Abortion Empowers the “Patriarchy”
By Emily Huseman
@LiveActionOrg
“Fight, fight, fight! Abortion is a human right!,” echoed outside. My curiosity got the best of me. I buried my conference badge into my dress pocket, walked outside, and quietly slipped into the crowd of passionate feminists. Both women and men alike were gathered to protest the conservative conference I was attending. They continued chanting and held signs with colorful language in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It broke my heart to see every woman there buy into the tragic lie that says abortion “empowers” them. While the feminists surrounding me thought abortion rights would liberate them, they did not realize that their cause is fundamentally anti-women because it incentivizes the worst behavior in men.
At first glance, seeing a man demand abortion rights at a protest just looks like he is sympathetic to women. After all, how could he benefit from something that doesn’t even concern a man’s body? The facts show, however, that promiscuous men have every reason to be advocating for abortion. Pro-life activist Lauren Marlowe said it best: “Ladies, remember the pro-choice men aren’t fighting for YOUR right to an abortion. They’re fighting for THEIR right to YOUR abortion.”
Ironically, pro-life supporters aren’t the only ones pointing this out. After Roe was reversed, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “If you are a parent of sons, do think about what this means for the life of your son and what that will mean in terms of the choices he will have.” Harris’ comment speaks volumes. It should prompt us to ask why a man’s life would change if abortion is no longer legal. The answer is simple: a man’s life changes when abortion becomes illegal because he no longer can take reckless advantage of women without bearing responsibility for his actions. This forces men to think carefully about the consequences of participating in hookup culture. If the woman they slept with becomes pregnant, he will have to either provide child support, put the child up for adoption, or slip a wedding ring on the new mother’s finger.
The story is quite different when abortion remains an option. Men can continue having casual sex whenever, with whomever, and without any repercussions whatsoever. When the man quickly leaves a woman after a one-night stand to find another, the woman is left feeling emotionally wrecked because she has been treated like a discardable object. This all too often saga can leave a woman with more than heartbreak, however, if she becomes pregnant. Rather than rightfully taking responsibility as a father and committing to the woman he impregnated, abortion allows men a cowardly escape. By pressuring the vulnerable woman into abortion, the man escapes fatherhood by dropping the mother off at an abortion clinic to end his child’s life. This frees the man from having to pay child support and enables him to continue sexually objectifying more women.
How does this affect the woman he abandoned? Unlike the man, she doesn’t have an easy out. She is the one who faces the health risks of hemorrhaging, infection, and future infertility. She is the one who is 154 percent more likely to commit suicide than a woman who didn’t have an abortion. She is the one left without a man or baby, but with physical and emotional trauma to carry for the rest of her life.
Sadly, women across the country have blindly believed that not having a right to abortion is more unjust than allowing men to continually use their body for free. One of the signs that caught my eye at the abortion rally read, “No sex until Roe is protected.” To borrow from a meme found in the Twitter universe, “I accept your conditions!” While I don’t agree that abortion should be protected, I applaud women who refuse to have sex when they don’t consent to pregnancy. Women will never find empowerment from ending the life of their children after having sex with men who won’t commit to marriage. Women will find true empowerment when they tell a man “no” unless he gives her a lifelong “yes.”
