enforced by
society and the state, with deadbeat dads becoming society’s new outcasts, I wonder how long it would take for
abortion to be made legal and universally available in America?