In an episode of the show Parenthood (the series that predated and likely inspired This Is Us), a teenage couple deals with a pregnancy. The girl wants an abortion; the boy doesn’t want her to have one. She gets the abortion, anyway. The boy is supportive (he loves her), but when it’s done, he’s broken, distraught, and for the first time goes to his mother for emotional support (he’d been very private and “teenagery” up to that point).
I thought it was an effective way to show the impact of abortion on males who don’t agree with the decision to terminate, but who have no say, really, and can only stand by and accept whatever the carrier1 decides, whether the pregnancy he wished would lead to fatherhood is terminated or a baby he doesn’t want is born.
While I do believe the sperm contributor to the creation of a pregnancy (in a relationship in which the two respect each other, that is) should be informed of the pregnancy and involved in a discussion of the options—purely for honesty and transparency and emotional intimacy reasons—I also believe that, following whatever discussion takes place, the decision ultimately is (and should be) the carrier’s.
But it’s unfair.
When I say it’s “unfair” to men that they have no say in whether a pregnancy is carried to term I don’t mean carriers having the ultimate choice is unfair; I mean some things, such as biological males generally being physically stronger than biological females, are inherently and objectively unfair.
It’s like this:
Imagine you’re a man.
Imagine you and your partner use birth control. You’re both being as careful as you can be.
Still, “Oops.”
You don’t want to be a present or an absent-but-paying parent, and as far as you knew, this was understood by both of you.
Even so, the carrier decides to give birth and raise a child, thereby choosing a major aspect of the rest of your life for you.
Note: I’m approaching this from a position that sees carriers/potential carriers and men—later in this post referred to as “partners” to pregnant people—as complex individuals with life goals, emotions, and the ability to make mistakes. I’m not approaching it from an Us vs. Them perspective or in a way that places knee-jerk blame on anyone, whether it’s the ol’ “She opened her danged legs!” or “What happens to his sperm is out of his hands once it’s out of his ‘nads!”
As someone who was raised by a very good single dad, and also as someone who likes men so much that I married three of them (one at a time), I have a hard time seeing men as MEN. That is, blame blankets. MEN WHO DESERVE WHAT THEY GET BECAUSE LOOK AT WHAT WOMEN HAVE HAD TO ENDURE UNDER THEIR OPPRESSIVE AND MISOGYNISTIC POLICIES AND PRACTICES WHO CARES IF THEY GET THEIR LITTLE FEELINGS MADE SAD.
I want the practices to change, for sure, but…men are people like everyone else. No matter how bad the bad seed-and-leave men have made regular men look, most men would have a difficult time leaving a child they didn’t want. It doesn’t mean they wouldn’t leave (men and women both leave), but for those who did, leaving would still tie them to their offspring with thick emotional and/or psychological (not to mention financial) strings. They’d still know a child was out there.
“Becoming a parent, like many other important life decisions, carries a certain risk, as it is a decision whose consequences will accompany the person for the rest of her/his life,” a 2021 PLOS One study on parental regret found. “Even divorcing one’s partner, breaking off contact with the child and moving to a remote place do not change the person’s awareness of being a parent.”
And if the unwilling partner did decide to be present rather than mostly absent because it was the right thing to do, they’d still likely feel their lives as they’d once wanted to live them had been utterly destroyed—as would many people forced into parenthood.
Scenario 2
You’re still the man, but in this scenario the “oops” pregnancy makes you face the possibility of having a child you now suddenly want (people of all genders have experienced that unexpected shift). Your head fills with fantasies of long talks and bedtime story-reading and father-child mentoring and annual Thanksgiving dinners after the child has left to live their own life. You would be responsible for someone else entirely. You would be their everything, and you would love them and keep them safe and…
But the person carrying the pregnancy started by your sperm has no desire for any of that, has no desire to go through with gestation and childbirth, and certainly won’t go through gestation and childbirth just to hand the baby over and suffer the challenges of being guiltily absent or unhappily present.
For a man who fills his mind and heart with all of the same parenting visions happily pregnant people latch onto, it would have to be difficult to know the pregnancy will be terminated and that he has no choice but to accept it.
The choice to parent or not parent is among the most important decisions that can be made in a lifetime. To have that choice, to not be forced into or out of it by anyone, is essential.
But to leave no option, at all, for men is to support the notion that their desire to parent or not parent is insignificant, that they are inessential to the reproductive conversation or process beyond their contribution of sperm. That notion directly contradicts the many and varied complaints about how men should take a more substantial role in parenting as well as in supporting a carrier’s right to choose.
It also contradicts the full credit they’re given for pregnancy in Gabrielle Blair’s viral and enduring “Men are 100% responsible for unwanted pregnancies” tweet.
They’re in, or they’re out. They’re responsible for it (and therefore have a stake), or they’re not. But they can’t be—and they can’t be expected to be—both.
Is it not unacceptably pronatalist to demand that men become parents when they don’t want to and then expect them to behave accordingly?
So, how to make the pregnancy playing field fairer for men?
There’s no easy solution to anything, obviously. As I learned after enacting parent licensing legislature in The Age of the Child, something can always go wrong for someone.
But what if we tried?
What if, for example, there were a legally binding document the potentially procreative sex partners could sign before they ever have sex?
SAMPLE PRO-CHOICE DOCUMENT
1. Upon discovery of a pregnancy, partners will discuss whether the pregnancy will be carried to term.
2. If the pregnant person chooses to terminate and the partner opposes the decision, the person terminating accepts full responsibility for medical costs.
3. If both partners choose to terminate, they pay for it 50/50.
4. If the pregnant person doesn’t want to be a parent but agrees not to terminate out of deference to the partner, the partner agrees to accept full medical costs and sole custody of the child (unless both later decide that they’d like to share costs and care).
5. If the partner doesn’t want a child and the pregnant person chooses to carry to term and become a parent, the partner will be absolved of any responsibility to the child, including visitation and child support.
6. If the pregnant person chooses to give birth and be a parent and the partner is in favor of the decision, the two will enter into custody and child support discussions.
Signature #1:____________ Signature #2:_____________
Note: It could and has been argued that someone agreeing not to contribute financially to provide for a child puts the child at risk. This is probably true; however, the system we have now—laws preventing pregnant people from terminating without any concern for how the resultant children will be wanted, cared for, paid for, etc.—not only offers no protection for children, but also puts children at risk of being raised in unpleasant or even dangerous environments.
What solutions would you recommend? Please share them in the comments! There will never be full equity when it comes to abortion and childbirth, and there will always be a way someone can take advantage of or manipulate a system, but there has to be a way to, at the very least, improve upon the existing model.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy my post-Roe novel The Age of the Child, published in 2017 when an overturn was nothing more than imaginary, a mere catalyst for a story about the consequences of waging a “successful” assault on reproductive rights.
“Reading the news these days is terrifying enough for women concerned with bodily autonomy — why would I invite that into my leisure reading?! What I hadn’t counted on is how compelling Tsetsi’s storytelling is, and also how darkly hilarious some of the scenes are. This is a book that begs to be discussed and dissected.” — Amazon Reader Review
“Scathing social commentary.” — Goodreads Review
“The Handmaid’s Tale and The Farm, to name a couple, have opened the dystopian genre to questions about reproduction; however, The Age of the Child is one of the first I’ve read to really consider the issue of reproductive rights and attitudes so deeply.” — Rebecca Maye Holiday, author of The Beaches
I used “carrier” in place of “pregnant person” in The Age of the Child, and it became so familiar to me that, now, using two words when I could use one seems verbose. It’s not intended to dehumanize people who are carrying a(n) zygote/embryo/fetus.