It is standard practice for abortion activists to treat each new pro-life law or court win as an existential threat to an abortion regime that has been protected by Roe v. Wade for nearly fifty years. With the hearing of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization earlier this month, however, the tone of many activists seems to have undergone a distinct shift. Their panic, this time, is not merely the fearmongering of those trying to gin up the base, suck in fundraising dollars, and motivate voters. There is a shrill note to all of this that indicates they think it could really happen this time.
There have been plenty of male media commentators opining solemnly about the sanctity of women’s rights, but none of them have had the guts to actually say what many of them mean: That many men want abortion legal so that women can be sexually available to them without having to care for any children that might be created by their casual unions. Activists have been saying for some time that it is time for men to speak up and talk about why abortion benefits men, but most have been understandably hesitant to do so. Even Jeffrey Toobin, the infamous Zoom flasher who once tried to push his mistress into an abortion, left those facts out of his monologues to CNN’s audience.
Enter Kaivan Shroff, a senior advisor to the Institute for Education, political commentator, alumnus for Hillary for America’s Digital Team, and possessor of degrees from Yale and Brown. On December 13, he penned a column saying the quiet part out loud: “Men like me benefit from safe abortion access.”
Shroff starts off by talking about his academic career, his future as a public interest lawyer, and how much he loves kids and wants to be a father. He even thinks he’d be good at it, eventually. But not yet — he can’t have kids while he’s so busy. That does not, mind you, mean he isn’t willing to engage in the baby-making act. It means that he needs abortion to be legal in case he gets one of the women he is using for physical gratification pregnant. If a baby ends up in her womb, he needs an abortionist to be there to suction it out, pronto.
IMO the article works a lot better in video form.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o950k2HffWw&feature=emb_title
Ha! I hadn’t seen that! That is excellent.