Men, what’s stopping you from talking about abortion rights? I don’t mean to be rude, but in the wake of the Supreme Court ending the constitutionally-protected right to abortion, those leading the conversation have been disproportionately female, as if getting impregnated is some sort of one-handed clap. Women are talking about this, whether quietly between courses at dinner, or loudly on the streets in protest. Women are, quite rightly, questioning the very foundations of autonomy and equality the Roe v. Wade ruling is overturning after 50 years. So it’s odd to me that men (mostly cis, straight men, mind you) aren’t as vocal about this blatant desecration of basic human choice as everybody else.
I’m trying to work out what exactly pro-lifers want, because when they say it’s simply for unconscious, heartbeat-less fetuses to be taken to full term, I already smell a rat. There’s talk, of course, about traditional values. But when we delve deeper into said traditional values, it’s obvious we’re talking about restrictive social codes that hark back to a time when the repression of women was even more rampant. A time when the man of the house married a chaste woman and, I dunno, they went to a witch dunking on the one day a week they weren’t toiling in the fields. (I’m being glib only because it seems so wildly counterintuitive to idealize a bygone era, or to celebrate the idea of going backwards full stop.)
The core argument behind traditional values, after all, is to sharpen the amorphous boundaries of womanhood, to control it, leaving no room for maneuver. Clearly, that Biblical social stigma for women still hangs around like a bad smell. A woman following her desires, her education, her libido, is evidently still considered shameful to some. Do they want us to return to a so-called golden age when women were subservient? When women “knew their place,” and men would constantly remind them of it without repercussions? Once again, it’s all about that very word: choice.
It is your choice when you have sex and who with; your choice if and when you procreate; your choice if you want to terminate that pregnancy or not. Sure, there’s plenty of rhetoric about termination being a “tough choice,” but even that feels reductive. You might know immediately what you want to do, or you might lie sleepless worrying for days and weeks, but that decision—however it manifests—is none of the business of the Supreme Court. It has nothing to do with powerful men.
I also think it’s important here to differentiate women’s rights from human rights. Women and men aren’t the same. My feminism is centered on the idea of being different but equal, in that differently sexed bodies aren’t chromatically identical, but they should have the same rights, the same opportunities. And everybody should have a say in what happens to their particular mortal coil. Bodily autonomy can’t be something only women want, surely? It’s humiliating they even have to ask for it. It should be offered as a default. I know I’m stating the absolutely obvious, but bodily autonomy is the lowest bar for our society, and whichever sex is being denied it endangers us all.
I have to say to the men, all the men, that wading into this discourse wasn’t always my plan either. You’ll have noticed from the near-constant references to my husband in previous columns that I’m gay—and of all the things to take into account when gay men shag, pregnancy isn’t a factor. But how can anyone stay silent when control over other people’s bodies is being enforced with such brutal and transparent force? It’s happening in front of us in real-time. This isn’t a time for men to listen with a supportive head tilt as women rage. It’s time for us all to be outraged by this overturn. It’s time for us all to speak out. In the fight against the systemic oppression of women, every voice matters.
