It doesn’t take a person of particularly genteel sensibilities to be offended by Senator Cory Bernardi’s most recent contributions to the public discourse. His criticism of single parents, of the children of single parents, of non-traditional families and his depiction of women who have abortions as ‘pro-death’ are particularly jarring.
These sentiments are jarring not simply because they are offensive, which they are, but because they are so obviously lacking in understanding. When Bernardi quotes the growing number of abortions performed in Australia you could be forgiven for thinking that the recipients of these abortions independently seek to impregnate themselves, just so they can access the medical treatment.
When I hear Bernardi talk about women using abortion as contraception I genuinely wonder whether he knows how a pregnancy comes to be. Medical intervention aside, the current limitations of biology necessitates a man and a woman to engage in intercourse to produce a pregnancy.
A woman alone does not a conception make. Without a conception, an abortion is not a relevant proposition. For there to be an abortion there must be a pregnancy. For there to be a pregnancy a man and a woman must have engaged in sex. Together.
No abortion has ever been necessitated by the actions of a woman alone, and it never will be. Because no single person – man or woman – can create a pregnancy on their own.
Yet the discussion about abortion so rarely involves, let alone considers, the role of men in the equation. It so rarely involves the “choice” that happens prior to conception. The choice to take precautions. To use contraception. They are choices that men can – and should – consider. No contraception is entirely fool-proof but where it fails it is not the fault or creation of a woman alone. Men play a role too.
But that role is conspicuously absent from any debate about abortion and reproductive rights. Abortion is framed as a women’s issue. The responsibility, or more often, the culpability, for any abortion lies with women. Women are described as pro-death, or pro-life or pro-choice. Women are condemned or criticised or humiliated or shamed for having an abortion.
It’s a double-edged sword. Unlike men, a woman cannot escape the responsibility of pregnancy once it arises. Women bear the physical burden of an unwanted pregnancy and the brunt of public judgment should they have an abortion. Men can, if they choose, escape quietly without consequence.
It’s why Bernardi’s comments about women choosing abortions are so infuriatingly paradoxical. It is not a scenario he would personally ever have to encounter, even if he himself was involved in the making of an unwanted pregnancy.
If reducing the number of abortions is something he – or any other man – genuinely wants to achieve he can help. Not by shaming or blaming women but by exercising responsibility before conception can arise and encouraging other men to do the same. And in the event that precautions fails, accept joint responsibility for the circumstances that eventuate.
The best thing any man can do is to recognise that no abortion would ever be necessitated without a man’s involvement at some point. A man, or woman, who cannot accept that will not be capable of making any reasonable contribution to a discussion of abortion. On that basis it is not a topic Senator Bernardi should consider.