Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

Interesting article written by Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D, regarding men and abortion. I would love to have him come to one of our men's days…."More could be done to have the experience understood as "our abortion" rather than "her abortion." No Dr Shostak, not "our abortion", but "our baby".

No, I am NOT a "Rock."

On Abortion and Waiting Room Men

Were
I asked to name the single pop tune that had the most to teach us, I
would name "I am a Rock," even though it requires a keen grasp of
irony.  On the face of it the Simon and Garfunkle tune offers a
pernicious stereotype, a caricature of sealed off, bottled up males.
Allowing for how this fits far too many Conon-like dunderheads, I
contend it does not fit most American men- and the more we can do to
move "many" to "most," the better.

If you want in-your-face evidence that a good many guys are
not "rocks," spend a little time with over 500,000 males annually found
in the waiting rooms of the nation's nearly 400 abortion clinics (about
half of all abortion-seeking women generally have a man sitting by in
the clinic or doctor's waiting room).  And if you want to help move
"many" out and into the ranks of most (feeling) men, please join me in
an on-going effort to reinvent the clinic experience of the waiting
room men.

I have been there, both as one of them, and soon thereafter, as
a sociologist trying to find out more about them (and thereby, about
me).  To get deliberately ahead of the story below, what I found was
moving and poignant, as might be expected.  But it was also
exasperating and even infuriating, two outcomes that took me by
surprise, and have me ever since eager to gain the support of feminist
women in an urgent reform campaign.

Back in the 1970s, when "Nancy," a former lover, nervously
called a month or so after we had broken up, I was shocked to learn she
was pregnant, and we were going to have an abortion.  Both parts of
that phone sentence knocked me over.  We had enjoyed an intimate
two-year relationship, and I knew she had been on the pill before we
met and throughout our live-in love affair.  What I did not know,
"Nancy" softly explained, was that severe headaches had had her go off
the pill, "just for a little time," and she had now resumed taking it
after getting a better prescription.  Nor had I known that before
calling to tell me "our" decision "Nancy" had taken several days to
make up her mind alone about what to do about her pregnancy.

"Nancy" was quick to get me to promise that I would discuss
this with no one, absolutely no one – and I was quick to agree. 
Something inside told me this was a mistake, however, and over the
years since I have realized over and again how true that was.  Scores
of males I have interviewed since have told me I was the first person
they had ever told of their part in an abortion months or even years
before.  Many cried with the relief disclosure and processing makes
possible.  We would sit in the back of a dinner in a booth I had
"reserved" for an hour's interview, and still be there hours later,
with crumbled kleenex tissues strewn about, and a sympathetic waitress
hovering nearby to keep the coffee cups filled.

You can read the rest here:http://www.menandabortion.com/art_personal.html