We\u2019ve recently had the idea of what would happen with abortion if men could get pregnant come up twice. In last week\u2019s blog<\/a>, Mary Liepold said:<\/p>\n \u201cI still agree with blessed, angry Florynce Kennedy, may she rest in peace, that if men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament. That\u2019s consistent with the history of patriarchy in the church and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n In a movie fantasy of male pregnancy, the man yells \u201cMy body, my choice\u201d to escape an attempt to abort his pregnancy<\/p><\/div>\n But Mary Krane Derr was quoted in the Quotation of the Week for Peace and Life Connections<\/em><\/a> just a few weeks ago:<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been said that if men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. On the contrary: if men got pregnant, pregnancy would be treated as the sacrament; abortion would be considered blasphemy against their sacred bodies and lives and those of their children; and pregnant humans would finally, finally receive the alternatives they deserve instead of what one social activist calls, from bitter experience, the \u2018choice\u2019 between \u2018abortion or else.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n (\u201cPro-Every Life, Pro-Nonviolent Choice\u201d; ProLife Feminism: Yesterday and Today<\/em><\/a>, second edition, p. 375)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019ll say what my first thought was about the if-men-could-get-pregnant question: of course abortion would then be a sacrament. Men treat war as a sacrament. In days of yore, human sacrifice was literally treated as a sacrament. The perversion of applying sacredness to killing has long been one of the ways such violence has been sustained.<\/p>\n Then, of course, there\u2019s the obvious point that if men could get pregnant, they would be women and not men anymore. The ability to get pregnant is a major part of the definition of what makes each gender each. This has been part of the dynamic of male domination throughout history.<\/p>\n Indeed, men have been regarding women\u2019s abortions as part of men\u2019s own privilege for a long time. Rodney Stark in his book Discovering God<\/em><\/a> discusses the Roman Empire in the first three centuries of the Christian era:<\/p>\n Once married, pagan girls had a substantially lower life expectancy, much of the difference being due to the great prevalence of abortion, which involved barbaric methods in an age without soap, let alone antibiotics. Given the very significant threat to life and the agony of the procedure, one might wonder why pagan women took such risks. They didn\u2019t do so voluntarily. It was men \u2013 husbands, lovers, and fathers \u2013 who made the decision to abort. It isn\u2019t surprising that a world that gave husbands the right to demand that infant girls be done away with would also give men the right to order their wives, mistresses, or daughters to abort. (p. 321)<\/p>\n An Entirely Different Tack<\/strong><\/p>\n Yet all of these views\u00a0take male domination as a starting point. They don’t consider the vision of a world where\u00a0such\u00a0domineering is no longer\u00a0prevalent.<\/p>\n One of the strong links among the many life\/peace issues is that domination of any group by any other should cease. We should treat each other as equals. We need to be sensitive to one another. In this case, we must move beyond male domination, and recognize where it\u2019s already fading.<\/p>\n My own son is the soul of gentleness. And check out the tenderness in the photo of my father with me as a baby:<\/p>\n Then multiply that by the millions.<\/p>\n So here I want to make an entirely different answer to the point:<\/p>\n Men do<\/em> \u201cget\u201d pregnant.<\/p>\n Biologically, the part they do is to help get the pregnancy started. Their contribution there is indispensable, and you can\u2019t get more important than indispensable. And while they\u2019re physically capable of running off and abandoning the pregnancy, and many do, they\u2019re still a psychological hook there. The best men know the value of this.<\/p>\n I had a friend once who, in referring to himself and his wife, talked about the time when \u201cwe\u201d were pregnant. My first thought was to be bemused. She was clearly doing all the biological part, everything connected with having the child inside her body. But as I thought more about it, I decided it made perfect sense. He was fully participating.<\/p>\n Some men have had sympathetic physical symptoms. Men have certainly been intimately involved in all kinds of aspects of nurturing and nourishing. While women are capable of doing a pregnancy alone and men aren\u2019t, when the two of them do their pregnancy together, beauty results.<\/p>\n I think this positive vision is the best of all the answers to the \u201cif-men-were-pregnant\u201d idea.<\/p>\n ===============================================<\/p>\n For more on men and abortion, see:<\/em><\/p>\n What do Men Have to Say on Abortion?<\/a><\/p>\n The Myth of Sexual Autonomy<\/a><\/p>\n No Combat Experience, No Opinion: Parallels in Pro-bombing and Pro-choice Rhetoric<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d Doesn\u2019t Do Its Homework<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Rachel MacNair The \u201cSacrament\u201d We\u2019ve recently had the idea of what would happen with abortion if men could get pregnant come up twice. In last week\u2019s blog, Mary Liepold said: \u201cI still agree with blessed, angry Florynce Kennedy, may she rest in peace, that if men could get pregnant abortion would be a… <\/p>\n![\"In](\"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/blog-junior-204x300.jpg\")
![\"dad-and-baby\"](\"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/dad-and-baby-300x200.jpg\")
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