Men Do Have a Dog in This Fight

My daughter, Amy, rashly called it “matricide”, this rush by state legislators around the country, mainly male, to put women at risk in the name of ‘pro-life’ by trading a woman’s health for that of an unintended or unsafe blastula or fetus. And more calmly, she argues persuasively that mainly men are making these decisions about what women can and cannot do with their bodies and in or not in privacy. And she’s right to observe that men are neither venting outrage, as are many women, nor even speaking up strongly about red-states’ eager embrace of the Thomas Courts’ decision.

She piqued my curiosity about gender roles in this issue. First, I’ve learned that the majority of anti-abortion activists are women – college-educated, often Catholic or Baptist, predominantly white women. Studies as far back as the 1980’s showed that women were over 60% of dues-paying members of the National Right to Life Committee (cf. D. O. Granberg.) Studies in the early 2000’s found women in the majorities of both anti-abortion activists and non-activist pro-lifers (cf. C.J.C. Maxwell;  cf. Z. Muson.) As one of my (male) friends put it: “women can’t stand the thought of killing a baby” -- as if that morula or blastula or embryo were a person. 

Overall, of course, the anti-abortion folks are in the minority. Recent Gallup and AP/NORC studies showed most Americans did not want Roe overturned and a majority believe that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. More Americans believe in choice and privacy than in control by the state.

That women’s bodies are the immediate issue doesn’t mean men don't have a stake in this. We men must engage with this issue and its broader implications. First, because we owe support to our daughters, wives, sisters, and mothers in anything they care so passionately about. Secondly, because our rights are on the table, too.

The majority on the Thomas Court are thrilled to earn a footnote in legal history by overturning a half-century old precedent – stare decisis and confirmation testimony be damned. And surely more to come, as Thomas has pledged. Their originalist logic used can be widely applied: to gay marriage, to the morning after pill, to contraception; to in-vitro fertilization; to trans-gender and trans-sexual choice; to inter-racial marriage (in state courts, since Ginny Thomas is unlikely to allow Clarence to bring that one forward); to physician-assisted suicide. And yes, to privacy itself.

In Roe as in many other rulings former courts’ underlying assumption was that despite “privacy” being nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, a “penumbra” of privacy is embedded in our right to Liberty. This is foundational to keeping government out of our bedrooms, out of our phone records, out of our e-mails.

A lawyer friend of mine points out that the state has always regulated to some degree domestic and seemingly private matters: to wit, polygamy, marriageable age, married license requirements and so on. These provide ample grounds from which either true believers or a malignant government can launch attacks on our other rights. These jurists, especially Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett, have earned our distrust. We must not accept on its face Alito’s “assurance” that the Dodd precedent will go no further.

Do men have a stake in marriage equality? Gay men and fathers of gay men certainly do. In the morning-after pill or contraception? Of course. In inter-racial and race equity? You bet. In privacy of other sorts? Of course we do, and we should be alarmed.

En garde! Engage. Add your voices to those of women who are leading the way. We, too, have a dog in this fight; stand and be heard.