What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

Abortion & Veto Power

A comment on the issue of men being given a say with regard to abortion, because it’s something I don’t often see mentioned: if two people can’t agree about something and their voices are weighted equally, then the end result is a deadlock. When this happens, there’s usually three constructive alternatives as to what can happen next – the parties agree to disagree, one or both parties walks away, or else the parties continue to try and work out their differences – but not in the case of pregnancy. For obvious reasons, neither agreeing to disagree nor walking away are viable options, because the parties still need to decide on a course of action, and while further discussion might work in some cases, there’s a legitimate time-sensitivity to the issue that puts a very real, immediate pressure on the debate. Specifically: if one party wants an abortion, then the longer the debate goes on, the more difficult that option will be to obtain.

Which means that, when it comes to disagreement over abortion, one party needs to have the power of veto – otherwise, there’s no constructive way to end the deadlock. It’s quite literally the only option. It’s just a cold, hard truth that if neither party will change their mind, then one person will inevitably go home disappointed, and while I think that the men/non-pregnant persons involved should definitely be given a say in things and the pros and cons fully discussed by both parties, the plain fact of the matter is that only one person’s body is on the line. Both pregnancy and abortion – but particularly pregnancy – are painful, costly and potentially dangerous, and under those circumstances, it makes perfect sense that women/pregnant persons get the power of veto, because in either instance, they’re the ones accepting the physical risk.

Say we had access to a piece of advanced technology that allowed even a zygote at the earliest stage of conception to be painlessly, safely and unobtrusively removed from the uterus and grown elsewhere, either within a willing surrogate mother or an artifical womb, so that in instances where one partner wanted a child and the other didn’t, the question of physical risk would be removed, and it was therefore possible for just that partner to take responsibility for the pregnancy without any reference to the other person’s body. Say this procedure was free, readily available to everyone, and posed little or no risk to the person from whom the zygote/foetus/baby was being extracted, and in a context where both the technology and the new social situations it allowed were fully supported and understood by medical professionals, society in general and the legal system. Under those circumstances, and those circumstances only, then yes: there’d be no need for a veto, and both parties could truly have an equal say on questions of abortion, birth and pregnancy. I would love to live in that world! But, sadly, we don’t, and until or unless that situation arises, the party with the uterus is the one who needs the veto, because it’s their uterus, and that status is non-transferable.

People die in childbirth. Pregnancy can cause lifelong medical complications, to say nothing of other relevant physical , emotional and social consequences it brings about, even in the ‘easy’ trimesters. I say this as someone who’s currently pregnant: seriously, it’s not a walk in the park! Even a legal, early-term abortion involves the attendent risks of someone fossicking about in your tender bits and/or injecting you with chemicals. And unless you’re the one with the uterus, you will not face those risks. It doesn’t matter that you might want to, or that you’d take them on in a heartbeat if you could. Because you can’t, and however pure and loving the sentiment that’s causing you to express that desire, it’s still the other person who has to go through all the physical stuff – and because of that, they get the power of veto. It’s really that simple.

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