Monday, October 02, 2006

Women have the last say on abortion.

Let's say you're the man. You're having intercourse with a woman. You get all excited and ejaculate and experience an intense, though fleeting, erotic feeling in your nervous system. If you've been a good lover, your partner experiences the same. But a few months later, she finds that your sperm has impregnated her egg, and she's pregnant. Unless she's in a real relationship with you, she is probably depressed to hear this news. She knows that she is going to go through profound changes in her whole system: her belly -- for lack of a better word -- is going to be distorted beyond her imaginings; her moods are going to swing back and forth; her digestive system is going to be thrown way out of kilter (e.g., she's going to be vomiting in odd places, often without warning). And what are you, the male, the guy, the father, going to undergo? Nothing but the anxiety of thinking that you might be bringing a new person into the world and that you might be held accountable for it. Who do you think should have the veto right on this embryo?
I vote for the woman. She is going to be saddled with this baby, while you can skate out of town, denying everything. Yes, there are DNA tests that might name you as the likely father, but you can challenge those. Yes, you may actually acknowledge that you're the father, but you can still disappear and make the authorities track you down. (And you know they're not going to spend much time or effort to do so.) In the meantime, the woman has to go through the trauma of giving birth, which can be prolonged and painful. (If men had to give birth, the whole human race would have ground to a halt long before now.) Then there is a baby to be fed and cared for, or given up for adoption, or neglected and flushed down a public toilet. Excuse me, but the case seems pretty clearcut to me: the woman who is pregnant has the right to decide whether she wants to see that pregnancy through to completion (i.e., birth). Until the laws change -- until there is more responsibility demanded of fathers -- the woman, of whatever age, gets to decide.

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