Your body - Your choice

This is a parenting blog, specifically a fathering blog, therefore one topic that doesn't really fall within its purview is not parenting, especially not parenting by women.  I'm prepared to shoot off on most topics but you won't catch me criticising mothers on here; still less women who don't want to be mothers.  Biological reality means that whatever perfection of equality is one day achieved equality of physical experience will never happen.  Men can't bear and birth babies.  They can stand by in awe and fascination or boredom and indifference, either way they can't do it.  And that reality, for me, underscores an important precept: of that which you know nothing of that you should say nothing.

But it is clear to me that is not a principle universally accepted, for countless men, since time immemorial have seen fit to tell women just what they can and can't do with their bodies.  I have often wondered, in idle moments, what the world's abortion laws would be and would have been if legislating men everywhere had said: 'You know what, I'm going to sit this one out, let the women decide'.  Instead it's 2018 and still this basic fight for  female autonomy is having to be fought.  The reason is simple, for the men that fight against freedom and choice there is no price to pay - not with their bodies, not with their lives, not with their money.

Perhaps we should make a deal.  If you're a bloke that wants to rail and campaign against abortion you can but you gotta pay to play.  First you have to carry a sack of potatoes tied around your waist for 9 months.  Then you can have a knife taken to your genitals and toss a coin, if it's heads you can be cut open to your navel.  Every third feller can take home lifelong incontinence.  Go home and give back half your salary every month for the next few years, forget about that promotion.  Allow a small animal to take a scouring pad to your nipples.  You get the idea.

It's said you should never judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes.  Well how about you never judge a woman until you've walked a mile in her postpartum maxi pads.