Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway From: falcao@felix.metaphor.com (Ronnie Falcao) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Giving up one's child (was Re: birth control failure?) Summary: Because men are unable to bear children, it's harder for them to replace childhood fantasy with the reality of motherhood. Message-ID: <9106212337.AA15912@felix.Metaphor.COM> Date: 22 Jun 91 00:09:59 GMT References: <14904@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <49657@ricerca.UUCP> <1991Jun12.143557.22596@panix.uucp> Organization: Metaphor Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA Lines: 105 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: blanche.ics.uci.edu >Some years ago I was talking to a close (male) friend of mine about >the likelihood that technology would soon do away with the argument >that terminating a pregnancy meant ending the life of the >fetus/child. I was quite surprised that he felt that most men would >find this very troubling. Either, he thought, they'd want the kids >themselves, or they'd want them to be raised by someone they knew >about, or they'd want to know that the fetus had been destroyed. >(His position on abortion was that it was a bad thing but that it >should be legal; "Let people commit their own sins," is the way he >put it.) > -- >mara@panix.com Mara Chibnik mara@dorsai.com I've heard similar feelings from other men and, yes, I think an examination of this attitude is very germane to feminism. Here are my thoughts on factors that contribute to it: For most people, their first relationship with a woman is with their own mother. It's a basic human need to feel loved and wanted, so we all would like to believe both our parents very much wanted to conceive, bear, deliver and rear us. In mainstream American culture of the 50's and 60's, it seems that many of us had different expectations of our mothers and our fathers, so many children growing up during those times will feel an exaggerated need for their mother, in particular, to have wanted them. Since they want to believe they were wanted from even before their conception, they'll naturally assume they were wanted and loved even when they were a two-month old fetus, the age near which most abortions are performed. As children, we naturally extend our personal observations to apply to large categories of people, unless challenged with conflicting evidence. So we project these hopes of our own mother's feelings about us on to all women, assuming that every woman very much wants to have babies and shower them with selfless nurturing. Clinging to the fantasy that "all women long to bear children" is something you might expect of someone who has never voluntarily examined their attitudes or been presented with conflicting evidence. And it's also incongruous with the notion that a woman could easily part with a two-month fetus, not even caring to follow its development and growth. This attitude is very evident among the male leaders of the anti-abortion folks. They'll often mention their beliefs that every pregnant woman wants to carry the pregnancy to term and raise the child, but that evil abortion rights activists are convincing them to have an abortion. They ignore studies which show that relief is one of the most common feelings for a woman who's just had an abortion. My experience watching other women become mothers is that a strong attachment to the fetus/baby develops along with the pregnancy, rather than bursting into full bloom upon conception. So it makes sense to me that a pregnant woman's feelings about a two-month fetus would be different from those for a baby that she's carried to term and labored to deliver. Aside from direct experience of pregnancy, why is it that more men than women retain a child's fantasy about all women's desire to have babies and selflessly nurture them? Those of us who face the possibility of actually being the one to do the conceiving, bearing, delivering and rearing perhaps achieve a more realistic notion of what's involved. For women, the conflicting evidence may come very early. I grew up in a neighborhood with LOTS of large families, so most of the kids in the neighborhood were familiar with the details of pregnancy and delivery. Many girls among my friends declared that they were never going to have babies, based on what they knew they'd have to go through. Some women don't give much thought to the subject until they find themselves faced with an unwanted pregnancy, at which point they may be startled to find that they feel little or no attachment to the fetus and just want to get rid of it with as little fuss as possible. These women experience the fetus more as the parasite it is than the person it might become. Men are never faced with the possibility of conceiving, bearing or delivering a baby, so it's harder for them to imagine themselves in that situation. Some sympathetic men may be able to imagine it themselves, and others are willing to listen to women's feelings rather than projecting their own feelings onto women. These men would probably be in a better position to understand why a woman would not be troubled with terminating a pregnancy that didn't end the life of the fetus/child. Comments? - Ronnie Ronnie Falcao, Metaphor Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA falcao@metaphor.com What do you see said he I am not this body What do you see said he I am a spirit living within I did not choose this frame or this picture of me you see But I am living inside this time of this me - Judy Fjell, "Dance In The Moment"