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Pity the ManSarah Blustain
Pity the man who conceived four babies with four women and suffered anxiety attacks and nightmares after all four, with his consent, were aborted. Pity the man who saw his soon-to-be-born baby on an ultrasound and instantly came to believe that he "had killed two of my own kids" through abortion. Pity the man who abused alcohol after his girlfriend aborted. Pity the man who suffered a nervous breakdown, depression, psychosis and nearly suicide after his girlfriend had an abortion despite his pleas.
And pity these men who, wittingly or not, are allowing their pain to be co-opted for political gain. Whatever the cause of their suffering, it is real and they deserve support. But they are also the new face of the antiabortion movement: Post-Abortion Syndrome-for men. In conferences and counseling, they're being wrapped in the fuzzy blankets of men's healing, but behind these men and their stories are the same crackpot research, coercive counseling and policy-by-anecdote that have defined the antiabortion movement's tactical emphasis on women's suffering after abortion. It's a maxim among the antichoice crowd these days that there are "two victims of abortion"; the men's PAS movement wants to take that to three. A casual prochoice activist might dismiss this movement out of hand. After all, politically speaking there's no great constituency for men's PAS. The men's rights movement-which fights to improve men's standing in custody, child support and fatherhood-related issues, on which they say the law favors women-doesn't particularly embrace men's PAS: men's rights advocates are divided on abortion, and besides, some say, the pain of losing a child to abortion simply doesn't measure up to the pain of losing one's born children. Plus, the Supreme Court has definitively told men, including husbands, that they have no rights when it comes to abortion, which leaves antichoice activists no judicial openings to revive, for instance, spousal notification laws. To read the rest of this article, click here. |
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