Sunday, January 4, 2009

Happy Birthday

When I listen to songs in English, I noticed I can completely ignore the text while a song in German just forces it´s meaning into my head. So as I as listening to some older songs I had flying arround I wondered what that song is all about.

It is called "Happy Birthday" by the hip hop and R&B group Flipsyde. Now you can think about the song what you want, it presents a position you will almost never find portrayed in the media.

What we learn from the lyrics:
Please accept my apologies,I wonder what would have been.
Would you hava been a little angel or an angel of sin?
Tom-boy running around, hanging with all the guys.
Or a little tough boy with beautiful brown eyes.

I paid for the murder before they determined the sex,
Choosing our life over your life meant your death.
And you never got a chance to even open your eyes,
Sometimes I wonder as a fetus if you fought for your life.

[...]


I think about it every year, so I picked up a pen.
Happy birthday, I love you whoever you would’ve been.
[...]
I got a million excuses, as to why you died.
And other people got their own reasons for homicide.
Who’s to say it would’ve worked and who’s to say it wouldn’t have
I was young and struggling, but old enough to be a dad.
The fear of being my father has never disappeared,
I ponder it frequently while I’m sippin’ on my beer,
My vision of a family was artifical and fake
So when it came time to create, I made a mistake.

[...]


I’ll never tell a woman what to do with her body,
But if she don’t love children, then we can’t party.

[...]
And from the Heavens to the womb to the Heavens again.
From the ending to the ending, never got to begin.
Maybe one day we can meet face to face, in a place without time and space.

- shortend by me see full text here


A man struggling after an abortion, calling it murder comparing it to homicide and yet says he would never tell a woman what to do with her body. When it comes to abortion the role of the father is simply overseen. It is even worse. He does not even have the right to decide, nor to be informed. It is her body and her choice. But when in the abortion clinic it suddenly is her body his fault. Great another double standard:

One theme surfaces repeatedly in the commentaries: feckless boyfriends who abandon their partners in their hour of greatest need.

Hadley Arkes of Amherst College describes women having an abortion as routinely "Abandoned by the man." And Dorinda Bordlee from the Bioethics Defense Fund obliquely refers to fathers as "those who should be caring for [the mothers] and their unborn children."

So does research back up these broad pronouncements of male abandonment?

In their book Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love, Shostak and McLouth report that 44% of single men offered to marry the woman, 18% of the couples had discussed adoption, and half the men accompanied the woman to the abortion clinic - hardly the image of wholesale male abandonment.

When these men show up at the clinic, they are met with a chilly reception. Two-thirds of the fathers want to accompany their partner throughout the experience, and nine out of 10 hope to hold the hand of their partner in the recovery room. But in most cases abortion clinics prohibit men from such expressions of support.

But the NRO panel reserves its harshest criticism for men who force their girlfriends to abort.

Walter Weber at the American Center for Law and Justice claims that "many" women (we aren't told the number) obtain abortions because "they are coerced by boyfriends, bosses, parents, etc."

Joseph Dellapenna of Villanova University states, "Significant evidence led one sociologist to conclude that 'the attitude of the man is the most important variable in a woman's decision to have an abortion." Dellapenna does not cite, however, the name of the sociologist or explain what constitutes "significant evidence."

And Frederica Mathewes-Green recounts the tales of two women who were undergoing an abortion. As they lay on the clinic table, both of them were praying that the boyfriend would burst through the doors and say, "Stop, I changed my mind." Mathewes-Green's imagery of the angelic woman succumbing to the spell of the conniving male is unmistakable.

But research paints a very different picture.

Several years ago Carol Gilligan's acclaimed study, In a Different Voice, examined the dynamics of the abortion decision. She found in only one-third of cases did the father have any influence on the woman's decision to abort.

Likewise, professors Arthur Shostak, Ross Koppel, and Jennifer Perkins recently summarized several large-scale surveys of men in abortion clinic waiting rooms. They reported that only 19% of men in waiting rooms affirmed the idea of abortion in general, and fewer than 5% of men "may have cajoled their partner into having the abortion."

The conclusion is clear: men are not dragging their pregnant girlfriends willy-nilly into abortion clinics against their will.

Abortion is one of those moral and social tragedies that seems to invite simplistic explanations. But the reality is far more complex.

For example, none of the NRO participants mentioned the fact that thanks to the 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision Casey v. Planned Parenthood, women are not required to inform the father of the impending abortion. That's an important omission -- according to clinic workers, in 15% of abortions the man never finds out, or learns of the deed until it's too late.

I once met such a man - years later he was still grieving the silent loss of his precious innocent.

A growing body of research reveals that fathers suffer a variety of ill-consequences following the abortion. Dr. Catherine Coyle recently reviewed 28 studies that reveal men often suffer regret, sadness, and depression. One-third admit to a longing to see the fetus.

Coyle sums up the research with this observation: "Several authors have noted a tendency among men to defer the abortion decision to their female partners as well as a tendency to repress their own emotions in an attempt to support their partners."

Many argue that women are the second victim of the grisly abortion industry. Clearly men can be victims, as well. So when will we stop treating fathers as social pariahs? - From here

Of course we have feminist rethorics as well:

Kim Gandy, president of the National OrganizationKim Gandy, president of NOW for Women, supports Roe v. Wade for women but says about Roe v. Wade For Men:

According to the National Center for Men Web site, as a result of Roe v. Wade, "[w]omen now have control of their lives after an unplanned conception. But men are routinely forced to give up control, forced to be financially responsible for choices only women are permitted to make, forced to relinquish reproductive choice as the price of intimacy.” That's a whole lot of talk that, when you get right down to it, means "have an abortion or I get to walk away." Either way it means zero consequences and zero responsibility, and they want the courts to call it "reproductive choice for men." - Found on battlingblog

A classical example of rights without the responsibilities, undoubtly with the aid of society and a lot of men in the process as well. People need to open their eyes and so it is a good think the above song exists. Kudos to flipsyde.

Some more about after-abortion depression in men (it is not an imagined topic as some might think). A summary (click on the table to see bigger version):








- more on that one here

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