Brian E. Fisher - Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women

MEN STARTED IT.

MEN OPPRESS WITH IT.

MEN CAN END IT.

BRIAN E. FISHER

Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women

Brian E. Fisher 2013

All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version.

Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-0-9891819-0-7

Jacket and Interior Design:

Roark Creative, roarkcreative.com

Published by Online for Life

Printed in the United States of America

www.onlineforlife.org

Online for Life

P.O. Box 5052

Frisco, TX 75035

I am once again indebted to John Aman for his excellent and diligent work as researcher, editor, collaborator, criticizer, and encourager. This book is far better because of his passion and thoughtful input.

To Jessica, Caleb, and Zach, for their patience and understanding, as husband and father once again spent obscene amounts of time at home typing furiously behind a computer.

To the Directors, Advisory Board, and selfless donors of Online for Life, for their staunch support of our work.

To the OFL staff: Jeff Bradford, Tim Gerwing, Tommy Swanson, Sean Martin, Danielle Teel, Kari Buddenberg, Olga Figueroa, Barry Moerschell, and Ben Woodard, for insight, input, and hard work to print and distribute this book. And to the committed group of OFL volunteers, you have my deepest gratitude for your service.

To those contributors who courageously shared their abortion stories with methank you for your transparency and willingness to see others positively impacted by your experiences.

Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women.

Thats a ridiculous title, isnt it?

Abortion doesnt exploit womenit empowers them. Abortion is a legal right for women that permits them to do whatever they want with their own bodies. Abortion has freed women from the bonds of male dominance and biological slavery. It has narrowed the gender gap and elevated the value and role of women in American society.

Abortion is choice, and choice is power.

Men Started It. Men Oppress With It. Men Can End It.

And whats this about men? They use abortion to oppress women? Thats just crazy. Why would men promote abortion? They dont even have the legal right to influence the abortion decision. Socially, they arent even really allowed to talk about it.

We are told that abortion has nothing to do with men. It is a huge step forward for womens rights.

There are three very good reasons why this should be true:

1. Abortion is legal in the United States, and that law empowers women. The landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case effectively stripped men of any legal right to protect or terminate the life of a child in the womb. The Supreme Court decided the right to abort rests solely with women. It found that right in either the Fourteenth or the Ninth Amendment. What it didnt find was any legal authority for a father to have a say about the fate of his offspring.

In two subsequent abortion cases, the Court threw out a law requiring the husbands consent to his wifes abortion and another mandating that he be notified when his wife was on her way to an abortion facility. As the Court put it in the latter case, [I]t cannot be claimed that the fathers interest in the fetus welfare is equal to the mothers protected liberty....and to terminate the fathers rights, as well.

2. Abortion is a surgical procedure that, for obvious reasons, only involves the female body. Because women are entrusted with providing sustenance and proper living conditions for a developing, in utero human being, any changes to that process must be carried out within the womans body. Abortion is a surgical procedure that cannot be performed on men. Thus, men should not be able to dictate whether or not the surgical procedure is performed on women.

3. In America today, 40 percent of all births are out of wedlock.for that child once she is born.

We often speak of abortion in biological terms, constraining the conversation to life inside the womb. But the implications of raising a child after birth are very much a part of the abortion decision.

If the father of the child has abandoned the pregnant mother, she is now put in a very difficult position. She carries the emotional and physical weight of carrying the child before birth, and she now can anticipate a drastic change to her lifestyle, expenses, and social status after her childs birth.

The impact on lifestyle and finances are the two primary reasons women choose to abort in America today. A 2004 study conducted by researchers at the Guttmacher Institute a pro-abortion organizationasked 1,209 women why they obtained abortions.

The reasons most frequently given: having a baby would dramatically change my life and I cant afford a baby now (cited by 74 and 73 percent, respectively).

Since more and more men are leaving pregnant women without financial, emotional, or physical help, the decision to abort should rest with the gender responsible for the entire process. Author Kathleen McDonnell summarizes this view succinctly: Women are the ones who bear children. Women are the ones, still, who are largely responsible for their care and nurturing. It is our bodies and our lives that are at issue, so the decisions must be ours as well.

In a column responding to high school boys who petitioned her on behalf of the unborn child, Cleveland Plain Dealer writer Connie Schultz put it another way: How do these boys figure that a womans womb is any of their business? How do men, for that matter?

Indeed, how is it possible abortion is anything but an empowering decision for women? If the Supreme Court supports the womans right to choose, biology mandates abortion only be performed on women, and women are increasingly being abandoned by men in the child-rearing process, why should men have any say at all?

For many men, its just fine that they dont have the right to say anything. Their goal of using women to achieve their own selfish purposes has already been achieved. They now enjoy a new kind of freedoma new kind of emancipationbecause of a womans right to choose.

These purposes have very little to do with empowering women. In fact, mans relentless promotion of abortion exploits women in the most personal, debilitating, and disrespectful way. It is yet another tool to persecute and diminish women, pushing them farther away from gender equality. In the process, men are doing enormous damage to the physical and emotional well-being of millions of American women and their families.

And men walk away from the damage with no responsibility or accountability. In fact, we are able to give the same passive rationalization weve been giving for millennia: Its her fault. Its her responsibility. Not mine.

How is it, then, that our culture celebrates abortion as a womans choice? Its her body; its her life. If men are behind the abortion issue, why is it that women are taking full responsibility for the choice and its consequences?

The answer is simple: Thats exactly what pro-abortion men want our culture to think.

Early feminists were passionately against abortion, understanding that abortion exploited and harmed women.