Re:A Vexing Practice Issue

OK since you don’t want to take this issue further, I have a few points I would like to make on this subject.

You say that men don’t suffer "as much" as a woman, because when a woman who want’s a child may also feel it necessary to have an abortion - that’s a contradiction there because if a woman really wanted her child she would not be getting an abortion, that’s another subject though – you say that a woman suffers physical pain and because of that men, i.e. husband, boyfriend, lover, etc. don’t suffer as much as the woman.

Do you realize how completely misguided that idea is? Misguided and very one sided on your part.

You don’t have to answer just think about it for a while. Emotional pain can be just as damaging, harmful and “painful”, as physical pain. In this week’s issue of the Harvard Mental Health Letter, article “The Sadness and Pain of Rejection” that death, illness or emotional trauma in a person’s life “…may be read by the brain as a form of physical pain…The brain responds to social exclusion and physical pain in similar ways…”.

When a woman gets an abortion she gets all kind of counseling to go along with it, pain medication, psychotherapy, etc. Last time I checked I know of no mechanisms in effect which counsel the men in a woman’s life who choose to get an abortion and completely leave the man out of the loop not only legally, but emotionally. Also think about the child, it is a scientific fact that children suffer pain in the third trimester and some evidence that children suffer pain during the second trimester of the pregnancy.

If the woman does not what the child, can not raise the child for what ever reason, the very least she can do, have some common decencey and ask the man before terminating the pregnancy to see if he wishes to raise it. Or place the child upo for adoption. It is very selfish, one sided and mean spirited to end a pregnancy for a woman to be thinking, “well, if I don’t want the baby then the father (and no one else) can have it either”. That’s wrong.

Whether or not the study has merit, just as a man has no right to say how much or little a woman suffers about an abortion, a woman has no right to say how much a man suffers over an abortion either. Fact is, you just don’t know.

For medical purposes, in which the woman’s life is in danger, I can absolutely agree that abortions are sometimes necessary, or in situations where a woman is raped and terminates the pregnancy early. However for a woman to be having sex with a man, husband or not, and then towards the end of pregnancy decides in a cavalier fashion - "Oh I think I’ll just end this pregnancy", is wrong.

Yes it is a complicated discussion and in the end the vast majority of women who choose to kill the child regret it years later and suffer many years of guilt, pain, sadness.
And because it is complicated you really have no right, as a woman, to postulate how much or how little a man suffers about losing their child, with absolutely no choice in the matter either.

I also think it is wrong for mental health professionals to take such situations so lightly and encourage their female clients to cut their babies out without having any kind of concern for the male. To not take third parties into consideration in these situations is clearly unethical per APA and NASW codes.

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