Pensees: Quote of the Week

Quote of the Week

Mary Katharine Ham makes sense to me.

The logic of the pro-choicers has never sat right with me. I’ve never understood, from a purely intellectual point of view, why the woman’s wanting the baby makes it a baby. It either is or it isn’t. But, if a pro-choice woman wants a baby, tells her pro-choice friends she’s having one, and then miscarries, she and her pro-choice friends are sad, no? Why? It’s not a life. Wrong. Of course it is. It always was, and not wanting it doesn’t make it less of one. But that’s the rationale.

The men-need-not-offer-opinions argument is more of the same. If a woman wants the baby, the man is expected, and legally required to some extent, to be a father. If she doesn’t want the baby, he’s no better than a turkey-baster. His fatherhood, according to the logic, depends upon her choice. And we wonder why so many men choose not to be dads to the children who are actually born. They’re totally pro-choice, too. They just exercise the choice after the baby’s born. By choosing not to be fathers, perhaps they make the children not really children at all?