Miracles of Modern Science

You learn something new every day. Via an admittedly circuitous route (World-O-Crap as linked to by Atrios) comes this LA Times article which is, um, well... Oh, hell, just read it:

Abortion is usually portrayed as a woman's issue: her body, her choice, her relief or her regret. This new movement -- both political and deeply personal in nature -- contends that the pronoun is all wrong.

"We had abortions," said Mark B. Morrow, a Christian counselor. "I've had abortions."

Yes, you read that right: like a scenario from a Chuck Palahniuk novel, there is a burgeoning movement to serve the needs of "post-abortive men", asserting that the emotions involved are on a par with those experienced by women and therefore deserve equal attention. Put simply, it's an attempt to find a new angle to the anti-choice argument by focusing on men's emotional trauma.

How widespread is this trauma? Apparently, it doesn't matter:

But the activists leading the men's movement make clear they're not relying on statistics to make their case. They're counting on the power of men's tears.

Like Chuck Norris' tears? The ones that could cure cancer if he ever cried?

Before we start quibbling about whether this concept is infinitely offensive or merely deeply offensive, let me just say that I'm not trying to belittle anyone's emotional pain (well, okay, maybe just a bit); I'm trying to belittle what's being done with that pain while pointing out how potentially dangerous this is.

The "post-abortive men" movement as described by the Times instantly reminds me of Promise Keepers. For those not familiar, the surface premise of PK is to get men to live up to their "responsibilities" as men. Basically, that means taking abusive drunken assholes who ignore their families and turning them into abusive sober assholes who control and dominate their families. PK takes the self-absorption of sad-sack failures and, instead of replacing it with empathy, concern for their loved ones and a healthy outlook on the world, simply rechannels that self-absorption into a direction more politically acceptable to the forces behind PK (see "Dobson, James").

Similarly, the post-abortive men's movement takes what may well be legitimate emotional pain and channels it in a direction that'll support its own worldview. Thus the central question for members of the "movement" isn't "How do I get over myself?" so much as it is "How could I have let her do this to me?" Or, as liebniz puts it in Atrios' comments thread:

"I don't own a woman's uterus! Waaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

It's another attempt to shore up a rapidly crumbling patriarchy. It'd be laughable if it weren't so creepy.

Scott at the aforelinked W-o-C article tries to find some middle ground:

I will happily accept that we have abortions if, whenever a woman dies in childbirth, the father is immediately executed. It’d be easy. Just make sure that, along with the epidural, you have a lethal injection on hand, and you could do it right there in the delivery room.

And just to drive the point home further, let's leave this particular issue with a tale recounted in the Times article, in which they interview one Chris Aubert. This guy's a real prize; apparently, he once refused to take one of his pregnant girlfriends to the clinic because it conflicted with his weekly softball game (sorry, ladies, he's taken now). He reflects on his sordid, abortion-strewn past:

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.

'Nuf said.