I’m sure you’ve seen the abortion news over the last couple of weeks. Missouri passed a bill to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. Alabama’s bill is an outright ban on abortion. And Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Ohio passed heartbeat bills that prohibit abortions after six to eight weeks of pregnancy.
Because abortion has been in the news so much, the Twitter thread about irresponsible ejaculation that I wrote last September (you can find the blog post version here), went viral again. It was liked and retweeted another 40,000+ times. If I’ve been posting a bit less around here, it’s because I’ve been pulled to Twitter to discuss and defend what I’ve written.
Which reminds me, if you’re not a big Twitter user, but you’re curious about what I’ve been writing on that platform, you can go directly to a feed of my Tweets & Replies. Click on any individual tweet there to find full conversations.
Anyway, today, in an attempt to clarify my thoughts, I wrote a new thread on the subject of abortion and responsibility. I’m going to copy and paste it here.
——
Heads up: If you aren’t using condoms every time, you don’t care about abortion. If your partner suggests no condom and you agree, you don’t care about abortion. If you won’t consider a vasectomy because you think it will hurt/make you less manly, you don’t care about abortion.
If you don’t bring up condoms or birth control and wait for your partner to say something, you don’t care about abortion. If you’ve ever hinted to your partner, or outright said, that sex feels better without a condom (so manipulative!), you don’t care about abortion.
If you assume your partner will have condoms or will otherwise be taking care of birth control, you don’t care about abortion. If you’ve ever thought: well, if she gets pregnant, she can just get an abortion or take the morning after pill, you don’t care about abortion.
If there’s a discussion on ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy, and your first thought is: Women should just keep their legs closed, you don’t care about abortion. If you think pregnancy prevention is not your personal responsibility, you don’t care about abortion.
If you don’t have enough practice or control using the pull out method, and you suggest that you don’t need a condom because you’ll just pull out, you don’t care about abortion. If you ever promise to pull out and don’t, you don’t care about abortion. (Also, that’s assault.)
If you tell your partner that condoms don’t work for you; that they don’t fit you; that they always break when you use them, you don’t care about abortion. If you bargain with your partner that you won’t wear a condom, but you promise to pull out, you don’t care about abortion.
If you’ve ever sighed or rolled your eyes — even unconsciously — at the suggestion of using a condom, you don’t care about abortion. If you assume you don’t need a condom because she’s on the pill, you don’t care about abortion.
If you don’t want to use a condom, and you think it’s up to your partner to say no to sex, you don’t care about abortion. If you refuse a condom, and blame your partner for not walking away, you don’t care about abortion.
If you think people should cover their nose when they sneeze, but don’t think you need to worry about where your sperm ends up, you don’t care about abortion. If you don’t understand you and only you are 100% responsible for your own bodily fluids, you don’t care about abortion.
If you’ve ever hinted that if your partner denies your request for condom-less sex, you’ll hurt your partner, or make things difficult, painful, or otherwise unpleasant, you don’t care about abortion (and should definitely be in prison).
If you think you care about abortion, but aren’t willing to change your behavior so that *you* prevent unwanted pregnancies, you don’t care about abortion. If you think focusing solely on women will reduce abortions, you don’t care about abortion.
If you’re not actively working against the cultural pressure for women to be wholly responsible for preventing unwanted pregnancies, you don’t care about abortion. If you don’t fight to change the fact women are 100% blamed for unwanted pregnancies, you don’t care about abortion.
If you’re not actively working against the cultural pressure for women to agree to no condom, in order to not disappoint men, displease them, or lessen their pleasure, you don’t care about abortion.
If you think trying to stop abortions is more effective than preventing unwanted pregnancies, you don’t care about abortion. If you don’t understand that men are the key to preventing unwanted pregnancies, you don’t care about abortion.
Remember: Men who fight against abortion, don’t actually care about abortion. They could easily prevent unwanted pregnancies (and therefore abortions), by controlling their own actions. Instead, they just want to control women.
——
Any thoughts on this new thread? Have you heard any conversations that try to bring men into the equation instead of focusing on women?
For those who want to advance the conversation here, I wrote a list of ideas and solutions I would like to see happen:
—–
-A public opinion campaign to shift the conversation from stopping abortion to preventing unwanted pregnancies.
-A media focus on studies that prove easily available birth control reduces unwanted pregnancies (and therefore abortion).
-A public opinion campaign to help men recognize how dangerous their sperm is, and that they must be incredibly careful with their bodily fluids.
-Fund programs that make condoms as available, affordable, and commonplace as toilet paper.
-Add a focus on the man’s responsibility to prevent pregnancy to all sex ed curriculum, because condoms are the simplest, easiest, cheapest, safest, most convenient way to prevent pregnancy.
-A public opinion campaign to counter the myths about condoms. In responding to my thread, many men mentioned that condom use doesn’t have to diminish pleasure at all. There is advice for finding the right condom, and tips — like putting a few drops of lubrication inside the condom. Make it super clear that having sex without a condom is irresponsible, reckless, and selfish.
I adore men and believe the vast majority don’t want to be irresponsible, reckless, and selfish — it’s just that no one has pointed out to them before that sex without a condom is exactly that.
-Don’t let politicians use abortion as a political tool. If they bring up the topic of abortion, remind them the only way to reduce abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Ask them how they propose to hold men accountable for irresponsible ejaculation. Don’t let them talk about abortion; keep redirecting them to prevention. Don’t publish or share their policies on abortion, only prevention.
-Educate men on how safe and simple vasectomies are. Teach them that vasectomies don’t affect your manhood or sex life. Show them how vasectomies are much safer, more foolproof, and more effective than women’s birth control options.
-Vasectomies are already highly reversible, but we could fund research so doctors could perfect vasectomy methods, with the goal of making them universally reversible.
-Subsidize the cost of vasectomies so they essentially free — or the same cost as a box of condoms.
-Criminalize the action of using bodily fluids to cause an unwanted pregnancy, with the goal of making sure men take the act of sex seriously, understand the risks, and are extremely careful with their semen.
-Fund research to make women’s birth control much safer and easier — so safe and easy it can be available 24/7 like condoms.
Of course, feel free to add your own ideas. And to be clear any of those ideas would be more effective at reducing abortion, and keeping women safe and healthy, than making abortion illegal.
If you’re focusing on making abortion illegal, you don’t actually care about reducing abortions. You just want to control women. If you want to reduce abortions, you need to focus on men and prevention.
——-
What are your thoughts? Does all this abortion talk leave you feeling angry or depressed? What do you believe would be the most effective way to reduce abortions? And is your belief based more on a gut feeling, or on research and data? If you are against abortions for religious reasons, do you feel people should be able to make laws based on religious beliefs?