Men need to vote no on abortion measure

Editor,

There’s this idea that “pro-choice” is equivalent to “pro-abortion.” As if women think to themselves, “Oh, absolutely, I love invasive surgical procedures that might also make me sad.” Yeah, that’s not how this works.

Being pro-choice, and being against the Nov. 19 ballot measure, isn’t about encouraging the across-the-board termination of all late-term pregnancies. No one is suggesting abortion as a desirable alternative to shrewd family planning and the diligent use of birth control. No one considers abortion unless they feel they have to. No one wants to have to face that question in the first place, whatever the reason. How could they? Most people don’t even like going to the dentist. Why would anyone think that getting an abortion is a decision that could ever be made lightly?

No, being pro-choice is simply about granting women’s self-determination the same value and protection we grant men’s. And standing against the Nov. 19 ballot measure is about saving women’s lives.

If a woman considers an abortion more than halfway into her pregnancy, it’s usually because of an unexpected health issue. If she concludes, with the advice of a medical professional, that an abortion is the best thing for her health and well-being, chances are she’s going to find a way to have it. And maybe, if she can’t afford to go someplace that can provide the procedure safely, she’ll do it unsafely.

That’s where this fight started, lest we forget. Before Roe v. Wade, desperate women took desperate measures, and many of them paid for it with their lives.

And sometimes labor itself becomes unexpectedly dangerous. As The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in 2011, reflecting on the near-death of his wife when she gave birth to their son, “Every day women choose to do the hard labor of a difficult pregnancy. It’s courageous work, which inspires in me a degree of admiration exceeded only by my horror at the notion of the state turning that courage, that hard labor, into a mandate. Women die performing that labor in smaller numbers as we advance, but they die all the same. Men do not. That is a privilege.”

I keep hearing men demur from taking a stand on this issue because “it doesn’t have anything to do with me.” If those men really believe that, then all of us with Y-chromosomes should vote no just to remove ourselves from the conversation permanently and entirely.

But as Coates makes clear, this fight does affect us. I love many women very dearly. I’m voting against the abortion ban because I don’t face any comparable restriction on what decisions I can make about my own body, and those women deserve such freedom no less than I do. I’m voting against the abortion ban because I don’t want any of them to ever have to face anxieties that I could never understand. I’m voting against the abortion ban because I don’t want any of the women I love to die.

Kris Miranda
UNM student