This includes me. I have been too quiet, and I’m sorry. The vast majority of the noise I have heard and seen has come from women. Which makes some sense, I suppose — These oppressive laws are attempting to control WOMEN’S BODIES and WOMEN’S CHOICES… But men have to be more involved, because our silence is failing them.

Before going any further, I should mention that I have written about abortion before. When I told my wife I was writing about abortion, she said, “Again?” I wrote a post about how complex this issue is titled “Finding A Middle Ground On Abortion.” I wrote a post about how God seems to be pro-abortion in the Bible called “The Test For An Unfaithful Wife,” or “How To Perform A Biblical Abortion.” I wrote about how, since Roe v. Wade, Democratic presidents & policies have LOWERED the actual rates of abortion while Republican presidents & policies have either increased the number of abortions or kept is stagnant… It was titled “Christians ~ Want Fewer Abortions? Vote Democrat.” I also wrote a satirical post titled “Christians Should Be Rooting For As Many Abortions As Possible” about how — if saving souls from hell/getting souls into heaven is really what it’s all about — abortion is actually has a way higher success rate than evangelism. I’m not going to go over all of the points I made in those articles again, but if you’re interested, there they are.

I’m sure you’ve seen that abortion is in the news again. This oppressive “fetal heartbeat law” recently passed and signed in Georgia is not unique — there are similar laws that were passed in Ohio and Louisiana which go into effect on July 1 of this year, while Georgia’s law doesn’t go into effect until January of 2020. These laws essentially makes abortions after 6 weeks illegal, even though most women won’t even realize they might be pregnant until AT LEAST around week 4… As if all women have cycles you could set your watch to. There has been a lot of misinformation about these bills, with people saying it allows for the death penalty for women who have an abortion. This is not true. What IS true is that it DOES penalize and criminalize doctors who perform abortions, and it COULD require women who have had a miscarriage to be submitted to exams to prove that she didn’t have an abortion. The law allows for exemptions in the case of rape or incest, but only when a police report has been filed. It’s a complicated mess, and there are a bunch of places on the internet (here’s one) that can explain the specifics to you better than I can…

It is no secret that these abortion bans are designed to get the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade… And as I wrote about HERE, Roe v. Wade was and is a case about PRIVACY. It is not about making a moral judgement, but it’s about how the state shouldn’t be able to look at a woman who has been raped and say “Prove it” before allowing her to terminate her pregnancy, and how that would be an egregious violation of a person’s right to privacy. They are trying to get the SCOTUS to revisit the ruling by attempting to define an embryo at six weeks — where a sensitive transvaginal ultrasound can detect the slight flutter of what would later develop into a heart — as a “full person” with 14th Amendment protections under the constitution. But as Andrew Fleischman pointed out, that would mean that thousands of “full persons” are being being unlawfully detained in prisons that hold pregnant women.

Lawmakers in many of these republican-controlled states are even inexplicably coming after emergency contraception… Which makes about as much sense as being against fire AND fire extinguishers:

We live in a country with people who are so comfortable with cognitive dissonance that they elect lawmakers who are calling themselves “anti-abortion,” while actively making it harder for women to get birth control… They try to allow insurance companies to refuse to cover abortion procedures, while they keep shelling out money for men’s boner pills… They put groups of men in charge of of making decisions about women’s healthcare…

Banning abortions doesn’t make abortions go away… It simply makes them unsafe. Republicans seem to think that banning things will fix all the world’s problems… All of the problems other than gun violence, that is.

Anyway, NONE of this is about doing things that will actually reduce the number of abortions. This is about CONTROL. It is about controlling women’s bodies. They don’t actually want to get rid of abortions. For most republican lawmakers, the issue of abortion is about power. It is about getting elected. It is about getting people out to VOTE. The moment a woman they’re having an affair with gets pregnant, they become as Pro-Choice as anyone on the planet. Rich conservatives love the abortion fight, because it allows them to say the reason they are voting republican is for “moral reasons,” instead of having to admit that it is just because of good ol’ fashioned combination of greed and preserving white privilege. Please make no mistake: These heartbeat laws are not being passed because republicans are anything close to “Pro-Life.” They’re not. At best, they are pro-BIRTH. You know who else has a heartbeat? Migrant kids.

And in the GOP’s attempt to stop abortions from taking place, they are focusing on WOMEN, and forcing them to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term… Instead of focusing on the actual problem: MEN. If lawmakers wanted to actually get rid of abortions, they totally could. Criminalizing abortion and punishing women is not the answer. Listen — You want to pass a law that reduces the number of abortions? PASS A LAW PUNISHING MEN FOR THEIR IRRESPONSIBLE EJACULATIONS! Because, as Gabrielle Blair wrote in her absolutely amazing Twitter thread, “Men are responsible for 100% of unwanted pregnancies.” And yeah, sure, I know: “It takes two to tango,” and all that… But it takes two people for INTENTIONAL pregnancies… It only takes one man ejaculating irresponsibly to create an UNWANTED pregnancy. Please read the whole thread below…

Men: WE ARE THE ONES CAUSING ALL OF THESE UNWANTED PREGNANCIES. The very least we can do is speak up and stand with the women who are being compelled into the role of Forced Baby Incubator. What I’d REALLY like to see is more men taking up the cause of vocally opposing this push toward turning “A Handmaid’s Tale” into a reality. This is not and CANNOT be only a woman’s fight. Men have got to be loud and active in our opposition to these unjust laws, which put all of the onus on the woman as a baby incubator, and none of the blame on the men who irresponsibly cause all of these unwanted pregnancies with their selfish desire to not wear condoms & their selfish insistence on not pulling out.

Now, if we can just start getting people to READ…

We need to speak up when we hear people referring to abortion as “murder.” All of this hyperbole is so misleading and demonizing. Sperm is alive too… That doesn’t turn male masturbation into mass murder… And if it did, you can bet there would be no law passed against it. And all of this talk about “infanticide” is so utterly false. An embryo is NOT an infant. A fetus is NOT an infant. Nobody in the world is talking about having an abortion at 36 weeks… We who are Pro-Choice acknowledge that there are times when abortion is needed, and we want to keep abortions safe & legal for the women who find themselves in that difficult situation. And before anyone discusses whether an embryo is “fully human,” they need to understand that WOMEN are fully human.

• Forcing a woman who has been raped to carry her rapist’s child is cruelly inhumane & dehumanizing to women.
• Ordering a woman who has been raped to relive her trauma by insisting she press charges against her attacker in order to access a safe abortion is cruelly inhumane & dehumanizing to women.
• Compelling a young woman — pregnant as a result of incest — to publicly report that family member before being able to end her pregnancy is cruelly inhumane & dehumanizing to women.
• Requiring a woman who has gone through the trauma of a miscarriage to “prove” she didn’t have an abortion is cruelly inhumane & dehumanizing to women.
• Demanding that a woman — who, with her doctor, goes through the difficult choice of deciding that terminating her pregnancy is in her best health interest — be subjected to insurance inquiries and possible criminal charges is cruelly inhumane & dehumanizing to women.
• And men: Expecting that women fight this battle without our active & vocal support is ALSO cruelly inhumane & dehumanizing to women.

We must do better.

I’m probably going to lose some followers over this post, but I’m totally okay with that… Ten years ago, I could have NEVER seen myself writing something like this. And if you don’t agree with me right now, perhaps in ten years you will also have had your mind changed. Here’s hoping… And speaking of hope, I hope you consider BECOMING A PATRON. Or, if you like what you see here, and you want to leave a tip, you can LEAVE A TIP ON PAYPAL. Otherwise, stay in touch with me ON FACEBOOK and ON TWITTER. Or share this post with people in your life. Also, and more importantly, please use whatever platform you have to magnify the voices of the women who are doing such amazing work in this fight. Stay hopeful…