What If I Told You that Abortion was a Patriarchal Con-Job on Women?

Last updated on: March 8, 2018 at 5:52 am by Michael F. Bird

What If I Told You that Abortion was a Patriarchal Con-Job on Women? 2018-02-28T19:15:32-04:00 Michael F. Bird

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As a man, I do find it hard to discuss abortion for the reason that I am, well, a man. I will never be in the position of having an unwanted pregnancy. So, in the very least, there is an asymmetry about men talking about women’s bodies and deciding how they should be treated. I also know that abortion is not a black and white issue. There are legitimate medical grounds for seeking an abortion, ranging from ectopic pregnancies to sexual assault, and so forth. So I can live with ambiguity here.

However, I do have a mother, a wife, and two daughters, I am involved in their lives, their decisions, and so this is an issue that does involve men like me. Men are involved here, not only at the point of conception, but beyond that, in the messy world of male-female relationships, and the complexities of raising children. So I like to think that I am allowed to offer my two cents on the topic without being shouted down by the masses of pro-abortion objectors.

To be honest, I am concerned that the old slogan of “safe, legal, and rare” which recognized that abortion was less than ideal and not necessarily desirable, has now been replaced with the mantra “any time for any reason without apology.”

While I understand the reason for having an abortion due to an ectopic pregnancy, I’m less inclined to support one because eight months into a pregnancy a woman decides that she’d rather go skiing in Austria. So while I disagreed with the old pro-aborition ethos, I understood it; but now, for people advocating late-term abortion without a perilous health risk to a mother, I’m just abhorred by it.

My main contention is that the pro-abortion movement is, in fact, a patriarchal con-job that serves primarily to reinforce male dominance over women by ensuring that women’s bodies remain sexually available to men without men having to commit to the welfare of a woman.

A scandalous proposition I know, but let me ask several questions:

How many men do you know who have had an abortion? I can’t help but notice that only women have to experience this invasive and traumatic procedure.

How many men do you know have irreparably damaged their reproductive health and experienced the direct psychological trauma from having an abortion? Again, men are safely removed from the physical risks and psychological trauma posed by the abortion procedure. Note this, women can end up infertile as a direct result of an abortion, with some women then having to live with the fact that they aborted the only child they ever conceived (I’ve known women this has happened to and it is truly tragic).

How many men have been pressured into having an abortion? How many men have heard the words, “Unless you have an abortion I’m leaving you?” None, Zip, Nada! Of course, how many women have heard those words, faced duress, experienced domestic violence, and been manipulated by a man to have an abortion that they do not necessarily want? I read somewhere that it was about 28% of women, that’s right, 28% of women who are pressured into having an abortion by a man. It’s amazing, if you get a girl pregnant they call you a stud, and if you force her to have an abortion they call you a feminist!

How many men benefit from women having an abortion? Oh yes, now we get to it. Abortion enables men to ride the wave of the sexual revolution, it allows them to pursue their unbridled lusts with unfettered access to women’s bodies, requiring only the loosest notion of consent, without taking any interest in the welfare of a woman after coitus.

Why do you think Hugh Hefner and Harvey Weinstein were such big pro-choice fan-boys? Yes, Captain Obvious, if you believe in objectifying , exploiting, and using women for sexual gratification – and if sex often results in pregnancy – then you need a way to erase the biological effects of your promiscuous and predatory sexual behaviour. Otherwise, your child support bills are going to go through the roof. And with allies like Hefner and Weinstein, which woman needs any enemies?

How many babies have been aborted because they were male? In other words, should developing countries with restrictions on ultrasounds be forced to change policy to enable gendercide against females? In countries like India, it is technically illegal to have an ultrasound to determine the sex of an infant. The reason being that females are more likely to be terminated because males hold more honor and esteem in parts of Indian society. See the Invisible Girl Project. The results are socially catastrophic creating a huge deficit in the female population, creating a generation of single men, and even leading to sex trafficking, etc. Is gendercide in places like India okay and should we pressure the Indian government to remove the ultrasound restrictions? If you are “Any time for any reason,” you have to say yes. In this case, abortion is the epitome of male supremacy by ruling male life more valuable than female life.

In sum, in abortion, men face none of the harm, they get all of the benefits, it enables them to keep treating women as nothing more than objects of sexual gratification, and women pay all of the costs.

A patriarchal con-job.

Confession, there are unseemly elements of my biography I don’t want to go into, but I’m a recovering misogynist. When I joined the army as a 17 year old, I was taught by my peers to adopt Nietzshe’s philosophy of women, “Man shall be trained for war, the woman for the recreation of the warrior, all else is folly.” I know how men think, I know how men treat girlfriends, I know how much men value abortion and why they do, and I know the lengths men will go to to compel/threaten a woman into having an abortion (I’ve known men who did it). I know the misogynist ideology because I’m a recovering misogynist. But here’s what I’ve learned, with due hyperbole and poetry:

The sexual revolution is a religion, a phallocentric religion, men are the gods, women are the priests, and men demand abortion as the sacrament whereby women sacrifice the children of their womb to prove their worship of male sexual desire.

Let me be clear, this is not all to be said about abortion, for and against, there is more. However, I would like to put it out there that abortion enables exploitation of women by men.

Comments are welcomed, but rules are, keep it civil, don’t project views, don’t impute motives, and post thoughts like one day they will be read out in a courtroom before your grandmother.

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