Should Men Be Allowed To Have An Abortion?

The youth wing of the Swedish Liberal Party has proposed that men should have the right to “legal abortion.” The idea is that the father could give up his parental rights and responsibilities of the child, up to the 18th week of the pregnancy. That’s the same time that women in Sweden have to decide if they want an abortion.

But feminists are not happy. They want men to take responsibility for their own children. They still think it’s fine for women to have abortions, though.

The Young Turks like it

“The motion came from a group of girls and LUF Väst (the youth wing) endorses the proposal. It is important to discuss the man’s role in pregnancies,” says chairman Marcus Nilsen, who thinks that some men don’t dare to say that they don’t want to be involved when their partner becomes pregnant.

A man who went through a “legal abortion” wouldn’t have the right to see his child in the future, neither would he be able to reverse the decision. But he would also be relieved of any financial responsibility to support the kid. This controversial proposal is not backed by the Liberals’ mother party.

News of the male abortion proponents has spread worldwide, and even The Young Turks made a video about it. Both Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian agrees that it’s a good idea to let the man have a choice. Cenk, a firm supporter of abortion, says “People have to own up to their decisions, right? Yes, they have to own up to the original act that led to the kid in the first place. But then you do have a decision to make at 18 weeks or whichever, you know, time period you want to put it at.”

Resistance from feminists

But others aren’t so happy about this. One woman at an Australian news site finds it “utterly ridiculous” to compare a woman’s physical abortion to a man signing a legal document. If men could get pregnant, that would be one thing. “But sadly, at present only women can carry a baby.”

A female abortion (aka a ‘real, actual abortion’) isn’t a legal decision. A pregnant woman who doesn’t wish to be pregnant can’t just make her pregnancy disappear by signing a form. She must find a doctor, have tests, and undertake a medical procedure.

A woman from a different Swedish liberal party says legal abortion for men is not acceptable. According to her, it would break the rules of the UNs convention on children’s rights—that a child has the right to know who his or her parents are and to see them regularly. She also thinks men have an obligation to take care of their children.

All men (or those with male genitals) who have intercourse with a woman (or someone with a womb) are fully aware of the of the possibility of pregnancy.

No contraceptive is 100 percent safe, and if you do not want to become a parent, you have a choice not to have intercourse leading to ejaculation in the vagina.

A feminist at the leftist site Politism of course doesn’t like this idea either. A woman getting an abortion and a man renouncing the responsibility of his child are two TOTALLY different things, according to her.

But what the right to have an abortion is really about is the right to decide over your own body—to decide whether it will carry out a pregnancy or carry out an abortion. That right obviously belongs to that person—and only that person—whose body it concerns. Men who become pregnant have the exact same right.

I love it because feminists hate it

There’s a part of me that really wants men to have the right to a kind of legal abortion. It would give men the same right as women have to not become a parent at a time when it’s not convenient. I’m certain that some men out there are very unhappy about having to take care of kids they never wished for.

Another reason why I like this proposal is that feminists hate it so much. They can’t stand it when men talk about men’s issues and demand to have the same opportunities as women. Their hypocrisy is blatant when they tell men to bite the bullet and “take responsibility,” while also fervently insisting that women should be able to opt out of their pregnancy at any time. It’s an example of how men are treated as adults, expected to make sacrifices. Women, on the other hand, are treated as victimized children with no agency of their own.

Having said that, I still don’t think men should have the option of legal abortion. It would be hypocritical of me to think otherwise, as I’m against physical abortion as well. I believe that the little creature in the womb is a life and that it deserves protection and care from both of its parents. If you don’t want that kind of responsibility on your shoulders, be sure to use proper protection.

I ultimately find myself on the same side as that Australian woman mentioned earlier, although I disagree with many things she says. She thinks a woman can’t just sign a form and then have her pregnancy terminated. But that’s exactly what it’s like in Sweden. We have abortion on demand and doctors aren’t allowed to question why a woman wants that procedure done. A woman can kill her unborn child, no questions asked, and about 35,000 kids die that way every year. The father has no say in it.

What matters is that every single child born into the world has the right to financial, social and emotional support. And if the parents are financially, socially and emotionally capable of providing that support—no matter what the circumstances of the child’s birth—they should be required to do so.

The Australian woman is right about that. Parents have an obligation to care for their children. That goes for both fathers and mothers.

Read More: Why Abortion Shouldn’t Be Taken Lightly