It’s not hard to figure out why the percentages of men and women in favor of abortion are about equal, even though men can’t get pregnant. Oddly enough, men imagine that the availability of abortion will free them from having to take responsibility for the consequences of their sexual activity. They are in favor of both contraception and abortion because they give them carte blanche to fool around, pay the piper, and fool around some more. When the girlfriend becomes pregnant and they come across with the abortion money they are off the hook. They think if they can forget the fact that a baby was present, the woman should be able to likewise forget it. Then they both can go forward happily, unencumbered.

But there is another scenario. Contraception fails, as so often happens, and the woman gets pregnant. She figures a baby would interfere with her schooling, her career, her emotional or financial well-being, so she will abort the child. In this scenario, however, the man is actually glad to learn that he has sired a child. He has a sense of accomplishment and even attachment to the wee one. But in spite of the fact that he is the father and would happily step up to the plate, he has no say in the matter. Even if he is married to the woman, he does not have a legal leg to stand on. She can kill his child while he stands by helplessly.

A third scenario: This time she gets pregnant and actually keeps the baby. The law requires that the father provide support for his child, regardless of the fact that it will interfere with his schooling, his career, his emotional or financial well-being. He is supposed to accept the consequences of his sexual activity even though doing so will cause him considerable hardship. After all, he knew what he was doing and a child was conceived. He made the baby and is legally obliged to care for it. The woman can play around, abort the baby, and end up free. The man is in a Catch 22: he may want the child and be unable to save it; or, he may not want the child and be forced to finance it.

Our next generation will exist or not exist at the whim of the woman. The man has nothing to say about it. She kills or does not kill at will. Fathers have no rights. One ejaculation contains 40 to 150 million sperm and men are willing to sell their sperm. Unlike ova (which have not been freezable until recently) sperm are easily frozen, stored, and reactivated. A woman can buy sperm at the sperm bank and raise fatherless children. Her sons will have no role model and can only consider themselves irrelevant in this matriarchal scheme of things. Her children may also have hundreds of half-brothers and sisters out in the world, unknown to them.

Archie Bunker sings of yesteryear when “girls were girls and men were men.” Long ago women turned males into men. George Gilder wrote in Sexual Suicide about the role of marriage in socializing men and children. Marriage channeled the normal male aggressiveness, his fighting spirit, into winning a woman and then protecting and providing for his wife and baby. He was expected to be responsible and, dare we say it, manly. No longer. Women are now advised to be sure they have a nest egg and a career to fall back on when their man flies the coop and leaves them to fend for themselves.

Feminist Gloria Steinem made famous the slogan: A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Between the feminists seizing their independence and the metrosexuals relishing their freedom, any child that might appear does so at great risk. This is, of course, an exaggeration and there remain traditionalists who stick together and actually mother and father their own children. But that no longer seems to be the norm.

In Making Men Dispensable, Elizabeth Pietropaoli writes:

Hugh Hefner has succeeded in his mission: with the assistance of biotechnology, a generation or two of males has been transformed into a gigolo cult. Free from responsibility, the male is able to revel in his ‘sexuality’ and find love wherever he pleases. Unfortunately, all this ‘free’ indulgence  with a price: the twenty-first century male finds himself good for nothing else than to render his services as a stud.

But he is not even needed as a stud. She further writes:

Biotechnology has stripped away the unitive aspect of sexuality, and has left men veritable eunuchs, rendered dispensable even in the realm of contributing sperm to fertilize an egg. A man’s very physical presence has become unnecessary. Biotechnology has facilitated the realization of every male’s dream, or so we are led to believe. What has resulted are two generations of  alienated, emasculated males who have access to open relationships with a
multiplicity of willing women. Has unlimited, uncommitted sex produced a score of healthy, well-adjusted  ‘human beings’ (formerly known as men)?

The answer, of course, is “No.” Fatherless boys roam the streets and fill our jails. Unattached males either do the same, or else focus on career, clothes, car and cuisine in order to feel good about themselves.

So, men, do you still feel freed? Instead of being freed, men have been rendered useless and powerless. Women have emasculated men and men have castrated themselves. Pro-choice for women is no-choice for men. Men, are you all right with that? Really?