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[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]”What are men doing when they oppose abortion?! It’s a woman’s body!”  This is something that is often said to men who are engaging in pro-life activism.  Many people are opposed to the fact that men would so strongly add their voice to the abortion issue when it “doesn’t involve them”.  While I agree that it makes a more powerful statement to have a woman opposing abortion, I don’t believe there is anything wrong in any way, shape, or form with men opposing abortion.  In fact, men should be the warriors who are boldly proclaiming truth regardless of opposition, on behalf of and alongside women, since this issue affects us all.  The following are two common arguments given in opposition to men and the abortion issue:

    “You’re a man and abortion is strictly a woman’s issue so keep quiet”

                                                     OR

            “Men can’t get pregnant so they should leave the issue alone”

The first thing wrong with this argument is that the person making it is begging the question.  They are merely assuming that the unborn are not human.  Here’s why.  Abortion will always either kill a male or a female.  If the baby is a boy then abortion is no longer a woman’s issue, but involves the male, unborn child.  This argument cannot honestly be made unless we are first assuming that the unborn are not human.

Secondly, why should men keep quiet when women choose to kill their children?  If the unborn are human and life truly begins at the moment of conception, then abortion is wrong regardless of where that unborn child is located.  The fact that he/she is located six inches away in his/her mother’s womb in no way makes abortion purely a “woman’s issue”.  Furthermore, if we were to apply this line of reasoning to any other scenario, it would be completely rejected by society.  For example, should women keep quiet when men rape children?  After all, it’s mainly a man’s issue and it is the men who are accounting for almost all the rapes.  Shouldn’t just men address the issue and decide the best way to move forward?  Of course not.  We see that is obviously ridiculous.

Third, this argument is nothing more than pure sexism.  It attacks the gender of those in the abortion debate, rather than engaging their arguments on an intellectually honest level.  If men who are opposed to abortion speak out against it and offer arguments and reasons for why it is wrong, it would be the height of insincerity for men or women to attack their gender and completely ignore the arguments offered.  As Dr. Frank Beckwith says, arguments don’t have genders, people do (Politically Correct Death: Answering Arguments for Abortion Rights 90).  It is the ideas that must be engaged, not the gender of those presenting them.

Fourth, we will run into a lot of problems by using the line of reasoning offered in the second argument.  For example, lesbians, post-menopausal women, and some post-abortive women cannot naturally get pregnant.  Will we require them to keep silent on the issue of abortion too?  This type of reasoning simply does not hold up in any other arena of thinking.  Imagine if we said “Since only generals understand battle, only they should discuss the morality of war” (The Case for Life, Klusendorf, 183).  A man’s inability to get pregnant has nothing to do with his being able to hold a position on the morality of abortion.

Lastly, if these arguments are legitimate, then Roe v. Wade needs to be overturned immediately!! Folks, Roe v. Wade was decided on by a panel of nine men.  The very case that legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason or no reason at all in the U.S. was completely void of the opinions of women.  How unjust! But naturally, Roe is a case that is celebrated by women who are for abortion, yet their demands that men stay silent don’t seem to apply to the nine men who legalized abortion.

I am not ignoring the fact that abortion does involve a very real woman, often in difficult circumstances, I am merely pointing out that attacking men because they are men detracts from the issue of abortion and is nothing more than sexism.  I would hate for anyone I know to appeal to the two arguments I cited, because you will end up looking very foolish, yet I hear them over and over again.  That is all I have to say….[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

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