Chapter 79 - If men got pregnant

There was an article in our local newspaper today about abortion. You could tell by the way it was written that it was from a person who is Pro-Life, as most newspaper articles are. It was a woman writer, and one paragraph in particular caught my attention, although, in my opinion, she missed the point.

She said "They (woman crying) are the women who mourn their abortions, the women who chose abortion because they had no other choice. They are the teens whose parents pressured them, the women whose partner threatened to abandon them, the students desperate to finish school, and the women whose finances couldn't feed another mouth. They are the women who love children, who cried on the abortion table, and who still cry."

I can identify very closely with all these women, for I was one who was crying and I still cry from time to time. But what was I crying about...yes, it was my lack of choices and for my loss.

But it is such a huge issue with so many twists and turns. Each person's experience is unique except that there is one common factor - pregnancy. I my opinion, pregnancy is not a solitary state. Although it is a woman who gets pregnant, she doesn't get there by herself. There is another person involved, but they are often left out of the equation, somehow they always seem to come out of this great debate unscathed. We never discuss the choice that the man has made. We never question his integrity. There are no protestors in front of his home. There are no threats to his life or safety for the choice he has made.

So why don't we talk about the cold-hearted, cowardly, sociopathic, dishonest, self-centred, deadbeat men who have created this problem? Why is it the women who are blamed and branded for making this 'choice'? Where is the article on the accountability of the men who share fifty percent (and more often than not more) of the blame? As always, it is the women who are left to deal with the aftermath of the unconscionable behaviour of these 'men'.

Thank God there is a choice for women. If the woman were to choose to have the child, do you suppose the man would step up to the plate and help support her and the child...or even just the child? Do you suppose that he would be with her during childbirth? Do you suppose he would share in the up-bringing and education of this child?

If men were the one's who got pregnant instead of women, do you think for one moment we would be reading articles such as this - no. It would not be an issue. First, because a woman would rarely leave a man on his own to deal with an abortion or a child, and second because if men could get pregnant, they would NEVER have sex again!

Sorry folks...I just needed to rant