My own views on abortion are anchored mostly in my experience with pregnancy. I was a doting partner, but those nine months made it abundantly clear that my burden was not Kenyatta's burden. It didn't matter that my heart was in it--there were simply places, on account of biology, that I could not go.
I have a good friend who almost died in the process of pregnancy. I am not willing to instruct people to carry a burden, that I can not. I will not do it. Andrew's recent of dispatches from people who've grappled with abortion, have only reinforced that for me. Read them here, here, here, here, here and here.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
To be honest with you thats why I have never understood why any man would go any further than being personally pro life but legally pro choice. What gives us the right to impose our will on a situation that we will never have to experience for ourselves?
That's why a prominent pro-choice argument--and one I make myself--is that the anti-choice movement isn't about the fetuses, it's about controlling when and with whom women are able to have sex. They give themselves the right to interfere, often citing scripture (usually out of context) to back themselves up. I've long thought that that position betrays a lack of faith in God to punish sinners; they're not convinced that God will take care of matters in the afterlife so they're going to make it hell for people they consider sinners here in this one.
And a lack of faith in women.
I think one needs to again understand the different centers of the debate. For abortion rights opponents, the center of the debate is not the pregnancy. It’s not the woman. It is the offspring she carries. They look to the pregnant woman as two people, so while they embrace the rights of the woman, they acknowledge and cherish those (let’s call them natural rights, seeing as they are not legal) of the unborn. At whatever point a person begins to acknowledge the natural rights of the child, they must begin to consider limiting the natural and legal rights the woman would have over ending the life of the child. This goes for advocates of life as well as choice; at some point, a woman isn’t (and shouldn't be) allowed to kill her offspring, we all agree on that. The difference is where and under what circumstances we draw the line. In all cases, where we draw the line has everything to do with wanting to protect and respect the life of the offspring, as opposed to suppressing the natural rights of the woman. Limiting the rights of the mother is a consequence of protecting the child. It is not the goal. Abortion rights advocates, as you know, look at the situation differently. They look at the issue as being about the singular rights an individual (which is how a pregnancy begins), rather than the shared rights of a couple (which is how one ends).
Well, perhaps nobody else is paying attention to this thread anymore, but I still have a question. Yesterday, calexical made the following point (cut and pasted below), but nobody responded. I'm honestly interested in how someone who identifies as pro-life feels about calexical's argument. I think it's a valid point, and I've never heard the pro-life side address it. It relates to the issue of rights of pregnant women vs. rights of the unborn.
Calexical: [speaking about the fetus] "You're not just arguing for the right not to be killed. You're arguing for the right to be kept alive through the use of someone else's body. Leaving aside the complications of whether the woman consented, if you're making a pure rights argument, then you have to account for the fact that no one has a right to demand blood, organs, or even food off other people, even if they'll die for lack of them."
Considering that you're asking for the perspective of somebody who is pro-life, I'm not sure I'd be the one to ask. I would speculate again, that their opinion would be that becoming pregnant is something similar signing a contract and with that contract comes certain responsibilities, the physical burdens of gestation being chief among them. That's clearly not the best way of putting it. And it's only speculation. But I think that's probably pretty close to how they feel in spirit.
The important point to them, I think, is that once a life is created, there's no turning back and no justifiable reason to make it go away. That a woman has every right not to become pregnant, but that there's no natural or fundamental right to make yourself unpregnant once that threshold has been passed. So the natural burdens endured by a woman while pregnant (or thereafter) are secondary to the issue of life. I think that makes sense. Which is not to say that I agree.
My response is that the difference is between whether someone is naturally keeping another person alive vs. whether it would require artificial intervention to keep the other person alive. In the case of abortion, it is artificial intervention that causes death.
Well, when talking about what should happen a number of them quickly switch to controlling women. But let's take your point as a given: the only question is at what point you say "this is a person with rights equal to the mother's."
Fascinating as a find prenatal development, I don't think the various stages--single cell, ball, flattened ball, tube, etc--are people, on any sort of legal equivalent to a newborn baby or five-yer old child. I also don't grasp why the moment of conception is a cutoff--shouldn't individual sperm and egg then be granted full protection, since all it takes is one more, rather simple, step to render them fertilized and thus "people"? If a single fertilized cell has full legal standing, why not a single unfertilized cell?
Plus, if you look at how conception and pregnancy work in real people--very often the fertilized egg does not implant, or implants but things don't go well and the woman gets her period a couple of days late, with worse cramps. (The latter is the "50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage" statistic you may have heard.) And all the many things that can go wrong later, as detailed in Andrew's posts. Allowing early abortion doesn't seem that far off from what happens naturally all the time. And understanding development better changes your perspective--the nervous system is getting hooked up in the mid-second trimester, for example, so talking about what the baby thinks and feels before this is not grounded in much reality.
Everyone can pretty much agree that if a woman is late in the third trimester, and the baby could survive outside the womb with minimal medical intervention, it has some rights. Which is why the present law--the woman's business in the first trimester, limits in the second, extreme limits in the third such as are outlined so heartbreakingly in the pieces Andrew quoted. The myth of the careless woman who, at 8.5 months, announces she's changed her mind and BAM she gets an abortion is just that, a myth. It's legally not an option.
Finally, what about sk's point above? I have been pregnant three times, resulting in children. (Plus probably 5 of those "feel tired and nauseous, then normal, then period arrives late with bad cramps" that are likely very early miscarriages.) Pregnancy is very, very hard on the body, at least for many women. It's a lot to ask. It is a huge limitation on the rights of the mother. It's not some little "you can't wave your arms if you'll hit someone's nose" intervention.
"...the only question is at what point you say 'this is a person with rights equal to the mother's.'"
I don't know if that's accurate. Because for the most part you're talking about two distinctly different rights: the right to exist vs. the right to end a pregnancy.
I think most reasonable pro-lifers (although I have no statistics to back it up) would still consider the life of the woman/mother to be more important than that of the zygote/embryo/fetus/baby.
So really, what we're talking about is at what point during development do we determine the unborn's right to exist outweighs the woman's right to kill it. And I honestly don't know the answer to that question.
(Replying to BreakerBaker)
I'd reference the woman with the ectopic pregnancy in Andrew's stories. As noted today, you don't survive an ectopic pregnancy. The fetus will absolutely die, because it can't grow in a fallopian tube. And the woman will die, too. Yet this woman's family condemns her. With no hope at all (short of divine intervention, which I haven't noted fix a single ectopic pregnancy, encephalitis, etc) of the child's survival, and her survival only if she has an abortion, they still condemn her as a murderer. She should apparently have gone with God's plan, as understood by them, where she dies.
On the other hand I've seen lots of reports along the lines of "Mr. and Mrs. Jones theoretically opposed abortion, but when their children learned they were carrying a child with encephalitis, they supported their choice of an abortion." As with gay marriage, it makes a difference when you know and care about the person considering an abortion.
(I'm frustrated by the rest of today's ectopic update, which opposes parents choosing late-term abortion when the child is certain to suffer and die shortly before or after birth. I absolutely support any parents who choose to come to term with the encephalitis, multiple certain-to-fail heart surgeries, etc. Maybe it would even be me--haven't faced it. One never knows until one is truly in those shoes. Yet I was very moved by Andrew's story of the couple who did that, but it was a nightmare and they never recovered--far from the happiest moment of their lives. At least give me the chance to choose if I'm the parent facing this--one thing that did NOT come across in Andrew's stories was a sense of "I wish someone had forced us to do something different." Even those who still wondered about their decision didn't wish someone had taken that power away from them.)
Deborah,
Yeah, I think people who deny the necessity of an abortion in examples of ectopic pregnancies do not qualify as “reasonable pro-lifers.” I tend to believe the opinion of the majority of pro-lifers is that a hopeless pregnancy that could very easily result in the death of the mother should be terminated. Obviously, there are unreasonable pro-lifers out there. My guess is that most abortion rights opponents (even many of those I would characterize as being generally unreasonable), if they were to be intellectually honest, would admit that they believe in a health exception (even if it’s a very strict one) that would include ectopic pregnancies as well as various severe genetic or developmental abnormalities. The challenge for them is accepting a health exception that will show compassion and consideration to the woman’s safety without being too open to interpretation. Most of them would likely object to a mental or emotional health exemption.
My personal feeling is that people are, on average far more receptive to accepting those abortions performed out of medical necessity than they are to those that would qualify more as, let’s say, circumstantial necessity (i.e. those performed when there’s no clear health risk to the woman, but are instead performed because for whatever reason, the woman does not wish to be pregnant). When I speak of the reasonable pro-lifer, this is the person I am talking about. Those who believe the procedure should be available to women with a verifiable medical need and no one else. I would hope they would also include a rape/incest provision, but I would understand (though disapprove of) the position of those who were against it.
Basically, I think most pro-lifers are pretty reasonable. You’re right to point out that many people are pro-life in concept, pro-choice in practice, but I don’t think that’s probably true of most. I think most of the people who identify as pro-life are people who genuinely believe that life begins in a meaningful way at conception. If one is to take that perspective, which I do not believe is an unreasonable one, it stands to reason that one would oppose terminating the pregnancy as matter of choice but would usually accept it as a matter of necessity. Those who are not concerned with matters of medical necessity are zealots, but (again, speaking only from my gut) I think they’re probably in the minority. Even if they talk the loudest.
I used to be pro-choice almost by default, since I am very much against the state meddling in private affairs. Then I started to have some doubts particularly about the 3rd trimester etc. But it always was a cold, ideological thing. Reading those stories in Andrew's and also in the comments here these days have changed my mind. Now I see how hard, painful, sometimes tragic the whole thing is for women. They know better. The women, and the woman that is dealing with her particular situation. It should always be their choice.
I guess this is what you need women representation everywhere, no?
Thanks for your great statement. I think if I were a doctor who performed the procedure I would be pretty pissed at representatives who often know nothing about obstetrics deciding what was best for my patient. How guilty would a physician feel to have a patient they knew for years die or have their health compromised because the patient couldnt have have a legal abortion performed?
That's why I think the people comparing this to the Schiavo case have a point-- don't listen to the people actually caring for the patient, listen to some jerk in Congress who's watched a video! It's the same 'gut feeling' bullshit.
I admire the way Andrew has been willing to listen to women's experiences and to publicly acknowledge that it has changed his mind. People don't usually do that in public, any more than they usually change their clothes in front of strangers. I admire you, too, Eduardo, for the same reason. I also want to say that I've enjoyed and been informed by your posts.
I agree with you. The stories at Andrew's show why we can't absolutely restrict abortion, although we may choose as a society to narrow the boundaries of legally acceptable abortions, which I would open to discussing in conjunction with a discussion of making different forms of birth control and sex education more widely available.
And this is where common ground is going to come from, I think. And it’s why I think the president has been talking for so long about how everybody can agree on the need to reduce unwanted pregnancies. Sooner or later, the more vociferous members of the pro-life movement are going to begin to acknowledge that they’ve lost the argument with regard to whether or not abortions are ever made available to women, that they’ve indeed lost that argument even within the hearts and minds of most of the faithful. Once they accept that battle lost, they’re going to begin to understand (I imagine many of them have already begun to understand this privately) the need to reframe their argument in a reasonable way. This will mean granting more victories to choice advocates by way of accepting, even embracing the need for something like comprehensive sex education (availability of contraception goes along with that, I think), but for their compromises they will reasonably expect some kind of compromise from the choice community by way of imposing some form of restrictions to choice. I may be wrong, but I tend to think that’s the natural progression of where this dialogue goes if the more reasonable, moderates that make up the majority of the pro-life persuasion can begin to have their voices heard in any meaningful way. The question is what sorts of concessions the more reasonable, moderates who are the majority of the choice persuasion will be willing or able to grant when/if that time comes. With these sorts of debates, that seem too much like wars, it’s so difficult for hardliners on either side to be trusting enough to make the first move towards reconciliation. If Obama is able to move people on either side of this and empower the reasonable majority of both, I think it will be an amazing feat.
obama is the only politician I have seen in my lifetime that I think has the remotest possibility of pulling off this miracle.
This will mean granting more victories to choice advocates by way of accepting, even embracing the need for something like comprehensive sex education (availability of contraception goes along with that, I think)
This idea that accepting contraception would be giving in to pro-choicers is a common one, and it drives me nuts. It shouldn't be a compromise for pro-lifers to support contraception and sex ed. For one thing, it just seems like an obvious practical way to reduce the demand for abortion. (I'm aware of the argument that using contraception leads to abortion due to the "contraceptive mentality", but it's weak and strikes me as more of a rationalization for an existing anti-contraception stand rather than a position anyone would come to from an objective look at the evidence.) For another, most pro-lifers also are pro-contraception. The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association found that 80% of self-identified pro-lifers say that women should have access to contraception, and 77% support government funding for it.
The anti-contraception forces just have a stranglehold on most of the organizations.
Not that you're wrong about the reality on the ground -- like I said, the anti-contraception forces have totally disproportionate control over one side of the debate. There really needs to be a coup.
Jen R,
You’re right, the real concession for pro-lifers is in accepting that the procedure should be allowed under any circumstances. My feeling is, that once that understanding is established, once the pro-lifers have made that significant (and rather reasonable) public concession, the next clear step in reaffirming their principled and reasonable opposition to the procedure in issues of nonessential choice, is in the acceptance that they must also adopt a perspective of reasonable, responsible sex ed. (to include contraception). Mind you, I think this is where they should be already, and, as you point out, many of them already are. But I do believe that by embracing health exceptions, sex ed., and contraception in an open way, the pro-life community would be making three significant good faith concessions to the choice community. What choice advocates would do in response, whether they would view these concessions with suspicion or as a genuine attempt to find a way forward, I don’t know.
I've been thinking quite a bit about those posts. I think I've been able to pick up a few things going on beneath the surface. It seems to me that this particular argument is really about moderates, not pro-Life or pro-Choice. The two extremes have already taken their stand on individual rights of the mother or personhood of the fetus, and decided one trumps the other. But I think that people stuck in the middle - who have sympathy to both views - don't take as absolute of a position. If you try to accept both rights as valid, and then try to balance the two, you're in for a rough time from both ends of the debate. And almost all of those cases touch on circumstances even some moderates might want it banned or restricted - since in *some* similar cases the mother might be attempting to put her rights above the rights of the fetus without giving them due consideration.
One situation like that is when there's no medical risk to either the mother or the child. It might be hard for some moderates to understand why the mother shouldn't just have the child and give it up for adoption.
A second is the idea that some women simply can't make up their minds early on in the pregnancy, or change their minds at the last minute and want an abortion. To some moderates, this might seem like the woman is attempting to avoid responsibility for making an admittedly difficult decision. It's hard to be sympathetic to a person who's trying to shirk.
A third is the issue of non-viable fetuses. For truly horrible cases (the horror stories of children born without faces, genetic abnormalities and the like), I suspect most moderates would side with the mother aborting the fetus. But where does one draw the line? Take it too far, and it smacks of eugenics.
As Andrew's posts make obvious, there is a tremendous amount of gray area. There might be real economic consequences for a mother (particularly a poor mother or a young mother) to taking time off work or school. Not every case where the mother waits is shirking responsibility; sometimes it's an inevitable consequence of sonogram scheduling. And certainly not every abortion is a step down the road to eugenics. But from what I can see, the pro-Life side has been much more effective in skewing the debate to those conclusions, and therefore getting people to try to ban the procedure in those circumstances.
Don't forget the sexism that's almost inevitable in a lot of these debates-- the 'flighty' woman with her six abortions, the teenager who 'changes her mind.'
Not to reject the idea that sexism is a component of a lot of these conversations, I think it’s probably important to acknowledge that so-called women who have so-called “serial abortions” do exist, and that their existence is actually counterproductive for the advocates of choice. An argument in favor of a person’s ability to make a choice is an implicit argument in favor of that person’s capacity to make that choice responsibly. While I do not favor imposing a numeric limit, I do acknowledge that a woman who accidentally gets pregnant multiple times through consensual sex and who ends each of those pregnancies in an abortion likely is not approaching the various choices that lead to the eventual choice to have an abortion in a reasonable, responsible manner. Whether or not I believe such things should be written into law, I do believe the availability of an abortion should not be viewed or treated as a sort of post factum form of contraception. And while I do not think it’s necessarily the moral obligation of choice advocates to condemn such behavior, it’s probably fair to say that it would behoove them to acknowledge that such things do happen and that they probably shouldn’t. That is to say, rather than coming to the defense of acting irresponsibly, as Andrew's reader did.
I hope it's clear that the double use of "so-called" was an editorial mistake, and not some sort of slight, Freudian or otherwise.
Anyone who has not had the chance to read Andrew's letters from his readers regarding abortion should take the time and dig in. Powerful stuff.
Thank you for sharing those posts, that is what's been missing from this debate -- real, honest experiences. Because of the right to privacy, we cannot expect women who have had abortions to share their experiences with the rest of us. Nor can we expect doctors to compromise their safety and patient privacy by talking about what goes on in their clinics. But hard lessons like the ones people shared with Andrew are the only way the debate can change.
The true reality of abortion could lead people who aren't total fanatics to see that women agonize over the decision to have an abortion. They don't just decide on a whim when their hair salon cancels their appointment and they have nothing else to do that day. And sorry Tel, but women don't wait too long either. Less than 1% of abortions happen in the third trimester. The vast majority of abortions take place before week 16 when there is absolutely no way the fetus is viable outside of the mothers body.
It's the actual walking a mile in someone else's shoes which leads to the empathy that has been so resoundingly mocked by those on the right. I have said many times that abortion is a choice I would not make but after hearing from more and more of Dr. Tiller's patients, I wonder what I would do if faced with the same sad set of realities they were hit with. It's the pain that women have already suffered that keeps me pro-choice. I wouldn't want to add to their burden by having them and their doctors treated like criminals.
And I am also sick of the comparisons between pro-life activists and pro-choice activists as though the two are the same. Please notice that the pro-choice folks have not killed Randall Terry or anyone else with whom they vehemently disagree. They are not the domestic terrorists in this situation. They are not the ones who are unwilling to discuss contraception with teenagers. They are not the ones who fund organizations that go to Africa to preach abstinence (without distributing condoms) while whole countries are slowly dying from HIV/AIDS. So please, no more of this nonsense that both sides are equal in ratcheting up the rancor of the debate. One side is way more guilty of obstruction, harassment and violence (bombings, arson, murder) than the other.
I wasn't intending to argue for or against, just describing how I see the arguments shaping up and the reasons people might have for making those arguments. Late-term abortions, while extremely rare, do happen. I think the fact that they are late-term is likely to set up a conflict in values among moderates who might otherwise side with allowing the abortion (all else equal). I think the Pro-Life side has generally done a better job at getting out their message ("No reason for them to take that long to decide") than the Pro-Choice side has.
If you want to immerse yourself in real, honest, and often painful experiences, go to this site:
http://www.imnotsorry.net/whythis.htm
"I have said many times that abortion is a choice I would not make but after hearing from more and more of Dr. Tiller's patients, I wonder what I would do if faced with the same sad set of realities they were hit with."
this statement of yours really hit me in the gut-- I have the privilege of having three perfectly healthy, beautiful children with no problems of any kind. I too have made the above statement, but today I am also not sure what I would do in their shoes.
To try to legislate in this situation is very difficult. Of course we want the least loss of life possible, Of course we want to avoid eugenics, of course we want to respect the mother and her wishes. I think what has come out of the stories at Andrew's most clearly is that we can not pretend to foresee all situations; some form of legalized abortion _must_remain available. What can we agree to as a country? That remains to be seen.
But these domestic terrorists have to be stopped. They are unacceptable.
I agree with your post, but as a woman who is perfectly capable of getting pregnant but still has no clue what it would be like for another woman, I'd take it a little further and say nobody of any gender has much business making sweeping moral judgments about another person's choices about her pregnancy. I wouldn't describe myself as rabidly pro-choice (I do think, at least at some stage in the pregnancy, which I am far from qualified to pinpoint, there are two people's interests involved), but I'm not about to tell another woman that she's a bad person for her decision, whatever it is, without having walked a mile in her shoes.
Having shared some of the same experiences as you, I absolutely agree. That being said, I think Andrew is right to call the attempt to shut men out of the debate based upon the disproportionate burdens we (men and women) have inherited to be a red herring.
I don't believe that men should be shut out of the debate, but I felt less than entirely sympathetic when a man wrote in to Sullivan saying he had used a girl for sex then persuaded her to get an abortion. Now he and his wife are having problems conceiving and he feels sooo guilty and wishes his "girlfriend" at the time had kept the fetus. He was so singularly focused on his own feelings about everything. I didn't see him putting himself in the shoes of his girlfriend or his wife, he only saw these experiences in terms of how he's been affected. He's looking back at the abortion years later and convincing himself that he would have "been there" for the girl, but given how self-centered he appears now, his lack of feelings for her then, and his age at that time, I doubt that would have been the case. I think men should join in the debate but without spinning it to focus solely on their experience as partners, boyfriends or husbands,
I am not coming to the defense of selfish pricks. Let's be clear on that. Selfish pricks who respond to their fear of fatherhood by persuading their girlfriend to have an abortion deserve to have trouble conceiving later in life.
I know you're not defending selfish pricks its just in all the great stories Sullivan posted that one did not make me feel better about men and the abortion debate. I`m wary of states where women are required to seek counseling before the procedure because in some cases if during the counseling the woman says her boyfriend/partner at any point told her she should get an abortion it negatively affects her chances of getting the procedure. Just saying the guy wants you to get it shouldnt be the final reason why you can't get it done, if you really want to. Also, if people want to conceive I guess they should be able to, I`m not a fan of hexing people's baby makers.
You know what's worse than a woman having trouble getting an abortion because her husband/boyfriend wants her to?
A woman who has trouble getting an abortion because her ex wants her not to.
A solid majority of abusers don't show that side of themselves right away; telling him she's pregnant is very often the first time he hits her. And now he's demanding to control her not only for the duration of the pregnancy, but 18 years of a legally enforceable right to be able to find her at any time, to be able to drag her into court and complain about how she lives, to allow the child to come to term only to be pawn and hostage in his ongoing efforts to assert authority over a woman who had the temerity to not want him.
To call a pregnancy life-threatening doesn't always mean medical conditions.
I'm generally against hexing too, but coercing a woman into having an abortion she may not want to have because you're afraid to be a father is something a man deserves to regret for the rest of his life.
Wendy,
I'm generally onboard if you put abusive in front of ex, and if by trouble all you mean legal trouble.
I'm not against a man, even if he's no longer in a relationship with a woman having his opinion known with regard to whether or not she should have an abortion. I'm simply not in favor of having his override hers. In the end, I think we all agree that the choice falls to the woman. Frankly, speaking for myself, while there are a number of aspects about pregnancy and motherhood that I envy my wife for, having that choice at my disposal ain't one of them.
I found that part very frustrating. This guy had made a ton of bad choices, but rather than bemoan anyone's failure to stop him at a dozen points (e.g. the US conveniently outlawed drugs, which would have stopped his becoming a drug addict if making things illegal stopped people obtaining them), he focused on not having someone try to stop his girlfriend from going through with the abortion he wanted her to have. Not at all small-c conservative, in terms of not insisting the state keep stepping in and try to change your mind if you make a decision you might later regret.
I think there is something even more going on tin this issue than the pregnancy itself. While good men may well be into the responsibility of the work that follows the pregnancy, we still live in a world where the default for the responsibility falls on the mother, especially in circumstances where the father and mother do not remain in a conjugal releationship with one another. In our own relatively evolved society, this default responsibility can--for a releatively young individual--amount to not only nurturing but economic. As a community college teacher, I cannot number the women students I have had that worked, went to school, and were single parents. I cannot remember a single male who had the same solitary responsibility.
And as we have seen in discussing the views about family, often espoused by the self same folks who are staunchly anti-choice, wide swaths of society still wish to stigmatize both child and mother if the child is born out of wedlock, whether or not this has as much, if not more, to do with the father than mother.
This is kind of anecdotal, but my friend had a co-worker who was still a teenager and basically his baby's central caregiver and we would joke about how single teenager fathers like him were ruining the country and how he was probably a Welfare King.
Ta-Nehisi, I respect what you've posted here. At the same time, I note that I've seen lots of people say that men should stay out of the abortion debate, I've never seen one of them react any better to pro-life views expressed by women.
"... *and* I've never seen one..."
Confused, Jen... Can you clarify what you mean here?
I'm saying that in my experience, "men should stay out of the abortion debate" usually indicates that the speaker doesn't want to hear *anyone*, male or female, speak against abortion. So, I think that getting into an argument with someone like that about whether or not men in particular have a right to an opinion on abortion is actually beside the point and not worth doing.
I understand that Ta-Nehisi's not saying that, since he's talking about his own position and not anyone else's. Just something that's been bugging me for a while in general.
Right, though I very specifically declined to write "men should stay out of the abortion debate." There's a lot of "I" in this post, and very little "We" or "You." I did that on purpose.
I understand, and I appreciate it.