Remember the Post-Abortive Men? Back in 2008 they were featured on the front page of the LA Times, and for those who may have missed it, PAM is both a non-stick cooking spray and a recovery movement for sperm distributors who claim to have been robbed of their inadvertent patriarchy by Planned Parenthood. It involves a lot of activism and role play, such as naming their imaginary children, scheduling playdates in Ramada Inn ballrooms with other ghost dads, and issuing press releases in which the PAMs threaten to sob until abortion is sent back to the alleys and basements where it belongs.
When men are widely recognized as victims [of abortion], Rue said, “that will change society.”
But the activists leading the men’s movement make clear they’re not relying on statistics to make their case. They’re counting on the power of men’s tears.
As you may recall, the Times‘ cover boy was Jason Baier, who now runs the Fatherhood Forever Foundation, and is also a Man from M.A.N. (Men and Abortion Network), which is a super-secret anti-abortion organization that is accessed through Del Floria’s Tailor Shop.
Well the agents of S.P.O.O.G.E. returned just in time for Father’s Day, or as I like to call it, A Bad Day To Go To Claim Jumper. This time, the man who had his fatherhood filched was Jerry DeBin, who “served 17 years for the State of Alabama in senior leadership roles and liaised with the Governor.” Presumably, “liaising with the Governor” is like “hiking the Appalachian Trail,” except you don’t use protection, and then the Governor has an abortion behind your back and you wind up with an empty photo-cube on your desk at the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. But Jerry’s co-author comes with a much more detailed and distinguished pedigree:
“Author’s note: This piece is co-authored by Jeanne Monahan.”
Jeanne Monahan is the Director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council. She researches, writes and speaks on the culture of life, with a focus on the sanctity of human personhood from conception until natural death. Prior to FRC, Jeanne worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the Office of the Secretary. Her federal government experience includes global health policy, as well as domestic and international health care issues.
I’m going out on a limb and guessing this means “working to defund family planning organizations in the the Third World who acknowledge the existence of abortion.”
Before working in public policy, Jeanne worked for the Catholic Church
Quelle surprise.
…in a variety of positions involving educating on life issues, human sexuality, marriage and family. Jeanne has an undergraduate degree in psychology from James Madison University and a Masters degree in the theology of marriage and family from the Pope John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.
The Pope John Paul II Institute also has a very highly regarded Marine Life Studies program, in which they teach fish how to swim and breath water.
A Woman’s “Choice” That Affects Men: Post-Abortion Trauma
This Father’s Day will be a celebration for dads all over the country, an opportunity for children to thank and honor their fathers. Yet for many men, the memory of involvement in a past abortion, of “cards they will not receive,” will be painful and palpable.
“I didn’t want to marry your mother, or help her raise a child, but I did want to force her to carry one to term in order to increase my annual greeting card yield.”
Granted, Hallmark hasn’t gone out of their way to meet the demand for holiday mementos from spectral zygotes (I’m thinking something simple, but sincere, like “World’s Greatest Condom Forgetter”) but Fantom Fathers Forever has stepped up and offered their own line of e-greeting cards (which will be available on their site as soon as they can figure out the complicated HTML).
Seasonal Abortion Greetings from the “That Bitch!” Collection.
In a debate where the primary focus is a woman’s body and a woman’s right to choose whether or not to carry a child to his or her delivery, the “other partner,” the father of the baby, is rarely given consideration, and is often completely disregarded altogether. The question of abortion is myopically women-centric.
Exactly. And this is a shocking and unforgivable miscarriage of justice, especially when one considers that since 1973, there has not been a single verified case of a man choosing to terminate his pregnancy — even to save his own life — so really, who has the moral high ground here? Maybe it’s about time America put on its bifocals and looked at the question of abortion in a slightly more dick-centric way.
Abortion advocates often mock pro-life men. Men are told they shouldn’t speak out because they can never become pregnant. Yet, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to acknowledge that two women cannot a baby make.
Therefore, in the case of such a tie, only one of the women will be allowed to have the abortion and advance to the evening gown competition. (As a side note, even though a man and a woman joined together to create this article, it seem they cannot an argument make.)
Less acknowledged is the fact that this decision deeply impacts the dad, too.
Suppose a man deposited money in the bank, expecting that it would accumulate interest and grow, and instead that bank just decided to purge his account? Would any customer stand for that? Of course not, and we need to start holding women to the implied contract they sign when they accept a deposit from a man’s testicles, or else report them to the Sperm and Exchange Commission.
This year three Father’s Day cards will stand prominently on Jerry’s kitchen countertop, telling the wonderful story of the lives of his three grown children. But there is an empty space next to the cards which tells another story that continues to grieve Jerry and his wife, Dayna. Over thirty years ago, Jerry and his then high school sweetheart, Dayna, chose to abort two of their children.
Too bad they don’t have access to a time machine. Of course, going back and deciding to have those two children (twins? Two separate pregnancies?) in high school would radically change their lives, causing chrono-ripples and time-space paradoxes, so when they returned to the present they might find they were divorced, never married, and/or their three, grown children were never born, so they’re still short a few cards on the mantle. Of course, this would necessitate another trip back, with Jerry making sure to spread his seed on the nights his present children were conceived — but then Past Jerry would walk in, see Future Jerry copulating with his wife, and shoot him in a jealous rage, or maybe grab him by the throat, starting a chain-reaction like Ron Silver in Time Cop and turning them both into explosive goo.
And no child is going to send a card to goo. So again — bare mantle!
Jerry deeply empathizes with any man who has taken the life of another human and lives daily with that burden and emotional trauma. The negative psychological impact of abortion on women has been well publicized, but less so have been the effects of abortion on men.
There are two primary vectors for PTSD: doing a tour of duty in Falluja, or driving your girlfriend to the Free Clinic.
In researching the topic, we found a variety of books, websites and support groups dedicated to male post-abortion trauma, as well as a number of studies on the issue. One study reported that 82 percent of male parents of a recently aborted baby (ranging from two days to 37 months) experienced depression.
Of course, late term abortions can be medically necessary, but terminating a 37-month old pregnancy just seems a bit callous.
Another study found that men experienced anxiety, helplessness, guilt, and a dual sense of responsibility and regret during an abortion.
Which is often why you’ll see men weeping and pounding on the walls of the waiting room, although sometimes they’re just trying to dislodge a package of Nutter Butters stuck in the vending machine.
According to Guy Condon and David Hazard, authors of Fatherhood Aborted: The Profound Effects of Abortion on Men, post-abortive men suffer from a whole host of problems, including relationship struggles, inability to trust friends, rage, addictions and sexual compulsions, sleeplessness, bad dreams, nightmares, sexual dysfunction, depression, fear of failure, fear of rejection, and loneliness.
I’ve experienced a lot of those conditions myself, but I never knew they were signs of being a Post-Abortive Man — I thought they were just symptoms of living in America during the previous Administration. Now I realize — and am only just beginning to wrap my head around the implications — that Dick Cheney aborted our child.
Having found hope in their grief and regret, [Jerry and Dayna] deeply wanted others to avoid making these same mistakes. They felt the best way they could do so would be to support young people facing similar tough decisions, and decided to start a pregnancy resource center in Prattville, Ala.
Quelle friggin’ surprise.
Jerry and Dayna helped to start Grace Place to share truth about abortion
It’s tearing the heart out of America, and American Greetings®.
An estimated 50 million abortions have been performed in the U.S. since the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. For each of those 50 million babies, there is a father.
Some men take the responsibilities of raising a phantom blastocyte seriously, and work hard to emulate their own fathers. But a word of warning: while you may consider it “just a friendly game of catch with my boy,” to the passerby it more closely resembles, “heaving a baseball at a woman’s abdomen.”
Even adjusting those numbers to allow for men who father more than one aborted child, the count of post-abortion men in America is easily 30 million. This Father’s Day let us honestly engage men in the conversation about abortion and its impacts on everyone involved. There remain significant, long-term consequences of Father’s Day cards that will not come this week … all across America.
We must ask ourselves if a woman’s right to control her own body is worth the grief and loneliness suffered by the millions of men who do not receive enough mail.
UPDATE: Amanda has provided some additional greeting card options for the holiday shopper.