Boohoo the poor menz: a BBC report on why men's feelings should be equal to women's in the abortion debate

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49240582

"Men are usually involved in an abortion in one of four ways, all of which can leave men traumatised when they come to reflect afterwards on their roles, say those running counselling groups for post-abortive men. Sometimes men coerce a woman into having an abortion against her will; others say they will support the woman's decision either way, while steering that decision toward abortion. Some men find out about the abortion for the first time after the fact, or the abortion goes ahead against their wishes."

Speaking as someone who was coerced into an abortion I didn't want, I couldn't give a fuck how traumatic it might be for him to later "reflect" on his actions. One day he'd be saying it was all my choice and he'd support me no matter what, the next day he'd be making plans to move country if I had the baby, the next he'd be threatening to use his contacts at social services to have the baby removed from me and saying he'd take full custody if I went ahead, then the next day he'd be bringing me gifts and begging me not to terminate. Shockingly that was quite a lot to cope with whilst also studying full time and experiencing such extreme morning sickness I could hardly think. Shockingly I decided that wasn't an environment I could justify bringing a child into. When I went for the surgery, because I was 11 weeks by the time I decided, he begged to be allowed to come with me, then never showed up because he decided to go shopping for a new BMW instead. I never heard from him again, but I lost the next 3 years of my life to severe depression over the guilt and regret I felt. I seriously and frequently considered suicide. I engaged in very high risk sexual behaviour in the hope of contracting some terrible STD which I felt was what I deserved. I went to the doctor several times but was rejected for help each time and told to basically get over it as it was "my choice". I was offered a single counselling session by the NHS with a woman who told me she "only really knew about miscarriages" and suggested I just make a list of pros and cons to look at when I felt sad. Ultimately I dropped out of university because the course material focused often on pregnancy which I found too upsetting. Many years later I now have 2 children but I still cry to think of the one who isn't here. So I don't give a shiny fuck how the man who got me pregnant feels now.

At the same time another friend I knew became pregnant by a man who was abusive to her but for religious reasons didn't want her to terminate. He would turn up to her house in the middle of the night screaming at her that she was a murderer. He made her life a living hell, but because of her termination she was able to finish her degree, leave that relationship, and is now happily married and professionally successful. So I don't give a flying fuck how the guy that got her pregnant feels now either.

""Men are meant to be protectors, so there is a sense of failure - failing to protect the mother and the unborn child, failing to be responsible," says 61-year-old Chuck Raymond, whose 18-year-old girlfriend had an abortion in the late 70s when he was a teenager."

I don't give a fuck, Chuck.

"He likens the mental and emotional anguish that can follow an abortion to battlefield post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)."

Post abortion stress syndrome isn't even a recognised condition for women yet, you know, the people actually trying to make the life changing decision in the midst of morning sickness, social pressure, and often male coercive control. The ones who actually have to choose between giving birth and raising a child, or going through an often traumatic medical procedure. And I don't believe for a second that these poor "traumatised" men actually wanted to raise the baby themselves, it's all about not being able to control the woman.

"It's changing now, men are fed up," Ms Bonopartis says. "Men had bought into how they have no say in this and that if they speak out, they are against women, but now the impact is being felt by more and more of them as the repercussions of 45 years of abortion are being seen."

FUCK. OFF.

FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF

I don't care if men are fed up. I don't care how sad they are, or if they feel emasculated by not being able to control women, or if they feel like being made to pay child support somehow gives them part shares in women's bodies, or if they think that they are the natural protectors of children and women (despite being their number one killers) and should therefore be allowed to "protect" a fetus by forcing it to be born to an unwilling mother when 9/10 times they have no intention of caring for it themselves. I don't give a single fuck and I am so angry that the BBC has run this "sympathetic" article which basically says men should be allowed to have a say in women's medical care. Men can state their preference for an outcome, fine, and they're allowed to be upset if that preference isn't followed, but they have no right, not now and not ever, to expect their preference to be given equal weight to a woman's.

So, fuck off BBC. Fuck off Alabama. Fuck off all pro forced birth people but especially pro forced birth men. Fuck off to my ex and to my friends ex, and to the exes of all the equally traumatised women I met in the one solitary non religious (i.e you need forgiveness) post abortion support group I was able to eventually find online because no one gives enough of a shit to form one in real life on behalf of women. Fuck off to anyone who thinks the decision over what happens to a woman's body should be in the hands of anyone but the woman herself. Fuckity fucking fuck off.

Saw it yesterday- the fact they didn’t spell out the implications gave me the rage.

Women are not incubators

I guess the poor men will have to refrain from sex entirely then, won't they.

After all, women are frequently told to keep their legs closed if they don't want children...

Has anyone got any idea why the bbc would want to promote this crap?

Has anyone got any idea why the bbc would want to promote this crap

I imagine the higher than average percentage of trans identifying staff working there has something to do with it.

Men, it is not your fucking choice. It is ours.

I also had many wtf feeling reading that. Especially the poor traumatised menz who feel saaaaad about forcing women into abortion....

‘Oh nooooooes! I coerced a woman into doing something and now I feel sooooo baaaaad, poor me, me, me, wah wah wah...’ - seriously, what the actual fucking fuck?

Circuit181 nor sure all the anecdotal stories really 'prove' anything.

The personal testimonies serve to remind people that abortion is not easy for women, it is physically painful and often psychologically unpleasant. Women don't want abortions the way we want chocolate, we want abortions as the least bad of two bad outcomes. These facts are routinely erased from abortion narratives, especially this BBC report focussing on men who don't even have the pregnancy or abortion, some of whom admit to coercing the woman, you know the one who is actually pregnant, into an unwanted abortion.

This should never even be a discussion. As soon as you give men any say in abortion, you remove the woman’s bodily autonomy. There is no way around that so they can never be part of the decision making process.

If men feel traumatised, they can seek counselling or other treatment. But that’s as far as it can go.

Buzz what does it have to do with trans? It’s straight men driving this, wanting the right to control women’s bodies.

Men are allowed feelings.

What they aren't allowed is to be 'part of the debate'. Which is what is being bandied around. My rights to my own body aren't a fucking debate. That's the issue. Not the feelings, the exercise of coercion.

‘Oh nooooooes! I coerced a woman into doing something and now I feel sooooo baaaaad, poor me, me, me, wah wah wah...’ - seriously, what the actual fucking fuck? confusedhmm

I briefly dated one like this. He was all about how it affected him, but of course, he had coerced her because 'It couldn't happen, we were too young' and then made out like he was a victim, too. He was a cunt.

Gave me the absolute rage too OP, I felt every single one of your FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFFS. Get to flying fuck, no uterus, no opinion.

Pota2 Buzz what does it have to do with trans? It’s straight men driving this, wanting the right to control women’s bodies.

Do you think that TPAs don't want the same? This BBC piece is in the context of an all-out war, by males regardless of gender identity, on women's bodily autonomy:

• The rape conviction rate has fallen year-on-year for the last five years, de facto removing our right to say no to sex. Surrogacy law is being reviewed in a way intended to reduce the rights of surrogate mothers*, they aren't even referred to as "mothers" in the consultation docs, with the end goal of legalising paid-for surrogacy. Systematic challenging of our legal right* to female-only spaces, including prisons, dormitories, rape centres, DV safe houses...
• The "cotton ceiling" concerted campaign to redefine "lesbian" and coerce lesbians into doing dick. Lesbians have described this as "corrective rape".
• Incels and their demands for women to fuck and state-issued brothel vouchers. Holbeck in Leeds, where the council have declared an entire district a pay-to-rape zone. In addition to the drug-addicted prostitutes on the streets being raped to fund their drug addiction, women living there have been abducted from the street, gang-raped, and the perpetrators acquitted* because they used "we thought she was a hooker" as a defence.

TPAs have huge vested interests in commandeering women's bodies to reproduce, as the hormones and surgeries they subject their own bodies to often render them incapable of having children themselves. Getting sperm is easy: plenty of men will wack off into a jar for £50 and it takes them minutes. Women's bodies are needed for nine solid months and pregnancy is onerous, making surrogates hard to obtain and always with the risk that the surrogate may change her mind and abort or may refuse to abort a foetus if the commissioners (ie the people who asked her to be a surrogate) change their minds. Hence, there are huge efforts being made on many fronts to move the Overton window in respect of who controls pregnant women's bodies, both for forced abortion and forced pregnancy.

When MPAs argue for legalised "financial abortion" aka coercion of women into aborting under the threat of the father defunding his own child once born, they move the Overton window towards fathers being able to force abortions (and some of the more extreme MPAs already think that fathers should be able to mandate abortions). When MPAs moan about how much a woman aborting the embryo he left inside her hurt his poor widdle feelings, they move the Overton window towards fathers being able to veto abortions.

Trans people, as future commissioners of surrogate-gestated children, will benefit from being able to bar a surrogate mother from aborting or forcing her to abort. TPAs can see that it is in their interests to move the Overton window that way. When MPAs sue abortion clinics, they harbinger a future in which commissioners, a disproportionately high number of whom will be trans, can sue for breach of contract if a surrogate mother aborts for the sake of her health.

There are already TPAs who think that women should be sex and birthing slaves (Picture evidence for quote). They are aiming for the right to use us as incubators. It's not a coincidence that these attacks on our rights and reframing of abortion to centre men are happening all at the same time.

Thanks for all the comments everyone. Sorry to take so long coming back to this thread. I almost never read or post anything on this subject as it's still very raw for me, so that's a mark of how utterly enraged I was to see this article. I also find it massively concerning that the BBC would publish this, and the cynic in me thinks this may be the latest MRA angle. Now that mens hurty hurty feelings are part of the "debate" I wonder how long it'll be before liberal "feminism" gets on board with the idea. Banning abortion can be the next "progressive" and "empowering" idea, along with Niqabs, prostitution, porn, anal, and PIV sex for lesbians. Feminists who protest this will of course be cast as prudish old has beens who are oppressing women.

The men in the article saying they think it's inconsistent that a woman could go through with an abortion but not an adoption, have no fucking clue. It just shows how far removed they are from women's realities. I could never have had an adoption. It was never an option for even a second. If I'd had the baby I would have raised it and loved it. As traumatising as my abortion was I can't imagine anything more awful than giving up a child to adoption. I felt that very strongly when I was pregnant, and 100X more so now that I've actually had children. And that's not to mention the actual process of carrying a child to term, the risk to your health, the pain of labour, the stigma of being seen to be pregnant but not take home a child, the distress to a woman's existing children... But that's how so many men think, isn't it. Because for them "no child" and "a child I just walk away from and never think about" are the same thing. The idea of being able to just piss off and get on with your life with a child somewhere out there in the world is so deeply ingrained in the male psyche that they can't comprehend that it is much easier for most women to never have a child than to have one she gives up.

And the other quote in the article from the man saying it was unfair that men had to pay child support but got no say in whether the child was born - as if child support was some kind of payment plan giving them the right to control the woman's body.

And the bit about "most women say they don't regret abortions, but lots of men are soooooo saaaaad about it" as if "don't regret" = "wasn't sad". I don't regret my abortion, not anymore. It was the right choice and my life has taken a better turn because of it. But that doesn't mean it wasn't also the most horrendous difficult traumatising thing that's ever happened to me. It paints the picture of women just shrugging off their abortions with a stony heart while the poor heart broken men look on in horror. No concept of the fact that we can suffer deeply from a choice and still think it was the right choice to make. But that's another thing these men seem to have no concept of - making a choice that's painful because you think it's right. No, they only know about doing what they want and what makes them happy, so if a woman has an abortion she must have done it for the shits and giggles.

OK now I'm all hot and cross again. I'm seriously so disgusted and angry with the BBC for running that article, because people will read it and they'll agree and think "awww poor men" and that's how the overton window starts shifting. They'll file it away in the back of their brains with all the other BBC articles about how women are out there in droves making false rape allegations or manipulating family courts or getting unfairly high divorce settlements, all of which is utter bollocks, and so the MRA myth of female privilege stats to grow and spread.

There's a great speech by Posie where she says "women have somehow bypassed the point where we enjoyed any measure of equality in society, and skipped straight to being painted as the oppressors". I think that's so so true of so many situations atm.

OK last point - I just want to repeat this by Michelleoftheresistance because it's spot on:

Men feeling sad about not being able to control women really is not the international crisis some men believe it is.

I really don’t think banning abortion will be the next step for liberal feminism. Say what you like about it’s many weaknesses but it does recognise reproductive rights and numerous libfems managed to push through reform in a country that has taken an extremely restrictive approach. Banning abortion is the province of the religious right. I think the TRAs/MRAs don’t give a shit really because it doesn’t affect them. But I don’t think it’s the woke crowd driving the anti-abortion rhetoric. They aren’t the ones standing outside clinics with pictures of aborted fetuses and telling women they will go to hell.

I agree bd67th I don't think it's a coincidence at all that this is all happening at the same time.

By the way this is the support forum that basically saved my life, if anyone else is struggling from similar issues. It's non religious, non political, and very very heavily moderated to make it a safe non "triggering" space. I can't recommend it highly enough if anyone out there is suffering from Post Abortion Stress Syndrome.

passboards.org/

Bd67th, yes I am concerned about surrogacy but let’s remember also that it’s largely heterosexual couples who use surrogates, followed by gay men. I have never actually come across any report of a trans person using a surrogate although I am sure there must be examples.
I think this is coming from the religious right/men’s right activism that is associated with eg Jordan Peterson. I am sure there are links at some level but I do not see this as driven by the fact that there are trans employees at the BBC. I think that really is stretching things out of proportion with no solid evidence. We’re letting straight men off the hook by blaming this on trans rights activists.

And plus this is in the US, where the politicians who are restricting abortion rights are also removing rights from trans people too. I mean you’d have to be really stretching things to say that the Trump administration is pro trans rights. It’s the exact opposite.

No I definitely don't think TRAs are behind this article, and I don't think trans women are involved in anti abortion activism in an significant way, but I do think that there are a lot of different attacks on women going on at the same time and I don't think it's a coincidence. That's not to say I think it's a planned conspiracy or a single group behind it all or anything like that, but I think we're seeing a lot of repressed male rage over increased female power coming to the surface at the same time. It's like bananas in the fruit bowl. All the MRA and incel groups have been green fruit for a long time, but once one thing starts to gain traction the whole lot starts to ripen and rot. I don't think it's part of an organised plan, but I do think it's all different facets of the same backlash.

Agree. It’s lots of attacks coming from different sides and with different motivations. From the right, from incels, from TRAs. Pretty horrifying.

The problem for men is condoms are pretty much the only contraception available except the even worse pulling out technique. Most people don’t like them in reality. By all means say boo hoo, so what you have to put a thing on the end of it but in my experience women hate them too.

I’m not getting into abortion because of the main crux here but do think I’m entitled to have an opinion whilst acknowledging I’m not entitled to have any decision making power.

The sooner there is a male pill the better. I seriously think it arrives (I say if because it’s been touted as being around the corner for 20 years) there will be ramifications that a very large amount of women won’t like

Caucho any person can have an opinion on abortion. If my next door neighbour has an abortion, I can have an opinion. Even if it is your sperm, your opinion cannot have any decisive weight, meaning that it is not worth more or less than any other opinion.

And what are the ramifications that a very large number of women won’t like of the male pill? A rise in STDs? Yeah, probably. I mean I am hoping your comment doesn’t relate to the myth that huge numbers of women trick men into pregnancy but I am sure I am wrong.

I am sympathetic to the feelings of men whose partner has an abortion when they want the baby. And the men who agree an abortion is necessary but still feel sad.

But that has zero bearing on whether I think they have a say in a woman's decision to have a baby or an abortion.

If I got pregnant we would both be devastated. But dh would want to keep it and I wouldn't. My choice would be the one we go with. It would probably ruin our marriage. We are currently looking at options for sterilisation so that we don't get to that point. His potential feelings are valid and are.affecting our decision making BECAUSE we both know that in that scenario the choice will always be mine.

What's also bizarre about this is that feelings are suddenly so important?! The rest of us have feelings about all kind of things but it doesn't give us a say or change our legal rights? Only when these are men's feelings about women's actions are feelings suddenly considered relevant!

We see what’s happening in America and should shudder. Men should not have the voice here.