Cornering the Market

"It's our bodies, our choice." It seems inevitable that men who oppose abortion must hear this retort, or some equivalent argument. I have alway found it incredibly irksome, not to mention ill-founded.

Firstly, let us not forget that once a woman has conceived, she is not responsible for her body alone; whether she is amenable to the facts or not, they remain: there is now another body within her, dependent upon her.

Secondly, since when does a pregnancy concern the woman exclusively? It takes two to bring about that state, and one of the parties is a man. Is he to have no say in the future of a life that was brought into existence by his part as equally as the woman's? If one is still inclined to answer that the decision is the business of the woman exclusively, I must then insist, along the same lines of logic, that women desist in the protesting of war and armed conflict. Is this not the business of men, into which women have inappropriately inserted themselves this past half-century, upsetting the proper millinia-old spheres of gender?

"Ah, but it is the fathers, husbands, and sons of women who fight such wars," one may counter. "Women, being in fact so greatly involved in the business of war, bound by blood, concern, and love to those involved in its events directly, must be permitted to have due influence in these matters." I quite agree, and it is by this same logic that I claim the right of every father to have his voice heard when it comes to the health and future of his unborn son or daughter.