Ban on Abortion a Male Chauvinist Plot?
I can't stop thinking about what happened in South Dakota and what is sure to happen soon in the Bush-wacked Supreme Court. Abortion rights are coming under fire yet again and this time it's personal.
I believe this issue has a deeper, more fundamental reason for continuing to remain so controversial. Far from seeing this as a religious, medical, or moral issue, I see the abortion fight as a by-product of feminism and the backlash against women's rights.
Simply put, men are scared. Women are powerful creatures who, increasingly, don't really need them. Women have become a force to be reckoned with, upsetting the gender-based societal roles that have been in place for thousands of years. It's not the women who are upset. It's the men! But women have one Achilles heel-- namely, children. Once a woman has a child, she is rendered virtually powerless for an extended amount of time. We've all heard stories of women who "couldn't even take a shower" after having a baby, due to its demands. Sleep deprivation, nursing, and healing from childbirth all serve to eliminate the woman from the man's arena, with some women opting never to return.
For those people who vainly endeavor to claim that "men are affected by having a baby, as well," I would very much like to differ. Having gone through years of infertility treatments, I hold no such illusions as to the man's role in reproduction. My part in the baby making process included having surgery, injections, sonograms, and logging in several days' worth of doctor appointments over the course of three years. My guy spent a few minutes in the bathroom with a cup. I can honestly say that it takes *one* to make a baby (the woman) plus a reliable sperm delivery system. I don't think that there would be many who would argue that, with few exceptions, childbirth and care of an infant holds up to that same involvement ratio.
Once she is carrying an infant, it's easy for men to infantilize the woman herself. Larry Sendlebach [Kevin Eigelbach, "Dead Set Against Abortion", January 12, 2006], a Kentucky Catholic who sets up crosses on church lawns for all the "dead babies", exemplifies this tendency. When asked about a woman's right to choose, he sarcastically said, "We could let the children run out in the street and make that decision for themselves." He was referring not to children, but to grown women who were exercising their reproductive choice!
It's time for women to grow up and insist on making their own choices about their own bodies. They need to stop allowing children (and not even children who have been born yet!) to have more power over a woman's body than the women themselves. They need to take a hard look at who is behind abortion ban legislation. Perhaps they will realize that they are being manipulated into having unwanted children by men who are threatened by their independence.
I'm not suggesting that there is a cabal of men, not even in South Dakota, who hold regular summit meetings with "How to Keep Women Subservient and Less Threatening" as their primary focus. I don't think it's that conscious. But I don't think it's lost on men that a woman with children is easier to control. She is less mobile, her body less able, her mind less focused. A woman with a child is now occupied, leaving the man to go about his business unimpeded. He is still free. And passing legislation to ensure that he remains so.
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