Easy abortion is a winner for sleazy men
While the pro-abortion crowd celebrates the fall this week of Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy, the rest of us got a useful reminder: Sleazy men make out pretty darn well, thanks to easy abortions.
Murphy’s political career came to an abrupt halt after the Pittsburgh Post Gazette caught him pressuring his mistress to have an abortion, even while he pretended to be pro-life. The pregnancy turned out to be a false alarm, but Murphy’s hypocrisy — and the end of his career — were real. After meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan, he announced he wouldn’t seek re-election. It’s nice to know that there are still a few things politicians can’t get away with.
Yet before we drop this one in the file marked “feminist victories,” it is worth understanding another lesson. Abortion-rights activists often say efforts by politicians to restrict the procedure are simply a way of men exercising control over women’s bodies — keeping them barefoot and pregnant. And that abortion-on-demand really is the key to empowering and freeing women from the shackles of the patriarchy.
But the truth is that men benefit from the easy availability of abortion at least as much — if not more — than women.
Which is one reason the recently departed Hugh Hefner was such a big proponent. Playboy published its first article supporting the legalization of abortion in 1965 and even listed the numbers of hotlines where women could obtain them — even before Roe v. Wade. The audience for this information was clearly not women who were reading Playboy articles but men who had, as they used to say, gotten women in trouble.
But for the reporting, Tim Murphy (like so many other married men) might have been able to cover up any embarrassing consequences from his affair, thanks to the fact that abortion is easily accessible in Pennsylvania and most other states. (Pennsylvania does have a 24-hour waiting period, and doctors are supposed to offer women some literature about other options. But as long as the fetus is less than 24 weeks old, the requirements are hardly onerous.)
Still, the ACLU would like to make things easier. This week, it filed suit against the FDA for restricting the availability of an abortion pill called Mifeprex. Currently, it can be dispensed only in clinics, hospitals and doctors’ offices. But the lawsuit says it should be available by prescription in your neighborhood pharmacy.
Imagine the possibilities. When a man like Murphy or someone who may be preying on a vulnerable woman — perhaps even an underage one — finds that he has made a “mistake,” he may be able to simply phone a doctor who calls in a prescription without even a visit to fix his mistake. It will be like getting penicillin for an ear infection.
Abortion-rights supporters often point out that laws requiring parental consent for abortions can mean that embarrassed teenagers won’t get the services they need. And it’s true that many girls did resort to unsafe abortions when it wasn’t legal.
But without parental consent, men can get girls pregnant and then pressure them to have abortions without anyone who cares about them finding out.
And frankly, it’s not just sexual predators but even fairly normal, pro-life-leaning men (a la Murphy) in perfectly consensual relationships who like loose abortion laws.
In college, a self-professed conservative acquaintance sleeping with a liberal woman told me he felt a little uncomfortable with the giant “pro-choice” poster hanging above her bed. But then he shrugged: “Not that I’m in any position to object.”
One of the reasons the ACLU and its feminist supporters push for the more widespread availability of the abortion pill they can get “in the privacy of their own homes” is that they believe that our culture shames too many women out of having an abortion. And only by removing all legal and even cultural barriers to abortion can women truly be free to make this decision and be satisfied with it.
Indeed, a forthcoming book called “Happy Abortions” wonders why the “idea that abortion could or should be a positive experience for women is rarely discussed in our socio-political landscape.”
But the people who are most likely to see abortion as a “positive experience” are not women — whose emotions are likely to be mixed — but men, who want to get off the hook.
Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.
Twitter: @NaomiSRiley