He was freaking. His future was on
the verge of vanishing in a puff of disposable diapers and sleepless nights.
Their relationship, ornamental at best, was by its nature quid pro quo. It was
the view of each other’s material advantages that kept the romance going. The
sex was good but not ‘death do us part’ good. There was no intention, on his
part at least, of making what they had any more than what it was.
Since their ‘talk’ he knew what
must be done, the alternative was flat unacceptable. He would not be a father
to a child he did not want with a woman he never loved. He was too young, too
successful, and too absorbed to sacrifice his long-term plans for a short-term
mistake.
He would handle everything; all she
needed to do was make the appointment and get in the car. But she was not as
certain. Under that lacquer façade remained a tinge of her Baptist upbringing.
Those Sunday sermons about sin and brimstone, long muffled by the boom of
nightclubs and the wisdom of Cosmo Magazine, were suddenly ringing in her ears.
Their relationship buckled under
the tension. The dog hid under the bed. To avoid the risk of lectures and
counterarguments they went underground and prepared for the fight ahead.
__
In the abortion debate, there is
one absent from that conversation, someone without whom there could be no
disagreement whatsoever – the father of the unborn child. This omission is not
without cause. Males are arguably the greatest benefactors of abortion
providing them a suitable get out of jail free
card without sacrificing sensation. And realizing the benefits men
have strategically chosen to stay in the shadows, conveniently maintaining this
is not their body or their fight.
The question of the father’s role
in the decision to terminate a pregnancy has raised a host of philosophical
questions. Does the man deserve any say in the matter at all? If it
is her choice alone is it then her problem alone? If he does not want the child
can she be forced to have an abortion? In every case the courts have unanimously
sided with a mother’s freedom over a father’s interest. In Planned Parenthood
v. Casey (1992) the justices ruled, "it cannot be claimed that the
father's interest in the fetus' welfare is equal to the mother's protected
liberty...." This clear distinction has lead to countless stories of men
using whatever means necessary including violence, threats of financial and
emotional abandonment, even legal efforts to coerce the mother in one direction
or another.
In 2007, Matt Dubay, a 25-year-old
computer programmer from Michigan, was ordered to pay child support after his
ex girlfriend gave birth to his child. He sued, claiming he made it clear from
the onset that he did not want children; she said she could notget pregnant
anyway because of a medical condition. When she did get pregnant, he argues,
she should have chosen to abort the child. Dubay’s legal complaint was whether
he should be required to pay support for a child he never wanted to have?
__
The problem however, as Dubay’s
case made clear, is men wrongly assume the original intent determines the final
outcome. In other words, because a one-night stand is meant for carnal pleasure
any consequences falling outside that one objective are superfluous and are to
be dealt with accordingly. This is evident by Dubay’s assumption that since he
had made his desires clear about children this obligated his girlfriend to
fulfill those demands. But that line of thinking would be similar to playing
blackjack in Vegas then ordering the The Bellagio to
reimburse any losses because the player went in with the intention of winning.
The failure of men lies in this -
enjoying the fruit then expecting others to pay for the sin. Estimates show
that almost three quarters of women felt pressured to have an abortion – the
overwhelming majority of which was directly from the father. The same number
cited the father’s willful lack of support, financial and otherwise, as the
means of that coercion.
Over 50 million legal abortions
have taken place since 1973, one must wonder what that figure would be if the
vast majority of those fathers fought as hard to keep the child as they did to
get rid of it. What might the landscape of the abortion battle look like if the
fathers of countless unborn children accepted responsibility for their actions
instead of avoiding them and pledged to love and support something they are
directly responsible for instead of demanding another clean up the mistake?
Many men have argued to the
unfairness of abortion in general. Parenting authority Armin Brott
put it this way, "A woman can legally deprive a man of his right to become
a parent or force him to become one against his will". But abortion has
been and should always remain the sole prerogative of women so long as men
continue to slither into dark places and hide from their God-given moral duty.
__
No one knows what was actually
said, promised, or threatened. All anyone can say for sure is that soon
afterwards the ornaments began losing their brilliance from the stain of the
guilt and a relationship, based solely upon the artificial, quickly died after
something so genuine was discarded.