Anti-Choice Men Say: "I Had An Abortion."

Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville at 11:05 AM on January 8, 2008.

The LA Times offers up an absolutely infuriating profile of "post-abortive men"—which, despite what the name suggests, are not men who were born after being aborted, but MRAs who are getting involved in the anti-choice movement, via the bullshit "post-abortion syndrome" fallacy, by whining about how men are traumatized by abortions, too—which, naturally, means that women shouldn't be allowed to have them.

I could take you point-by-point through this travesty, but one dude's story pretty much sums up the whole movement:

Chris Aubert, a Houston lawyer, felt only indifference in 1985 when a girlfriend told him she was pregnant and planned on an abortion. When she asked if he wanted to come to the clinic, he said he couldn't; he played softball on Saturdays. He stuck a check for $200 in her door and never talked to her again.

Aubert, 50, was equally untroubled when another girlfriend had an abortion in 1991. "It was a complete irrelevancy," he said. But years later, Aubert felt a rising sense of unease. He and his wife were cooing at an ultrasound of their first baby when it struck him -- "from the depths of my belly," he said -- that abortion was wrong.

Yep. It struck him that abortion was wrong. Not his total fucking indifference to the women he impregnated getting abortions, an appalling lack of empathy which any rational person would conclude had to have been indicative of a larger emotional detachment from women with whom he was intimate—that was cool. It was just the women getting the abortions that was the problem. And of course his near-sociopathic apathy toward them and their shared circumstance while pregnant with his spawn obviously had nothing to do with their getting abortions in the first place. Heavens, no. Everyone knows women long to have babies with emotionally unavailable wankstains who slip abortion money under the door.

Aubert has since converted to Catholicism. He and his wife have five children, and they sometimes protest in front of abortion clinics. Every now and then, though, Aubert wonders: What if his first girlfriend had not aborted? How would his life look different?

He might have endured a loveless marriage and, perhaps, a sad divorce. He might have been saddled with child support as he tried to build his legal practice. He might never have met his wife. Their children -- Christine, Kyle, Roch, Paul, Vance -- might not exist.

"I wouldn't have the blessings I have now," Aubert said. So in a way, he said, the two abortions may have cleared his path to future happiness.

"That's an intellectual debate I have with myself," he said. "I struggle with it."

But not so much that he doesn't picket outside abortion clinics to make (what he only now realizes is) a difficult decision for women getting abortions even more difficult. What a hero.

In the end, Aubert says his moral objection to abortion always wins. If he could go back in time, he would try to save the babies.

But would his long-ago girlfriends agree? Or might they also consider the abortions a choice that set them on a better path?

Aubert looks startled. "I never really thought about it for the woman," he says slowly.

Well there's a bloody shocker! I'm positively gob-smacked that he's never stopped to consider whether those abortions might have been a wise decision for the women who had them.

No—of course it would have been better if he'd "saved the babies," and brought into the world children of a father who cared so little for one mother that he played softball while she had an abortion. Not better for the mothers, and not better for the kids—but better for Aubert and his burdened conscience nearly 20 years later, and isn't that what really matters?

He has not talked with either of the ex-girlfriends, but he says he can imagine what they feel because he knows how the abortions affected him.

Right. And so they must be affected the same way—because however he feels, his ex-girlfriends must feel the same. It's inconceivable to this dipshit that they might have feelings independent of his. Good lord.

[Thanks to Shaker Poly for passing along the article link. Cara's got more.]

Tagged as: reproductive justice, men's rights, pro-life, abortion

Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.