Abortion: Where Are The Men on This?

For pro-life men, and men in general:

I’m not trying to start a war here…

But I have serious questions re the spate of abortion bans just passed in the South:

If you really want to do away with abortion, why not flip this conversation to men’s role in the situation?

They do have a key one, right? Everyone knows women don’t get pregnant by themselves…

Why aren’t conservative men stepping up and leading the way to prevent pregnancy, and therefore abortion, by aggressively halting conception from the masculine side of this equation?

Or….if you prefer that the state handles it for you (which in my understanding, is never the preferred conservative solution, except when it comes to banning abortion):

If men were mandated to pay the consequences for their products of conception, for the rest of their lives, as women are by default, wouldn’t that necessarily change the behaviors that produce abortion?

Every factory worker knows it’s easier to prevent problems upstream than fix them expensively and badly on the tail-end of any system. Applying that logic, if men were mandated to deploy birth control either by masculine birth control pill or injection, they couldn’t impregnate women.

No possibility of unwanted pregnancy by men = zero demand for abortion by women.

Problem solved, it seems to me. And for far less money and pain than today’s system, where the woman gets stuck with all the responsibility and consequences.

If the state mandated it, it could work like it does in California when you let your auto insurance lapse. They revoke your registration, for a start. Imagine, as a man, your employer or mortgage company getting a call that you weren’t keeping up with your birth control. You’d now be more financially risky because you might have unplanned children that you have to pay for.

If that seems harsh and overly-statist to you, consider that women already navigate a world that looks like this:

1. Women are considered by companies to be more risky as new hires in their childbearing years.

2. Women get disability rather than maternity leave when giving birth, because apparently having a child is ‘disabling’ in this country.

3. Women make less in their lifetimes when they have children.

These economic penalties on women FORCE the party most at-risk to make desperate choices.

Men aren’t penalized by society for the children they father the way women are for the children they bear.

Change that, and the need for abortion decreases dramatically.

No one seems to be willing to hold the other responsible party accountable here…. other than letting them weigh in with what they think ought to be done to women.

There. Has. To. Be. A. Better. Way.