Happy Father’s Day to men who weren’t ready to become dads

Father’s Day festivities in my Brooklyn home are wholesome and joyful—a privilege, considering how difficult the day is for so many. This year, my 9 and 5 year olds will give their dad handmade cards and a framed gift, slightly cracked in one corner. I will give my husband a well-deserved bottle of whiskey and a heartfelt thank you for being the parenting partner and equal father our boys deserve, and the type of father I never had.

I’ll also take a moment to think of another man who, like me, knew he wasn’t ready to be a parent. Not yet. A man who, 14 years ago, held my hand during a seven-minute surgical abortion that gave us both the chance to separate and be the parents we are today.

Like one in four American women who will have an abortion in their lifetime, men benefit enormously from access to abortion care.

Like one in four American women who will have an abortion in their lifetime, men benefit enormously from access to abortion care. Although data detailing how abortion affects men is sparse at best, a 2019 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that when men age 20 or younger were involved in a pregnancy and their partner had an abortion, they were four times more likely to graduate. college. Another study suggests that about 1 in 5 men have been involved in an abortion, although researchers note that this number is likely higher due to the prevailing stigma of abortion that may deter men from speaking out about their experiences .

In 2022, after the Supreme Court’s proposed opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked, I spoke to a few men who were willing to publicly share how they had benefited from access to abortion.

“I wouldn’t be a father without an abortion,” one father, Andrew, told me. “Before we met, my wife and I experienced abortion. …If we hadn’t been able to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, we wouldn’t be married with a 5-year-old child. It would have taken both of our lives in completely different directions.

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Another father, Simon, said that although he and his wife knew they wanted children from the moment they first met, the first time his wife got pregnant they both knew it wasn’t the right one. moment. “It wasn’t easy for us to make the decision to abort, but the fact is that we had a choice in the matter,” he added. “Not carrying that first pregnancy to term was the right choice for us, and it allowed us to become people who would eventually be ready to become parents.”

And then there was Garin, a father who said that at around 30 weeks gestation, his wife was told the pregnancy was not viable. In order to obtain an abortion, the couple traveled from their then home in New York – where abortions are not permitted after 24 weeks of gestation – to Boulder, Colorado.

In a post-Roe world, we’ve also heard from men who were harmed by the abortion ban — men like Josh Zurawski, whose wife, Amanda, fell into a coma and nearly died afterward. being denied abortion care after her 18-week pregnancy. proved to be unsustainable and life-threatening.

As Jennifer Reich, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado, told the New York Times in 2022: “Everyone benefits when individuals can control their own reproduction, but the benefit may be invisible to cis men, since they do not absorb energy. risk of pregnancy and it’s not written on their bodies.

So, on this second Father’s Day without a constitutional right to abortion, I hope we think of the men who stood by their wives as they underwent medically necessary and life-saving abortions, as well only to men who, like their pregnant partners, – have been forced to comply with cruel anti-abortion laws that only serve to deepen the trauma and heartbreak.

Let’s think of the dads who know what it’s like to worry about every pregnancy pain their partner feels; who may feel helpless in the event of a complication; who, along with their partners, survived sleepless nights, terrifying visits to the pediatrician and emotional school dropouts.

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Let us honor the fathers who knew that expanding their family was not sustainable and who supported the responsible decision to continue to focus on the children they already have. (Half of participants in a recent survey of men involved in their partner’s abortion said abortion allowed them to better provide for the children they already had.)

And I urge us all to recognize – in the most appropriate way – the men who knew that delaying parenthood was actually a form of family planning, and perhaps the first responsible “father-like” decision that ‘they never took.