2007
Fathers, The Third Victim of the Abortion Industry
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by Carey Roberts
Why are men reflexively treated as the fall-guy in the abortion debate?
Recently National Review Online convened a group to opine what would happen in a post-Roe v. Wade world to women who might obtain an illegal abortion. The panelists reveal that before 1973, women who sought an abortion were not subject to criminal prosecution. So overturning Roe v. Wade would not fill our jails with post-abortive women. [http://article.nationalreview.com/?=ZjkwNWQ4ZDQ2NTljNDg4MjUyYWIxZWQ0NDVjMTkxYjg=]
One theme surfaces repeatedly in the commentaries: feckless boyfriends who abandon their partners in their hour of greatest need.
Hadley Arkes of Amherst College describes women having an abortion as routinely "Abandoned by the man." And Dorinda Bordlee from the Bioethics Defense Fund obliquely refers to fathers as "those who should be caring for [the mothers] and their unborn children."
So does research back up these broad pronouncements of male abandonment?
In their book Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love, Shostak and McLouth report that 44% of single men offered to marry the woman, 18% of the couples had discussed adoption, and half the men accompanied the woman to the abortion clinic >– hardly the image of wholesale male abandonment.
When these men show up at the clinic, they are met with a chilly reception. Two-thirds of the fathers want to accompany their partner throughout the experience, and nine out of 10 hope to hold the hand of their partner in the recovery room. But in most cases abortion clinics prohibit men from such expressions of support.
But the NRO panel reserves it harshest criticism for men who force their girlfriends to abort.
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