I have two kids. I love them. I wanted them to be born. I wanted to be a parent for years before my wife gave birth to them. I cried when I saw their first ultrasounds. My wife and I even bought a cheap fetal heart monitor so we could listen to their heartbeats some nights before we went to bed, smiling.
I fly a lot for work. Now, when there are babies or toddlers on a plane who make a racket or cry, I don't mind. They remind me of my own children, and any noise they make (which previously would have driven me nuts) makes me miss my own kids and count the days till I can be home with them wishing they'd pipe down.
Both times my wife was pregnant, I would sometimes envy the fact that she got to carry our babies around in her all day and all night. She was getting to know them before me. It seemed like the ultimate snuggle.
Our oldest is two and the younger one is an infant. We're already talking about having another. My wife loves being pregnant and we both love babies and kids, so signs point toward a third. We may adopt. We've talked a lot about that, too.
I also believe that a woman should have access to a safe, legal abortion if she wants one.
This belief of mine exists in the same mind whose general knee-jerk reaction upon hearing the word "abortion" is to conjure to mind a sad, scary surgical procedure that I wouldn't want to be anywhere near. This belief exists in the same mind that practically combusts with excitement when I hear a friend or relative (or even a stranger or fictional character) is pregnant.
I support a woman's right to safe, legal abortion because centuries of history shows us that women are going to get abortions whether they're safe and legal or not. And when they're not safe and legal, these women will often die terribly or be damaged irreparably. In my fantasy utopia, there would be no abortion. There'd be contraception readily available and there'd be education geared toward preventing unwanted pregnancies. Adoption would be easier.
We don't live in a utopia, however. We live in a country where scoundrels are certain and nuance is vilified. I opened up my own thought process above to demonstrate that it isn't neat. But it's all taking place unified in one man's skull. And I'm not unique in having a complex thought relationship with abortion. I'm like a lot of people. Most people.
People like to have sex. My own research has shown that it feels really, really good. It's OK to want to do it, and it's OK to do it. It has its price, however, and the price for women is so very many multiples greater than it is for men. I see it in my own life. I have the incredible good fortune to be able to spend a lot of time at home with my wife and kids. I was even able to take three months off from touring as a standup for the final weeks of my wife's most recent pregnancy and the first weeks of our new son's life. I was, and am, present.
But even when I'm in the same room as my wife and sons, my contribution to their lives pales in comparison to my wife's. I'm not feeding them with breastmilk my body made out of its own blood as my uterus repairs itself and as my body and mind approach even basic tasks from a formidable sleep and energy deficit. My wife, at her resting state, is heroic, and I am, in essence, just some guy.
If I wanted to, I could split and suffer limited consequences. In the worst-case scenario, I'd give up half my income, or some such paltry nonsense, which wouldn't even nip at the heels of my wife's gift of her body and soul to our children. Not that a father who raises his children isn't a wonderful thing; he is. He just better enter the game with a suitcase of humility and gratitude toward the woman who birthed his child.
I don't know how to look at those who'd restrict or deny access to abortion, contraception and abortion and not see misogyny. Not sexism; that's a gender neutral word. Misogyny is the hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women. It's an ugly word and it represents an ugly thing.
And Good God, is it lazy. And disingenuous. And it is the warm and welcoming home to the idea that a pregnant woman who doesn't want to take her pregnancy to term should not have access to a safe and legal abortion.
If you've never done it, imagine a man, in this man's world in which we live, peeing on a stick after throwing up out of the blue one morning, and discovering he was pregnant. Imagine him looking down the barrel of a 40 or so week pregnancy, with his body betraying him in new and fascinating ways, potentially including but not limited to: HPV flare-ups that can turn into cervical cancer with astounding speed, gestational diabetes, or an ectopic pregnancy that could find him bleeding to death on the floor of his office bathroom. (He's a man, so he didn't go to the doctor early enough to find out why he was in constant, thrumming pain from his lower back up to his shoulders.)
Or perhaps he simply doesn't want to bring an unwanted child into a world with dwindling resources, and orphanages loaded with children who, it is mathematically certain, will never be adopted. Or perhaps, we never even find out why he wants the abortion, because he's a man, and no one asks.
If you've imagined that far, then you know the next logical thing to imagine is that very same man galloping on horseback to a hospital or abortion clinic, flanked by a police escort, where his path is impeded by not a single protester, to get the safest, most legal abortion possible, likely while watching "Man of Steel" though a state of the art 3-D headset, so he might be comforted by explosions and alien warfare as the doctor treats him.
I've written this as a father of two children I'm insane about, and as the husband of a woman I look forward to getting pregnant again, per her stated wish. I've also written it as someone who, to his knowledge, has never been responsible for a pregnancy that was aborted. And, perhaps most importantly, I've written it as a man who thinks of abortions as a sad, scary and wholly undesirable thing.
Undesirable, that is, unless the woman in whose body the pregnancy is occurring desires to have one. In that case, I'm writing it as a man who will protect her right to have it safely and legally.