Pro-choice advocates often say that pro-life men are anti-woman, and the pro-life movement is a way for men to deny women’s rights and control their bodies. One pro-choice writer says, “American anti-abortion policy has always been about controlling (white) women and pushing them into their ‘proper’ place: being subservient and making more babies.”
How ironic. Abortion allows and even encourages men to sexually exploit women. If the woman does get pregnant, the man can hand over a few hundred dollars and buy a dead child. (He may feel almost heroic for doing so.) When the man is long gone, with no child to support, the woman is left with the burden of having killed her child. “Abortion rights” bring out not the best, but the worst abusive and controlling behavior in men.
Pro-life men are also told by some pro-choice advocates, “No uterus, no opinion” and “No womb, no say.” But abortion is a human issue, not a gender issue. Facts, logic, reason, and compassion have no anatomy. Whether they are espoused by men or women is no more relevant than whether they are espoused by black or white people. The point is not the gender of those advancing arguments, but whether or not the arguments are accurate. To believe otherwise is simply sexism.
If men are disqualified from the abortion issue, they should be disqualified on both sides. The vast majority of doctors who perform abortions are men, as are most pro-choice members of congress. Why do pro-choice advocates embrace the judgment of the all-male Supreme Court that legalized abortion in 1973? And why do pro-choice groups donate sizable campaign funds to male legislators who endorse abortion? If men should be eliminated from the abortion debate, shouldn’t they be eliminated from both sides?
Both men and women can care deeply about women receiving equal opportunities, rights, and protections, yet oppose abortion because it harms children (of whom half are female) and women.
Finally, if pro-life men’s motives are suspect as self-serving, then pro-choice men’s motives should also be suspect. I sometimes wonder this when I see prominent males who are pro-choice spokesmen: have some of them congratulated themselves for being women’s advocates while paying for the abortions of multiple women for whom they are now free to give no emotional support in their darkest hours?
I encourage you to download (without cost) my short book Pro-Choice or Pro-Life: Examining 15 Pro-Choice Claims—What Do Facts & Common Sense Tell Us? It will equip you in your conversations and also is a great book to share with those who are pro-choice or are on the fence. The book is also available in print from our ministry for an affordable price.
