Reproductive rights for men

[cityofthedead]

Following up on my discussion from the Pregnancy and Parenting section, I feel that U. S. legislature has been and still is causing us problems by seemingly trading off rights, especially reproductive rights in this case, between men and women. Women weren't seen as independent, for a time. Now, women have so many rights over their minds and bodies that it's getting kind of problematic to me when women become pregnant, and they get to decide what to do with the baby, which also uses genetic material from the guy, without any say from said guy in the matter other than agreeing and disagreeing for an adoption. I am pro-choice, I believe women should have rights to get an abortion if they feel it is best for them. But when it comes to carrying the baby to term, I feel that guys are having their autonomy taken from them by giving women the choice to continue a pregnancy and give birth whether the guy wants that to happen or not, even though it is his baby too from a biological standpoint. If a guy wants a girl to remain pregnant when she doesn't, abortion is the only compromisable way to settle that argument, but if it's switched around, guys aren't given rights over what is theirs too. Also, guys could have something in their genes like depression or bipolar disorder or a physical condition that could be potentially dangerous to pass on to a child. Does anybody find this making sense? Do any heterosexual guys who use this site agree with me? I could be totally wrong with all this. I couldn't find a lot of trustworthy information to back up my point, but it's the best I've got.

[al]

Hi there cityofthedead,
These are some interesting points that you brought up, and I'd like to unpack some of them with you a little.

So one of the first things that you mentioned was that "women have so many rights over their minds and bodies", said in contrast with the idea that they were once not seen as independent. I want to know a little bit more about that statement - are you saying that at this moment, women's reproductive rights are universally granted, accessible, and protected? If so, I'd like to push back on that - a recent report published by the Guttmacher Institute, a leading research organization for reproductive and sexual health, found that as of 2014, 90% of counties in the U.S. don't have an abortion provider (meaning that for most women, obtaining an abortion can mean driving or taking a bus dozens of miles across the state just to be seen). And that in 2011, 84% of abortion-providing clinics received at least one form of anti-abortion harassment, including about 50 clinics that received at least one bomb threat. And these statistics only address abortion; there are so many other women's rights that are endangered, if they were ever really granted in the first place (freedom from emotional, financial, physical, and sexual abuse, appropriate, affordable healthcare, access to comprehensive sex education and contraceptive methods, right to respect and equal pay in the workplace, appropriate and diverse representation in the media and political spheres, etc).

As for this particular issue of a man's rights within parenting decisions, I found myself thinking through the options and making a chart, because I'm a nerd. In this scenario, let's say for simplicity's sake that a man and a woman have consensual sex without using any form of contraception. The woman becomes pregnant, and there are four possible outcomes:
She wants to carry the child to term, and:
- he agrees with this choice.
- he disagrees, and she carries it to term.
She does not want to carry the child to term, and:
- he agrees with this choice.
- he disagrees, and she does not carry it to term.

I could understand how, when looking at these scenarios, you might initially think that the man's ability to decide what happens to his potential offspring is being taken away from him. But the key difference when it comes to these comparisons and gender reversals is this: the couple is not pregnant, the woman is. Regardless of whether or not the man wanted to have a child, expected to have a child, or wants her to carry the child to term, he himself has an option as to whether or not to be involved in parenthood. He can feasibly walk away from the situation (although he may be legally responsible for financial support, based on the principle that one single parent's income is not enough to care for a child's wellbeing).
She, however, cannot. She's pregnant regardless of anyone's feelings on the subject, and, barring any actions taken otherwise, she will carry that child in her body for 9 months, give birth to it, and take care of it. She can't walk away from the situation, be cause the situation is literally growing inside of her. It would be different (and is different) in surrogate situations, in which each person's genetic material is put into another person's body with the intention to come to term. That stuff becomes a little bit more complicated legally, depending on who's suing who for what rights.
But this concept about a woman's right to choose becomes even more relevant when we think about how 83% of single parents in the U.S. are women, and are five times more likely to be living in poverty than married households. And we can't think about issues of parenting decisions and reproductive rights without thinking about the context - that context being a bunch of deeply entrenched and historically-held understandings of gender roles (that women are child-bearers/caretakers, and men are providers/heads of household). But I digress.

One other thing that I'd like to add - that situation where two people have sex, one of them gets pregnant, and both of them are faced with a situation that they didn't really want to be in in the first place? I can tell you that pretty unanimously none of the folks here at Scarleteen want that to happen. In fact, we spend a lot of time each day talking to young people about everything that happens before that positive pregnancy test, in order to prevent this exact scenario. We don't want anyone (of any gender!) to have to deal with unwanted pregnancy, and the only way to effectively prevent that is for the people having sex to fully understand the potential benefits and consequences, have thought about their wants and needs, communicate them with each other, and mutually make decisions that they both feel good about. That's why one of the first things that show folks when they're thinking about having sex is the Ready or Not? Scarleteen Sex Readiness Checklist, which specifically prompts them to think about all of these possibilities.

[Heather]

Just FYI, I am deeply uncomfortable with this - "Do any heterosexual guys who use this site agree with me?" - in this context. This is not okay here. As I have asked before, I really need you to think more about the whole of this community before you post, please.

Trying to get a group of people to talk about or support how another group should have less autonomy over their own bodies and what is inside of them is deeply problematic. It's also not something I - especially as someone with the kind of body you're talking about - want to have to experience at my workplace or our organization or that I want anyone else in the community to have to experience here.

Please really think about what you just did here, and consider how people might feel reading what you're saying here whose bodies and lives you're talking about wanting to remove rights from (and how it can feel to women or anyone who isn't a man for men to even suggest they want to get other men to effectively gang up in the interest of controlling women's bodies in any way, especially any of us who have lived experience of men ganging up to control our bodies), and please, please, don't do that here again.

There is, I think, a way to talk and think about how it can feel very uncomfortable to recognize that (for everyone, btw, but most of all for people who can themselves become or are pregnant) some of human reproduction is outside one's control without going this way with it. I also think it's important to note that, historically, at times when women start more actively asserting themselves and their rights, men - including young men - tend to be very reactive to it, and that includes reacting by trying to suggest *they* are the ones without enough rights, or that women already have too many. No clue if that's part of what is up with this for you, but might be wise to check yourself.

[cityofthedead]

I totally misunderstood what you've been saying in previous discussions and what has been happening in the world. I'm very sorry. I feel like a pro-life person bashing you for your pro choice policies. But I'm not pro life. I should've emphasized the "choice" better. I understand better that it's the uterus-possessing partner's choice over what is in their bodies, not just if they want to get an abortion, but if they would like to actively continue the pregnancy inside of them and raise a child. I seriously did imagine myself as a pregnant woman having and raising a child based on what I knew from sexual education resources and other people's accounts. In the fantasy, I felt very selfish not to listen to my partner when he said that the baby could have mental or physical disorder or STD like he had had, and forcing him to pay for something he couldn't give legal nonconsent to. The fantasy probably is barely authentic, but that's how I feel right now. Actually, not just selfish, but wasteful. Wasteful of your time and server space on the forums. And wasteful in terms of my very small reproductive function that enables stereotypes and unfair judgements based on my inability to carry something as complex and life-changing as a pregnancy so therefore all I really care about is "spilling my seed." And with the invention of sperm banks, women may as well get pregnant themselves without having to deal with the possibility of a penis-possessing partner saying "no", with the additional risk of getting raped by a man eradicated, and if women do have male kids, they can just extract the sperm from its body to provide fellow women with genetic material to pass on via artificial insemination. It's your job to keep monsters like me out of these forums, and it's my job to keep my sorry ass off of websites like these. It is also my job to enjoy the precious little things in this life while hoping that there is a next life where I don't have to put up with biological differences that could be taken advantage of, which was one of my biggest motives for posting this discussion anyway. I wouldn't actually do anything like shoot or hang myself, though. I have people in person who I talk to about these issues and I attend local mental health support groups. But here, I don't deserve your empathy.

I would never try to start or join a group that fights against the rights of individuals, as I considered after events like the UCSB and Colorado shootings. I would never intend to threaten anyone with anything from words to guns to bombs.

[Heather]

I'm very uncomfortable with the tenor of this conversation, including the suggestion you are undeserving of empathy, we're not being empathetic to you or that we are dismissing or devaluing your feelings. Calling yourself a monster with the implication that's what we think of you as and other similar comments in here feel disingenuous and manipulative to me. The way you are talking about what you projected unto your idea(l) of a pregnant woman in the way you have also makes me very uncomfortable, not just because it is so divorced from general realities, but because of the impact of statements like that on people who are actually pregnant here -- and are real pregnant people, not projections or ideals -- and making difficult choices.

Honestly, I don't think there is a direction this conversation could go from these starting points and the emotional tenor involved. I, and likely other staff or users, would be happy to talk to you about this in a different way, like by talking about your feelings around not being able to become or be pregnant, or the feelings you are having that seem to have you feeling freaked out about not having complete control of what your fluids in someone else's body can result in after you make the choice to put those fluids in someone else's body. I would be happy to talk to you about a fear it sounds like you have of being taken advantage of via your semen and help put that in perspective.

But I don't think anything good can come from this particular thread, so I am going to close it. If you would like to have another go at talking about any of this in a radically different way. like in some of the ways I suggested, you're welcome to make a new thread for that.