The pro-life movement is, at least in America, allied with conservatism. This leads to an inevitable contradiction. Any additional law means more government. This is especially ironic now that we are about to save taxpayer dollars through welfare reform.
Is there a way to radically decrease abortions without asking the government to do it? Adoption is often suggested here and that is a good alternative but I think there is another as well.
Marriage. I am not talking just about a return to the “shotgun marriage”; rather, I think an offer of marriage from a man who is not the father but will assume all the traditional responsibilities of fatherhood would be accepted by many unmarried pregnant women. The motif of a man proposing marriage to a woman pregnant with another man’s child is a common one on soap operas that are a fairly good gauge of female fantasy. These stories represent the truth that many pregnant women don’t really want to abort, and would not, if marriage and commitment were offered to them.
Grooms For Life could be facilitated on a practical basis by computerized matching of pro-life single men with unmarried pregnant women interested in carrying to term. Certainly, the number of Grooms For Life would fall short of the million and a half abortions per year–but the government would be able to ensure birth quite imperfectly as well. Additionally, female pro-lifers and married men could spend their time recruiting bachelors to their cause so that the screaming demonstrators outside abortion clinics would soon be replaced by swains in bow ties, holding rings and serenading the pregnant women.
Other objections are surely being raised. Such couples would not be in love, so what chance would their marriages have of succeeding? It is a peculiarly Western–and modern–idea that says marriage must be based on love.
“Arranged marriages” are still common in many conservative cultures–and their record suggests that romantic love is not the only basis for a lasting marital union.
Pro-life marriages would have major advantages over other unions: the men would know they have done a good deed in saving a baby from abortion and, thus, keenly look forward to the birth; the women would respect the moral sincerity of their new husbands.
A second objection is that if men offer to marry pregnant women to insure the baby’s birth, women will deliberately get pregnant in order to nab a pro-life hubby. This is unlikely. Most women are quite rational people and will realize that the number of Grooms For Life will not exceed the demand for them. Additionally, most women are pro-choice and, therefore, will have no incentive to abandon their current practice (whether celibacy, lesbianism, or contraception) in hopes of marrying a pro-lifer.
Was on AOL for a week as an “In My Humble Opinion” Column and appears on Fiercewomen.com.
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DrDamage said,
Yikes!
June 29, 2006 at 5:41 am
bethesda_paul said,
Now that is a platform the Democrats can run on!
June 29, 2006 at 5:47 am
DcFather said,
Oh, wait a minute, on second thought, we already have all of that. Never mind.
June 29, 2006 at 6:17 am
felix_phl said,
Oh, I get it. This whole piece was a comedy routine! I didn’t pick up on it until the end.
June 29, 2006 at 6:41 am
PolishKnight said,
Ironically, feminists fell for the political trap of replacing the welfare state sugar daddy for the family court one. What is now clear after the dust has settled from this social experiment is that welfare and child-support doesn’t reduce abortions like the religious conservatives hoped.
Although I agree with the concept of choice-for-men, I have to ask myself if men as a class deserve it if so many of them like Matt LaBlanc don’t wake up beforehand and observe the growing numbers of unwed mothers out there. I’m not blaming the victim, but men need to wake up and this is one of the first steps. Am I being too harsh?
Of course, if feminist naysayers who smugly observe that men will just have to think twice about sex get their wish, it will alter men’s view of western chivalry forever.
June 29, 2006 at 6:55 am
debi912 said,
Why aren’t women expected to accept responsability for what they bring upon themselves? What happened to we are women hear me roar?I don’t want bigger government, and I don’t want to pay for someone elses mistake. Every time something is proposed to help women we end up with another arm of uncle sam sticking his hand in my wallet. I have been a single mom for a long time, I manage on a wing and a prayer. But i’m the one paying for my boys. It would be a hell of alot easier if I didn’t have to pay for anyone elses.(Rant off)debi
June 29, 2006 at 7:33 am
ericjzero said,
Now… if she wants someone stable and worthwhile to raise her little accident, she can put it up for adoption.
/My Two Cents…
June 29, 2006 at 8:59 am
Toubrouk said,
Using the Pro-Life angle to sell that scam dosen’t make it more honest.
Women won a large ammount of freedom in the last century. They went from dumb teenagers in constant need of guidance to equal partners in society. This also means that she got the freedom of being impregnated by the local irresponsible moron if she chose too. If she’s not, it’s called rape and there’s prisons for that. From that point, if “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” without any birth control method, it’s their choice. I don’t own their uterus, they do. They have to accept responsibility for their sex life ans stop blaming mens.
What’s next? A “Man-Tax” so that all mens out there became suppliers for a state-sponsored child-support program?
I know Chivalry is not dead but the parasitic tendencies of the last 45 years are slowly eroding it.
June 29, 2006 at 9:02 am
PolishKnight said,
Why aren’t women expected to accept responsability for what they bring upon themselves? What happened to we are women hear me roar?I don’t want bigger government, and I don’t want to pay for someone elses mistake. Every time something is proposed to help women we end up with another arm of uncle sam sticking his hand in my wallet. I have been a single mom for a long time, I manage on a wing and a prayer. But i’m the one paying for my boys. It would be a hell of alot easier if I didn’t have to pay for anyone elses.(Rant off)debi
Hello Debi,
I don’t know what your circumstances are. Many single mothers are truly in that position due to no fault of their own. Indeed, many decent women are waking up and realizing that while the mommy-state has been quite generous to women, comparitively, it’s also demanded a high cost that’s hurt society and therefore, women, in the long run.
Exit polls during the last two presidential elections show that a vast majority of “nascar” men and even their wives are waking up in droves and leaving the leftist agenda. So Democrats have to increasingly appeal to immigrants and minorities, literally, to continue their agenda. If Kennedy hadn’t change the nature of immigration during the 60’s and Reagan hadn’t granted amnesty during the 80’s, we’d see a totally different political landscape today.
Toubrouk, things were actually better during the 1900’s with divorce court tending to be a lot more fair and rarely would the state have pursued single men to pay child-support. These are all relatively recent innovations but they have used chivalry as the means rather than feminism.
You write a rather provocative statement:
Women won a large ammount of freedom in the last century. They went from dumb teenagers in constant need of guidance to equal partners in society.
How is this true? I would argue the opposite: women continue to dominate the welfare state and middle class women generally tend to be more sexist than ever before. Try going out on a date with a young career woman and see if she picked up the check for you.
I think chivalry peaked during the 80’s with Anita Hill and rockerfeller republican women who earned big paychecks and still wanted men to pay for them to “sacrifice” and become housewives. Those days are pretty much over.
June 29, 2006 at 11:09 am
Toubrouk said,
When I use the statement “Women won a large ammount of freedom in the last century. They went from dumb teenagers in constant need of guidance to equal partners in society”, it is under the eyes of the Law. In 1900, women dint had the right to sign contracts and was not recognised as a full member of the society. Now, legaly, men and women are considered equal.
This being said, the social paradigm still want the men to protect women at all cost. An example is the policy of my local public transit autority. The busses in Montreal stop between two regular designed points after 9PM if you are a woman. So if a 18 years-old woman who is also an Olympic wrestling champion can go down everywhere while a 78 years-old geriatric man can’t.
This is the real problem. Chivalry is, and always will be, an uncommon valor. The last few decades, some persons tried to enforce it as if it was the norm. This is the best way to negate the value of everything: mass production. Women can’t ask from the men to treat them as equals and then ask them to overlook their shortcommings.
It’s like that silly thing; Grooms For Life. I can just hear some women whine about it…
“Yes, I slept with that a$$hole against my better judment. I also forgot to ask him to use a condom. Even if my uterus belongs to me, I dont want to use the pill since it’s chemical and I don’t want to poison myself. Since I love the idea of having a baby, I am keeping it. Would you like to be his father?”
Of course this is sacarstic, but not as much as raising a child that don’t belong to you in the first place.
As far as the attitude of some women versus the size of men’s wallets, my position is the same than Matthew Fitzerald in his book “Sex-Ploitation”: I am against “Social Prostitution”, that’s all.
June 29, 2006 at 12:33 pm
PolishKnight said,
When I use the statement “Women won a large ammount of freedom in the last century. They went from dumb teenagers in constant need of guidance to equal partners in society”, it is under the eyes of the Law. In 1900, women dint had the right to sign contracts and was not recognised as a full member of the society. Now, legaly, men and women are considered equal.
Where did you hear this? Feminists love to proclaim that before women “won” rights (given to them, both hands, by liberal, chivalrous men) that women were routinely beaten and tortured, etc. Nothing is further from the truth. Widows certainly had to sign contracts along with farmer’s wives when their husband was off to war, etc. Women clearly did have rights just as resident legal aliens, such as my wife, also have rights but not all of them. My wife cannot vote _NOR_ can she be called for jury duty, for example. In other words, women probably enjoyed a balance of rights and responsibilities even back then that men today would envy. Women are not “equal” since my wife as a legal resident did not have to register for selective service while a man would.
This is the best way to negate the value of everything: mass production. Women can’t ask from the men to treat them as equals and then ask them to overlook their shortcommings.
I wish that was true. It’s my impression that we’re living in an age of “hyperchivalry” where it gets taken to such an extreme that it’s an absurdity. Even “equal rights” is a chivalrous absurdity since it’s based upon the premise that women need “special rights” to make up for the fact that they cannot compete equally with men who are “prejudiced” and view them as unable to, er, compete equally. Get it? It’s messed up but people really thought this.
But this is nothing new. Remember when people thought witches rode on broomsticks? Oh, except when they were told they couldn’t. As Coulter points out, the left has it’s own religion and dogma that’s more contorted and arbitrary than anything that a minister thought up.
“Yes, I slept with that a$$hole against my better judment. I also forgot to ask him to use a condom. Even if my uterus belongs to me, I dont want to use the pill since it’s chemical and I don’t want to poison myself. Since I love the idea of having a baby, I am keeping it. Would you like to be his father?”
I like Denise and I don’t take everything she writes so literally or seriously because I think she’s sometimes playing or just musing. But yes, this is kind of laughable almost as much as a man going up to a woman and saying he has child support from previous women and asking if she would like to “marry him” and help him pay the bill. Most women would laugh and walk away.
The key thing to remember here is that we’re moving from a period of many women who engage in feminist apology such as Wendy McElroy versus those who realize that “radical feminism” is an oxymoron and “egalitarianism” isn’t possible. Women and men are different and therefore will have different needs and abilities and trying to construct a society that treats them the same will never work and be considered fair by either side. All that’s happened is that feminism and chivalry twisted women into something similar to a “handicapped” class as in your example of women getting off of busses above. Handicapped people, however, are still recognized as such and it’s not discrimination to recognize that blind people cannot fly commercial airliners or the deaf aren’t entitled to equal treatment in working as radio talk show hosts.
June 29, 2006 at 1:14 pm
bethesda_paul said,
No man, good or bad is going to take burned-out trash and her bastard offspring without big compensation.
June 29, 2006 at 2:00 pm
PolishKnight said,
I hate to say this, I really really really do, but this is wrong. In the states, plenty of women who otherwise shouldn’t get a second look can go online and get tons of men to go out with them. Quite simply, the bar here in the states is so low, that there are plenty of ignorant men who put up with such women.
I think that’s changing, slowly but surely though.
June 29, 2006 at 3:44 pm
A plea to Denise: Run away, run away with us! at PunkAssBlog.com said,
June 29, 2006 at 4:33 pm
SM777 said,
Hmmmm. It looks like someone has lost touch with reality.
Earth to bizarro-whackjob-fantasyland, can you hear me? Hello? Hello?
June 29, 2006 at 4:47 pm
ninderthana said,
What you fail to mention is that the area of sexual and reproductive rights has always been totally dominated by women. At best men have been treated as little more than helpful bystanders.
We claim that we live in an “enlightened” world where women have supposedly gained “equality” with men.
However, if a woman gets pregnant, she can abort the child, unilaterally put the child up for adoption, have the child and then force a man to pay for the upbringing of that child for 18 years with no access, or have the child and force a man to pay for the upbringing of the child with conditional access (i.e. marriage).
A man has absolutely no legal standing in any of these decisions and in many cases if he opposes the woman’s unilateral choice he will be sent to jail for his troubles.
How is this equality of the sexes?
We have gone from a situation 100 years ago where men and women were each given roughly equal rights and reponsibilies in the areas that had most impact on their lives.
With high infant mortality rates, and without the aid of the pill and modern contraceptives, nature (and survival) dictated that 19th century women places most their energies into child rearing and family. In exchange for their sacrifice, women were given an almost iron clad guarantee (both legally and culturall) that their
needs (and wants) would be met inside the institution of marriage and family.
Because women were tied up with raising children, men were expected (and forced if necessary) to protect and provide for women and children. This condemned many men to life-long servitude in back-braking and dangerous professions that quiet litterally condemned them to an early death. In exchange for this sacrafice, men were given the certainty of a stable home and a loving family.
Some idiots in the 21 st century actually claimed that men had all the power in the 19 th century because they were the ones who served in government and ones who made most of the the decisions in public life. What they fail to menion is that less than 0.5 % of all men actually had the opportunity to excise this
“power” and that many of those who did so were conditioned from birth to put the needs (and wants) of women and children ahead of those of men.
Some of these 21 st idiots even claim that women were treated as little more than men’s property. Again they also fail to mention that husbands were often sent to prison and labor camps for the debts and crimes of their wives. Nor do they tell you that these men were expected to die (collectively and individually) in defence of “their” women and children.
So don’t tell me that women are hard done by today because they hold 99 % of all the sexual and reproductive power.
If you want to have a lower number of abortion then either give back 50 % of all sexual and reproductive power to men or have it forcefully taken from you by the development of the artificial womb.
It is time for change or history will sweep you away.
June 29, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Azrael said,
Yes, there is. If you’re not prepared to have children, don’t be having sex. End of story. I’m quite capable of being celibate, if I can do it anyone can.
“Marriage. I am not talking just about a return to the “shotgun marriage”; rather, I think an offer of marriage from a man who is not the father but will assume all the traditional responsibilities of fatherhood would be accepted by many unmarried pregnant women.”
Of course it would be accepted by unmarried pregnant women, as further ratification that they did absolutely nothing wrong and they’re going to be bailed out for her bad decisions yet again and have no personal responsibility yet have all the deciding power. This is another of those Prince Charming riding in on a white horse scenarios to rescue the poor damsel in distress yet again.
Bear in mind this does not apply to women who became pregnant as a result of bona-fide rape. They deserve sympathy and assistance, and perhaps the love of a good man for something they were forced into. This is *not* the vast majority of unmarried pregnant women in the world today.
“Pro-life marriages would have major advantages over other unions: the men would know they have done a good deed in saving a baby from abortion”
And as many cases have demonstrated, no good deed goes unpunished.
“the women would respect the moral sincerity of their new husbands.”
NO they would not. They would see him as exactly what he is. A sucker who was willing to bail her out of yet another bad decision on her part. And I can guarantee that no matter how badly she might have needed the help from a man in the raising of those children, I can attest from my own personal experience and the experience of many other step-families I have seen that the women are nowhere near as appreciative as this drivel suggests. I am sure there are exceptions, I’m just saying I haven’t seen or heard of *any* and I would have expected at least a few.
Clearly someone is having a hard time defining lines between reality and “soap-opera fantasies of women.”
June 29, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Feministe » Grooms for Life said,
June 30, 2006 at 6:13 am
Oh, for the love of God… » Burned-out trash and her bastard offspring said,
June 30, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Mens News Daily reader posts final ultimatum, feminism has no choice but surrender. at PunkAssBlog.com said,
June 30, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Førti, feit og ferdig » Prinser said,
June 30, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Blog of the Moderate Left » Blog Archive » The Stupidest Idea in the History of the World said,
July 1, 2006 at 10:21 am
juliandroms said,
July 8, 2006 at 7:25 am