Question from a reader:

A friend shared a quote on social media that said, “Banning abortion is banning equality. Men break condoms, have one-night stands with strangers, change their mind about parenthood, etc. Forcing a woman to follow-through while men are incapable of the same physical accountability is the epitome of sexism.”

Can you provide some solid resources to help me respond?

Answer from Stephanie Anderson, EPM staff:

Here are a few thoughts that I hope might help you formulate a response.

In his book ProChoice or ProLife?, Randy writes this:

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.

It’s interesting that this person who is quoted is acknowledging those behaviors in men aren’t positive, but at the same time saying that women should be able stoop to those same poor behaviors. (We wouldn’t, for example, apply this same thinking to already born children and say, “Some men physically abuse their children, so women should be able to abuse their children too.”)

The “follow through” this person writes about is important for both men and women—because it involves the life of a child. There should be no “equal rights” for men or women to kill unborn children. Instead, men should be held accountable to care for the children they have fathered (that’s why we have such a thing as child support), and women should be helped and encouraged whether they choose to parent their child or give the child to another family who can care for him or her. We need a culture of life, not a culture that encourages death and irresponsibility from either men or women.

Here is a resource from Abort73, a site Randy highly recommends. They write:

Feminism today is very much in favor of a woman’s right to an abortion (e.g., it is one of the main goals of the National Organization for Woman to keep abortion safe and legal). The earliest (“first wave”) feminists, however, saw abortion, not as a necessary right for women to achieve equality, but as a device that hurt and exploited woman, dishonored motherhood, and was contrary to nature. To them, abortion was a device promoted by men to hide their elicit sexual activity. Beyond this, the early feminists also had concern for the child growing in the womb, finding the practice of abortion to be on par with murder. 

Here is a helpful resource from Feminists for Life. I love what they say here: “By definition, equality is a principle extended to all. When one group of people gets their rights at the expense of another, there is nothing equal about it.”

In this article they say this:

The first step is to empower young women and men to make life-affirming choices. No compassionate person, pro-choice or pro-life, wants to see a teenage girl drop out of school and face a lifetime of poverty because she became pregnant. Nor do we want her to suffer the pain and anguish of abortion. Public and private funding for comprehensive programs that emphasize teen pregnancy prevention must be increased dramatically. We need honest and unbiased evaluation and replication of effective programs that include proven strategies such as life-planning skills training and mentoring. Boys, as well as girls, should be included in the remedy.

Groups like Feminists for Life and pregnancy resource centers regularly get calls from women who are pressured by partners who say they will pay $300 for an abortion but won’t pay a dime in child support. Men and boys need to know that, thanks to legislation supported by Feminists for Life and other women’s organizations that strengthens child support enforcement and paternity establishment, they can no longer coerce women into having an abortion by threatening to abandon their children if they are born. But fathers need to do more than make payments. Their presence is needed in their child’s life. For women whose partners are absent and who are unable to provide for their children, assistance must come from both private and public sources to protect children by providing the basis, including affordable, quality child care, and education and employment opportunities for the mother.

God bless you, as you compassionately and courageously share the truth about the unborn!

Photo by Becca Tapert on Unsplash