Where are the Men in the Pro-Choice Fight?

I really don’t like this episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale”

The other day I was having lunch with P, a male conservative friend of mine. We were talking about Medicare for All, and in between bites of a Reuben he said, “Why should I have to pay for your birth control?”

I laughed. I thought he was joking. When I realized he wasn’t, I tried to explain the birds and the bees to him. Didn’t he realize that “her” birth control was also “his” birth control? That if he didn’t want to be a father, this was really his only option? (Unless he wanted to wear condoms, and we all know how well that usually goes).

“Well,” he mansplained, “pregnancy is an exclusively female condition, so it’s her birth control.”

I am very proud of myself that I didn’t reach across the table and stab him in the neck with a butter knife. Instead, I said, “I agree, it is exclusively a female condition, so how can you, a dude, justify being anti-choice?”

He stammered something about the sanctity of life, and I stopped listening.

As frustrating as it was, the conversation with P finally answered a question I’ve been ruminating about ever since I binged all three seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale in one month:

Where are the pro-choice men in the abortion debate?

Off the top of your head, can you name a man in your life who is talking about this? I can’t.

If P is any indication, the simple, sad truth is that men just don’t think about female bodies that much, even the so-called pro-choice men. As a result, women already bear the brunt of birth control.

A completely non-scientific, anecdotal survey of my friends’ ex-boyfriends and mine, who all think of themselves as feminist allies, proves this point. At some point, condoms go by the wayside and we all find ourselves on the pill, buying the sponge on Amazon, or comparing copper and plastic IUDs.

Two of my ex-boyfriends, both of whom had children and were dead set on not having more, looked like I suggested human sacrifice when I asked if they would consider vasectomies. The last one actually shrieked “No, no, no!” when I brought it up. (And this is why I’m currently sporting a Skyla).

They were both horrified because I asked them to do something with their bodies they didn’t want to do.

So I ask again, if men practically pass out at the thought of an unwanted vasectomy, why aren’t they taking to the streets to keep abortion safe and legal?

The Handmaid’s Tale is genius in many ways, but the most important way is reminding us that Gilead didn’t just happen overnight.

We see flashbacks of June’s husband having to sign off on her birth control pills, and the couple nervously laughs at how ridiculous it all is. We later find out that Commander Waterford was in marketing before he became a serial rapist.

Totalitarianism slowly rolled in, and then it was too late: women’s bodies became the property of state.

Like the slow-roll of Gilead, we are at the end of the pro-choice decades. It’s here. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah all passed restrictive abortion laws in 2019, and I’m not even bothering with the bills passed in other states from 2011 forward.

And I don’t know any men who are talking about it. I’m not talking about the current roster of Democratic presidential candidates, who all have at least given some lip service to the right to choose. Although to be fair, I was thrilled to see that Yang’s website has a powerful and comprehensive statement about the right to choose. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s website says nothing about it, and neither does Bernie Sander’s site.

No, I’m talking about our boyfriends, male friends, brothers, sons, uncles, fathers, male co-workers.

If your life is like mine, they’re all talking about income inequality or Medicare for All, or impeachment, which are of course important issues. But they never mention a right to choose. Ever.

A quick survey of Medium found one story by Christopher Keelty, who figured out that abortion affects men too and they should point that out more often. (Thank you, Christopher). The rest of the stories are by Jessica Valenti, who seems to be the only writer ringing the alarm.

My male friends don’t give money to candidates on this basis, they don’t give money to Planned Parenthood, they don’t talk about it on Facebook or Twitter. My sinking suspicion is that because pregnancy is an exclusively female condition, like P, it just doesn’t occur to them to worry.

But they should worry.

If my ex-boyfriend M is any indication, they should really worry. Because M and I both bought into the “it’s impossible to get pregnant after forty” myth we got sloppy and I found myself knocked up at 44. Then I found myself agonizing for a few weeks over what to do — toggling between friends who told me that I had to have this “miracle” baby, and other friends who told me that motherhood was the hardest thing in the world and I would never survive it — until finally, I was sitting across from M at a Denny’s watching him cry, beg and plead for me to get an abortion.

We had broken up by then, given how much of a jerk he was about the whole thing. But I thought that perhaps we could work something out: maybe I could be a single mother and he could just leave us alone I wondered. Instead, he said through tears, “Please, the most important thing is that I feel free.” Yeah, he said that. He actually said the most important thing is that I feel free.

PSA for the men out there: if like M, the most important thing is for you to “feel free” then it’s time to get in the ring on this issue.

I ultimately did get an abortion. I didn’t want to have a child with another person whose own freedom was his only concern. And it was hard, I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t. Extremely hard, which is why I am so thankful that it was safe and legal. Since then, I’ve done what I can to protect women’s right to choose, but there really isn’t much one person, alone, can do.

So again, I ask, if M’s only concern was his own freedom, why hasn’t he and other men taken to the streets to protect choice? Or at least donated to Planned Parenthood? Or maybe just talk about it at a dinner party? Is a tweet too much to ask?

I do have a confession to make. When I read about the increasingly restrictive abortion laws popping up in multiple states, I thought Fine, serves them right, women in those states voted these idiots into power. It’s no excuse, but I was exhausted from hearing that white women had voted Trump into office, and I’m probably spoiled by living in California, which will probably never restrict a woman’s right to choose.

But as soon as I thought it, I was ashamed: why was I laying the blame exclusively at the feet of women? It’s because I too, like P, have absorbed the notion that pregnancy is exclusively a female concern. But if M’s wild-eyed panic on display at Denny’s is any indication, it of course isn’t.

So men, get in the ring, please. And I promise, if there is ever a real-life version of The Handmaid’s Tale where all of a sudden men aren’t allowed to have vasectomies, or are forced to have them, I promise I will not think of it as an exclusively male condition. I will go to the mat for you while you shriek in a corner.

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