The Abortion Debate: Are Men Trying To Control Women?

This presentation deals with the way the abortion issue is debated and asks questions about the whether the pro-life movement is driven by a desire control women and women's bodies and reproductive health. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Any time the topic of abortion comes up. I'm reminded of an experience that I had in a health law class during my last year of law school and this particular experience stands out in my mind because it was so different from any experience that I can recall related to the issue of abortion. Of course, it goes without saying that abortion is a very emotionally charged topic. People tend to have very strong feelings about it one way or the other. When abortion came up in the material for my health law class, I assumed that the discussion was most likely going to be rather tense and yet to my surprise, this, this didn't happen for one of the only times in my life that I can recall, abortion was discussed in a calm, rational, and thoughtful way. One of the reasons that the discussions proceeded as they did was because we had a very good professor. He was a capable practitioner of what's known as the Socratic method, and he directed the classroom discussions very effectively. Most of the class took a pro choice position, but there was a substantial group that advocated for the pro-life position as well. I remember everybody got to speak up in support of their position, but everybody was also very effectively challenged by the professor. He asked probative questions. He made people think through the ramifications of their views on the topic. He never tipped his hand as to what his personal views were on the topic. The consensus among the students was that he was one of the more conservative politically, uh, professors at the law school, but this didn't result in him sharing his personal views on the topic. The material was also very good. The material got into some really deep technical medical issues. I remember discussing things such as when a fetus develops higher and lower brain function when a fetus can experience pain, et cetera. The discussion also went off into some of the more philosophical areas. Debates about when life actually begins as it conception is that some time after the texts exposed us to the ideas of a lot of different perspectives from across the spectrum. I remember there was an extended section dealing with controversial and famous, uh, Princeton at the cyst, the doctor Peter singer. This is a guy who believes in post-birth abortion and euthanizing Alzheimer's and disabled patients. So the material was very good, very thought provoking. People had to think through their positions. The classroom discussions were devoid of anger, name calling. The discussions were just very useful. I believe people learn something from the class and for once we had a focus on relevant issues related to the topic of abortion. So my experience was very positive and I look back on that and in the years since I've often wondered why contentious political issues aren't dealt with in this manner more often. So many times when there is an issue like abortion, the debate proceeds in such an acrimonious and counterproductive fashion. I mentioned that we had good material. I mentioned that we had a good professor, but that really was just a small part of it. When I look back, I think the main reason why the discussions were so useful was because everybody had a focus on real relevant issues. Everybody got a chance to hear other perspectives and not just other perspectives, perspectives on ideas that really mattered to the issue of abortion and really mattered in so far as finding reasonable productive solutions. So many times this topic and others is subject to so many distractions. When people discuss the issue of abortion, so much unrelated garbage gets into their head, and this is a bad thing because when we have discussions like the one that I described in this health law class, people tend to moderate their positions. This is how society makes progress. This is how we make good law. This is how we come to resolutions on complicated topics. Unfortunately, far too many of these issues are subject to demagoguery to demagogue. What does it mean to demagogue? It's a term people use every now and then and I don't think a lot of us know what that means to demagogue. An issue is to appeal to one's emotions and prejudices in an effort to distract a person from thinking through an issue. Rationally, when we talk about controversial political issues, perhaps more than any other, the issue of abortion is subject to demagoguery. What, how exactly does this happen in this presentation? I want to focus on one area specifically at the outset. Let me acknowledge that both sides of this debate and both sides have about any debate. You'll find examples of demagoguery. It's not just a one sided thing, but there is one example with regard to abortion that I think is especially harmful and is especially prevalent specifically when the pro life position is described as an attempt by men to control women's bodies. When this is done so much division and so much anger is stirred up between people, I can't help but notice that when people discuss abortion, when they debate it, when it's debated in any legislature, in any state in the union, when young people assemble on a college campus to advocate one way or the other on this issue, I can't help but notice that there is so much hatred directed to the pro-life position. This is not to say that there are not extremists on both sides of the topic. There certainly are, but the inordinate anger on the pro choice side, I believe, has its roots in this attempt by some to make this into a contentious gender issue. Think about the harm that is done to young women and young men when they are told that one side of this debate wants to throw up hurdles in front of them and wants to diminish their quality of life and wants to seeks to take dominion over their body. Think of how personal that is. It's horrible, but this is what's being told to so many people in this country. If you do so much as a casual search for the topic of abortion on the internet, you will find thousands of articles that repeat this kind of idea that men are trying to hurt women or that they're trying to control their bodies. Just looking right now, and I'm doing this on my computer as I speak, do a little casual search. Like I said, one of the first articles that pops up is a HuffPost article from 2017 listen to this title, how rape and quote pro-life politics are intimately connected that think about that. They're making a connection between the pro life position and something as horrible as rape. Unbelievable. Unbelievable stuff. Let's do another one. Let's, uh, let's do another little search here. See if we can come up with,

Speaker 2: 9:11

okay,

Speaker 1: 9:14

here's another good one. This is from the new Republic. Now I don't put a lot of stock in the new Republic. I don't put a lot of stuck in the Huff post. I think the HuffPost is regarded as somewhat more mainstream. But listen to this, listen to this headline from the, from the new Republic. This is from a article from may 17 of Oh 19. I suspect this was in response to the legislation down in Alabama. The title of the article, the criminalization of women's bodies is all about conservative male power. Ooh. The goal of the wave of anti abortion laws in America is to put female sexuality under strict and brutal control. See how people are being stirred up. Go back to that definition of demagoguing appealing to one's emotions, appealing to one's prejudices, distracting one from thinking about an issue. Rationally, this is terrible. This is terrible. This stuff is disgusting. It's disgusting. And it's shameful. I'm going to read, just scrolling down in the article, it says women are human beings whose human rights matter. This week, 25 white men in Alabama decided otherwise how sick, appealing to prejudices white men as if it matters who's making the legislation, men, women, persons of color, anybody who's duly elected has the right and the obligation to vote their conscience and to be rational and to come up with good policies. Again, I don't mind people attacking each other's policies. I've said earlier that is, that is such a good thing. It is so good to hear different perspectives. It's wonderful, but to make this P appeal to prejudice, this is terrible and this is why we have the salary debate about abortion in this country that we have. This is why we far too often have violence. It's not uncommon, unfortunately, to see a pro-life advocate attacked on a college campus, and I'll repeat that. The pro choice position is not the only one that manifests itself violently. We know there are pro-life people who've attacked abortion clinics, who've blocked women from access to these clinics, but stepping back for a moment and just being intellectually honest, there is a difference on the prolife side. The pro-life lunatics, when they go down a more extreme position, they're called out for it. They're called out for it in the media. They're called out for it by their own people. The same kind of self policing is not done on the other side. It's simply not and that's why you see mainstream articles like the Huff post pushing this garbage where you compare a pro-life ideology to rape.

Speaker 3: 12:43

But

Speaker 1: 12:44

since this is where we're at and since this is where the conversation has gone, it behooves us to ask ourselves if there's any validity to this kind of thinking. Do men want to control women's bodies? Does a desire to undermine a woman's reproductive rights lay at the heart of the pro life movement? Where can we look to get some idea of whether or not this is true? One place we can start is by asking the question, how do men and women feel about abortion? It's actually a very obvious place to start and if people would slow down sometimes and just think about this claim that men are trying to control women, our assumptions would be more effectively challenged. Look at opinion polls. Do women support abortion rights more than men? Do? Are there hosts of men who are out pushing a pro life position in an effort to try to control women? If you look at the Pauls and let me just say as well, I understand that opinion polls have limitations, but if you look at the polls with regard to this issue of abortion, you'll find very fairly steady results over the course of decades. I've got two good ones here. One from Gallup and one from Pew research. The Gallup one is from June of 2018 so about a year ago and the Pew research poll is from December of 2018 so a little less than a year and they both support this position that men and women hold similar views on abortion. The Gallop article asks the question, and this is by the way, this is entitled men. Women generally hold similar abortion attitudes from June 14 of 2018 first question that's asked is should abortion be totally legal? These are the people who believe in few if any regulations on abortion and what you find is that 30% 31% of women support this position and 26% of men. So there's not a great deal of variation between the genders. When asked on the exact opposite of the spectrum, should abortion be totally illegal? These are people who don't believe in abortion and believe in very few exceptions where you get 19% of men and 19% of women say, you have to ask yourself if this is really all about control over women. Why do so many women support a pro-life position? You would think there would be a divergence in opinions amongst men and women if that's what this was really about, but you don't see that and that's why it's inappropriate to cast this as a gender issue and to speak of it as, I mean, think of how approach choice man feels. One who's very dedicated to the issue, one who's very dedicated to the position that women should have a right to an abortion and you push this idea. Men are trying to control women, well apparently not. And on the other side of the equation as well, think of how the women feel moving on the

Speaker 3: 16:33

[inaudible].

Speaker 1: 16:33

The article goes on to discuss less the less of the extremes of the two spectrums and just gets into generic labels such as pro-life and pro choice. And again, when, when you get into less specifics, you've got 47% of men in 44% of women choosing a pro-life label. So not a lot of difference between the men and the women.

Speaker 3: 17:01

[inaudible]

Speaker 1: 17:02

50% of women in 46% of men choose approach choice label, not a lot of difference. Again, this is important. This is very important. Then there's the article from December of 2018 this is also very interesting, very good. This one is interesting in that it touches not just on the United States, but it goes to the really the rest of the industrialized world, Canada, Europe. This one's titled in the U S and Europe. Women are about as likely as men to favor legal abortion and what they do is they go to every country and in. What's amazing is every country, again, men and women are almost equal in their support and or opposition to abortion. In Norway you have 84% of men, 77% of women who support abortion, so you have more support for abortion among men than women almost by 10% the rest of the countries are pretty close. Some with the women, slightly more in support of abortion, some with the men, slightly more in support, but again, very close, very close, so look to characterize this as a gender issue is just wrong. Now, I know that when I bring up the fact that there are significant numbers of women who support the pro life position, that there are those who are going to shit just, well, sure they may support that position, but perhaps they're subject to some kind of patriarchal domination. They're subject to undue influence from the men in their life. Many of these women are admittedly more conservative minded, church going types in. It's typically men who run the church, but even then if you examine that argument closely, number one, it's patronizing. Number two, it's just not well-founded. If you've ever talked to a woman who was pro-life, you'll find in most cases somebody who is very sincere, very thoughtful, and has a very good reason for their position and there is, I know there's this tendency to sometimes treat pro-life women as traders, as subservient women. This is similar to when black conservatives are sometimes called uncle Toms or considered traders somehow, but this deserves some more examination as well. Is there any example from history that we can look to and the answer is yes. I had always heard that the women of the suffragette era were pro-life. I never looked into this too deeply. I never did any kind of research on this. I'd heard this claim. I acknowledge also before I even get into a big discussion on this, that regardless of what feminists and suffer jets of the past thought about abortion doesn't make the position more or less, right? More or less moral. I get that. I'm not trying to suggest that that is the case, but it's important to look at this because it, it goes to this issue of how one arrives at a pro-life position. If, if this position is just about men dominating women and and the women who happened to be pro-life, if they're just some kind of subservient, brainwashed individuals subject to patriarchal domination, then you have to ask yourself the question, why women like the suffragettes. We're so strongly pro-life and they, we're not just pro-life. They were fiercely pro-life and there weren't just a few obscure figures who supported this position. This was held by the prominent leaders of this movement. I'm going to offer some quotes here of first you have Alice Paul prominent feminist. She described abortion as the ultimate exploitation of women. You have Matilda Joslyn gage. She says, I hesitate not to assert that most of this crime of child murder, abortion, infanticide lies at the door of the male sex. Now, I'm gonna pause there just for a moment because there's something interesting about that quote. It's not just a quote that that quote reflects an ideology. The suffragettes had this idea that abortion was something that licentious men introduced in society in order to be, you know, to sleep with women and not have to bear the consequences of their actions. This was a way of them escaping their responsibilities to provide for women and children. And it's interesting to me because it's the exact opposite of what we have today. Today, the pro-life position is blamed on men. Back then, the pro abortion position was blamed on men. We see that it's unfortunately far too convenient to blame men for these things. Nevertheless, there are some other quotes here. Some other good ones, and again, these are, these are very prominent people. Elizabeth Cady Stanton referred to abortion as infant infanticide and she said that when we consider that women are treated as property is degrading to women, that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit. Victoria Woodhall first female candidate for president wrote, every woman knows that if she were free, she would never in and wished for a child. Nor think of murdering one before its birth. Elizabeth Blackwell first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation and awakened active antagonism. One more. That is really a surprise to me and this was something I learned in the process of doing research for this Margaret Sanger, the founder of planned Parenthood turns out that at least publicly she opposed abortion as well. Privately. I suspect she held different views, but I could find no evidence of that. Her concern was that contraception and birth control, which were her big, her big issues, the big issue she was trying to push in her time, she was afraid that they'd become confused with the issue of abortion. So publicly she opposed it. But this again raises a question. If the pro-life position is all about controlling women and undermining their rights and expanding state control over women, why was Margaret Sanger opposed to abortion? It just doesn't make sense. These interesting historical facts can't lead us to the proper conclusion to come to on the issue itself, but it's very instructive in helping us realize that different people in different times came to different conclusions, undermines the notion that the pro life position is rooted in an a Pfarius desire to control women. One other issue I want to touch on before we get away from history, since I did just bring up Margaret Sanger, there is often an analysis that goes through Margaret Sanger's views on race. It's pretty well documented that she harbored racist views. I'm not one of those people who believes that if someone fell short on race issues that anything else they said or did becomes tainted or irrelevant. Many great leaders did not think how they should have about race and that of course is not to minimize the horribleness of racism either. I only bring up Margaret Sanger's racism to point out that if either movement had more of a connection to racism, it was the pro choice movement. This is not to say that people who embrace the pro choice position now are somehow racist or that their ideas are rooted in racism. In fact, that in and of itself would be demagoguery and I would be a hypocrite for going down that road and it would be stupid. I would never suggest something like that, but it's equally audacious for pro lifers to be accused of racism and while they're usually accused of trying to control women or of sexism, discharge of racism comes up sometimes as well. I read to you articles earlier, 25 white men trying to quote control women. I've heard people say that the pro-life position is about throwing up hurdles in front of women of color. Someone said this to me once. I, I typically avoid these discussions at work. I had a colleague to me one time say that she believed that the prolife movement was trying to hurt women of color. This is absurd. This is absurd. If anybody's history has a closer connection to racism, it's the pro choice movement and look at the situation now it's without question that black Americans are disproportionately affected by abortion. Abortion clinics are often in black neighborhoods. The black population is significantly smaller because of abortion, so the charges of racism are as ill founded as the charges of sexism. There is another aspect of this topic that we should explore and that is the relative rights and responsibilities as their apportioned between men and women in our laws and in our customs. Some of this is not just about the mischaracterization of pro-life politics. Some of this is about an idea. It's pushed by people across the political spectrum with regard to the responsibilities of men. There are those who speak as though men have no responsibilities in society. You hear this in the context of the me too movement a lot and perhaps I'll do a presentation on that, but there are those who speak as though men go through life, they can do what they want, no consequences, and there are those who say not only that this is the current situation, but this is how things have been historically. This is a failure to understand how our society treats men. If you look at all of Western civilization, culture, history, law, custom religion, so much of it has been about making men live up to their responsibilities. It's been about constraining the behavior of men, about commandeering, the resources of men, about ensuring that men meet their responsibilities to men and women. Our civilization have always put, has always put the needs and interests of women and children first, and in many cases we've treated men as disposable in that endeavor. Because of that, we talk about issues of reproduction as though men have no stake in what happens when people talk about the invention of birth control. I often hear about how this liberated women and this saved women from the consequences of unplanned pregnancies and all the burdens that go along with it. What we forget is that for men to an unwanted pregnancy, an unwanted situation where a man had to become a father, such a situation could change the whole trajectory of a man's life. And that's why when you look at our current law, when it comes to the issue of reproductive rights, women have so much more in the way of options and rights when it comes to an unwanted pregnancy per Roe versus Wade. In every state in the union, a woman can have an abortion for a significant period of time. Different States have different rules, different ramifications. The time period isn't the same in every state, but there's a significant time period in every state. Men have no equivalent right to opt out of Parenthood. I've gotten into arguments with attorney colleagues about this. They'll say, well, come on. A man can disclaim his parental rights, or at least that's the case here in Illinois where I practice or a man can put a child up for adoption or their safe Harbor laws, but this is all deceptive because it fails to take into account that even with those laws, if a woman wants a man to pay for a child, she can make him do so and she's the one who makes all the decisions about whether or not the child is born. A woman can terminate a pregnancy, she can decide to go through with a pregnancy. The man has absolutely no choice and for that same period of time where she has the right, if she wants to terminate a pregnancy, a man has no right to opt out of pain. The only way a man can get out of paying child support is if the woman consents or if he's affectively broke or disabled. Something along those lines. The reality is the women have a lot more power to make the decisions in this situation. There's a wonderful documentary called the red pill. It's by a young lady named Cassie J. She's a good documentary. Could documentarian fairly liberal, uh, very pro choice, very pro gay marriage. I only bring up her political affiliation just to point out that this what she, what I'm about to say is not the product of some right wing pro-lifer, but she explored this issue of reproductive rights and health and she came to the same conclusion that I'm coming to, namely that men have far fewer options and far fewer rights. She sat down with a prominent feminist. She asked the question and stated, listen, I'm pro choice. I, I want to continue to have the right to an abortion. But what do you think about a situation where a man for that same time period can disclaim his parental rights and opt out of paying? You should've seen the look on the feminist face. It was priceless and should've, Oh no, we can't do that. Of course not. The woman's got to make all the decisions. And, and she said, and I quote almost an exact quote, she said, the man needs to think about that before he has sex book. Shouldn't both parties think about that? I mean, come on. It's, it's absurd. And not only is this idea that men are trying to control women, not only is that idea absurd, but it's absurd to think that our law and our custom and the current situation as it stands now for women and reproductive rights, it's absurd to think that undue control is exerted upon women. If anything, it's the exact opposite. It's men's bodies, it's men's energy, it's men's resources that we come in dear and and sometimes rightfully so. Certainly we don't want to live in a society where men don't live up to their responsibilities, but this idea that we're trying to undermine women, it's just wrong and it's what's leading us to a harmful analysis on the subject. When we talk about abortion, we also often talk about the related issue of sexual abuse and how sexual abuse leads to unwanted pregnancies. This is another area that's really important to take a look at as far as the relative rights of men and women. It may come as a surprise to many people that in some States, men who impregnate women as a result of sexual abuse are still responsible to pay child support. What I mean by that specifically is if a young man who is coaxed into a sexual relationship before he can give consent, if he impregnates a woman to that relationship in some States, man still has to pay child support and it's interesting to me because we often speak as though men are not held accountable for their misconduct. Well in some cases they're not only are they held accountable for their misconduct, they're held accountable for the misconduct of others. There's a famous case, a young man named Nicole Eavis and I believe this was in Arizona. He was 14 years old. He was coaxed into a sexual relationship with a 20 year old and the result of that relationship was a pregnancy. He didn't even know about this till a decade later. He was 20 years old when he found out he was a father. And of course he was forced to pay child support and he tried to challenge this in court and the court reasoned, well look, it doesn't matter how the child got here, the state has an interest in providing for the child and the child's here now. So the father had to pay. So again, we see another example that we don't live in a society that's trying to exert undue control over women. And when we go down this road, we don't have the kind of healthy discussions that I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation. Now I've avoided sharing my personal position up to this point. I think in the interest of full disclosure, I should state that I am indeed pro-life. I'm pro-life with exceptions. I have good reasons for my position. I have good reasons for the exceptions that I embrace. I acknowledge it's not as simple topic. It's much more complicated than some people make it, and it's important for people to listen to each other, to hear different perspectives, but to stick to the issues, to stick to the relevant issues. We'd all do a lot better if we leave off the demagoguery and we'd come to more sensible policies. It's a terrible thing to divide people along racial and gender lines, and I hope the information I've provided in this presentation will help people have a more enlightened and useful debate on the topic.