If men could get pregnant

[bettyellen]

72. in the real world, men routinely refuse to wear condoms, to pay child support. Most couples I know

men assume you'll get on the pill as soon as you're exclusive.

God knows way too many try to do without a condom from the get go. I don't know a woman who hasn't been through that sad song and dance more than once. Women who have serious side effects from the pill, whose docs won;t give them IUDs because it could diminish fertility (no matter how much you insist you KNOW you never want a baby- yes they do refuse) are shit out of luck.

Since we have the pill, men have expressed no pressure on the medical community for male contraceptives. Vasectomies are RARE. If there was a potential market, they'd be working on it log ago. Men largely prefer to leave this burden (and ingesting hormone pills is often a burden) where it has always been -on women.

The point is, if the serious inescapable consequences fell on men, the zeitgeist would be different. No squeemishness or reluctance to support abortion (which I often see on DU), no stigma, no roadblocks to access. Do you dispute THIS?

And women believe this because we still do not have equal rights, and we remember a time when our Moms and Grandmoms were largely treated as their husband's property. Men legislated themselves into a dominant position in the past, and we believe they'd do it again. But of course, if we women couldn't have babies and thus had more independence and control in our lives, maybe we wouldn't allow men to get out from under us and do that. They sure as heck wouldn't have the time and freedom to do it.

But if they all magically woke up tommorrow with the ability to get knocked up, hell yeah all that ambivalence or distain for abortion would very quickly be a thing of the past. We all know this would be the case. Even Dem men here constantly make excuses that it's not their issue- and LOL, women will get mad at them for butting in. If you support choice wholeheartedly, women are never going to criticize that- but guys here always have an excuse to give nothing but lip service. So again, they leave the problem to women.