Men, we should join the fight for abortion

Crackdowns on abortion are part of a larger strategy by the wealthy few to continue exploiting working people of all genders for ever-increasing profit.

The 2018 women’s strike in Spain.

The Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos should be considered children jostled free a long-lost memory. I was a junior in college, in an early-morning elective class on fine art drawing. I couldn’t focus my mind on the professor or the blank paper in front of me. My knee was bouncing like a jackhammer. My fingers were flipping open my phone every 30 seconds. I was rereading the text again and again: “My period is 3 days late. Going to get a pregnancy test.”

It wasn’t my first pregnancy “scare,” but I was scared. The first time I’d had sex, when I was 15, I hadn’t used a condom, and my girlfriend hadn’t been on birth control. I’d fretted for a week until her period started. We were so not ready to raise a kid. This time I was 21, and still so not ready to raise a kid.

I told the professor I was going to the bathroom. I walked to a hallway window and looked at the University of Maryland’s flowing green lawns, which calmed me a little. My mind raced. I’d have to drop out of college and get whatever job I could to put food on the table. I’d have to commit forever to my girlfriend. I’d have to give up my dream of touring the world in my rock band. My parents would kill me.

Then, my phone buzzed: “All good. The test was negative <3” My shoulders relaxed. I walked back to the classroom and could actually hear what the teacher was saying. Life went on. All was good.

I’ve never tried in vitro fertilization, or IVF, with a partner. I’ve never been involved in an abortion (that I’m aware of). But I strongly support reproductive rights for women. And I think all men should. Here’s why:

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Alabama’s ruling is clearly an advance in the Republican war on women’s reproductive health and freedom.

Republicans never planned to stop at overruling Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision providing the constitutional right to abortion. Republican-led states have been slashing access to abortion and other reproductive health options for decades. The very law that the Alabama court’s chief justice used to justify his opinion (in addition to the Bible—more on that in a minute) was a 2018 amendment to the state’s constitution recognizing "the sanctity of unborn life." In 2022, all but eight congressional Republicans voted against a law that would protect access to contraception. Last year, most Republicans in the U.S. House cosponsored a bill declaring that life begins from the moment of conception, which if passed would’ve given “equal protection” to “preborn” humans.

It’s too easy (and unhelpful) to chalk all this up to religion. Sure, the Alabama court’s chief justice has ties to Christian nationalism. In his concurring opinion, he quoted from the Book of Genesis, the Ten Commandments, and Christian thinkers from centuries ago. He wrote that human life "cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself." I’m no lawyer, but that’s nowhere near a separation of church and state.

But Christians haven’t always been so concerned about “preborn” children. Abortion up to the fourth or fifth month was legal in the U.S. from the founding of the country until the 1860s. Getting an abortion later in a pregnancy was only a misdemeanor. Abortions were relatively accessible, with little stigma. As abortion activist Renee Bracey Sherman and scholar Tracy Weitz write, it wasn’t religion that drove the eventual criminalization of abortion, it was the career concerns of doctors: “The first criminal laws emerged in the mid-1800s as U.S. medicine needed to distinguish itself from the ‘quackery’ of midwifery and apprentice-trained healers.”

The modern anti-abortion, “pro-life” movement didn’t really get going until the mid-1970s, when the Republican Party began recruiting evangelicals to the cause. Republicans needed ways to stoke and channel white anger in the wake of the Civil Rights movement. Sherman and Weitz write, “White Christians needed an issue they could exploit for political benefit that maintained the same Jim Crow segregation divide. Roe v. Wade provided an opening.”

If it was all about religion, then Republicans wouldn’t be backpedaling so intensely about the Alabama court’s ruling. Both chambers of the state’s legislature have since passed proposed bills intended to protect IVF. Donald Trump has been calling on them to do so, saying, “We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!” Alabama U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville first supported the ruling but then retreated, saying, “We need to have more kids.”

It seems like the Alabama court took religious opposition to abortion a little too far. Surely there are plenty of the party’s voters who morally and spiritually care about “preborn” children. But recent polling suggests that a majority think IVF should be legal, and just 14 percent said it was “morally wrong.”

If it’s not all about religion, then why do Republicans care so much about reproductive rights?

One reason is that throughout the history of capitalism, the rich and powerful have often pushed for higher birth rates, especially among working-class women. More workers mean more economic growth, which means more profits for the business class.

It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but that’s literally what they say. In January, Idaho Republican Senator Chuck Winder said, “We complain that we don’t have enough service workers. Well, I think there’s a reason, it’s not just the low birth rate. It is the number of abortions that have occurred.” I’ll never forget this quote from former Trump Secretary of State Rex Tillerson back in 2015 when he was CEO of ExxonMobil: “I’m not sure public schools understand that we’re their customer—that we, the business community, are your customer. What they don’t understand is they are producing a product at the end of that high school graduation.”

Republicans are freaking out over historically low birth rates in the U.S. Last year, a Texas state representative proposed a bill to offer property tax breaks to married couples who have four or more biological or adopted children. He cited Texas’s falling birth rate as the reason. “With this bill, Texas will start saying to couples: ‘Get married, stay married, and be fruitful and multiply,’” he said. Trump has proposed “baby bonuses for young parents to help launch a new baby boom.”

Trump and other Republicans are carrying on a well-worn tradition. Jenny Brown, author and organizer with National Women's Liberation, writes, “[Historically, abortion] crackdowns correlate closely with the ruling class’s stated desire for higher birth rates. Record-low birth rates in the 1860s, 1930s, and again in the early twenty-first century have all been followed by crackdowns on abortion and contraception.”

Another reason Republicans care so much about reproductive health is that they want women to continue taking on most of the domestic labor. Sociologist Jess Calarco recently tweeted: “The engineers and profiteers of the American economy want women trapped in marriage and motherhood, where they can be more easily forced to do the work of a social safety net.” I wrote about this last week. The rich and powerful don’t want to have to fund things like health, education, and welfare for the people who work for them. They try to pass as much of it as possible on to families, where women often bear the brunt.

All of this is to say that everyone but the rich and powerful benefit from protecting and expanding reproductive freedom.

Crackdowns on abortion and other forms contraception are part of a larger strategy by the wealthy few to continue exploiting everyone else for profit. The same strategy that’s keeping us from addressing climate change, ending racism, and fixing the other crises we face. A strategy that men should join with women and other marginalized genders to fight back against.

In fact, men directly benefit from abortion access. My experience in college isn’t particularly unique. It’s estimated that around one in five men has been involved in an abortion, which is likely an underestimate. For men involved in a pregnancy before the age of 20, those whose partner has an abortion are more likely to graduate from college compared with those whose partner gives birth. On top of that, abortion bans make economic inequality worse for everyone.

And we must go further than only protecting existing reproductive rights. We must abolish all laws dictating when, where, and how someone can have an abortion. We need to raise taxes on the rich and powerful to establish a publicly funded national health care system that includes reproductive health care.

Renee Bracey Sherman and Regina Mahone write in an opinion article for Truthout that really deepened my analysis of this issue: “Everyone [should have] the ability to decide if, when, and how to grow their families based on their own decisions, not how much money is in their bank accounts, whether they can get to the clinic within a time frame, or if they’re afraid of being deported.”

They argue convincingly that “blue states” aren’t actually abortion havens:

“Even the most progressive states limit abortion access based on gestational limits, insurance coverage restrictions, immigration checkpoints, or because there isn’t a provider in their community or even a few hours’ drive away that offers care in the second or third trimester for any number of reasons. Someone could live across the street from an abortion clinic, but if they don’t have insurance or money to pay for the procedure, time off of work or someone to watch their children during their appointment, their proximity is meaningless.”

So, we need to be loud about fighting for reproductive freedom. Join the fight against restrictions and bans. Demand that the federal right to abortion be codified in law immediately. If you have a little extra money, set up a monthly donation to your local abortion fund. Abortion is our issue too.

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Now, a question for the comments below: How has access (or inaccess) to abortion impacted your life?

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