MISSION ABORTED

I’ve never completely understood why males train to become obstetricians and gynaecologists. Isn’t that like females giving boys instructions on how to stand up to pee?

Instructions on how to put the toilet seat down, now that I would get.

And so what I don’t quite understand is why men become involved in issues of supreme sensitivity like abortion.

For centuries, women have always been left holding the baby. And the reason we’re left holding it is because sometimes we’re the only one left to do so. I mean, someone has to hold the dear little mite.

Passion will usually have its way. We’re active sexual humans, and we are blessed with all the body parts necessary to enjoy sex, to feel sexual, to love, to feel attraction. To want to rip the clothes off him (or her) and submit to that primal animal instinct.

And it can be jolly good fun too.

Years before contraception. And by that I mean, years before indoor plumbing, antiseptic and dental floss, babies were being born all over the place. And left all over the place to perish.

That’s because there was no social structure to assist an unwed mother, or the family with far too many mouths to feed already. The father could well have been some duke or land baron. The girl may very well have been in love, but love doesn’t buy you security. Or a home for your baby.

Home abortions, with tragic and fatal consequences, were the act of desperate girls more fearful of their father’s rage or family shame than their own health and survival.

The advent of the pill, and certainly widespread acceptance and availability of contraception, has made a woman’s lot in life a fair swag easier. We can now control our bodies, control our decisions, and control our timelines.

Which means we’ve got less chance of ending up like the old woman who lived in her shoe.

But accidents happen. Surprises, if you will. Nothing is 100% foolproof. So somewhere along the way, women, even intelligent, educated, wealthy women, are going to find themselves preggers and think “Oh no!!”

In today’s civilised society — a society of options and choices, expert medical assistance and family support — if a woman makes a measured decision to not go ahead with her pregnancy, she should not have to justify or explain that decision.

Until technology takes us to a place where the men are having the babies... where they come to the realisation that they are pregnant and alone because of one moment. Or where they are simply not ready to become a mother.

Where they throw up non-stop for three months. Where they have to rush out of business meetings to hurl into the work toilets. Where their boobs ache and their stomachs stretch and their hormones make them want to stab people in the heart. Often repeatedly.

Where their vagina is put through so much trauma that they feel they’ll never pee again, let alone have sex. Where their size 10 jeans remain on the shelf for years because their bodies didn’t bounce back as the books said it would.

And where what they were doing before they got pregnant becomes no where near as significant after the pregnancy…

Then, and only then, should they become involved in decisions about abortion.

And the naysayer women, well, my only comment is this. If the woman doesn’t want the baby, then it is her body and she, and she alone, will need to live with that decision for the rest of her life.

I don’t know a single woman who, having gone through a termination, has be able to wipe it from her mind. She may very well wipe the memory of a huge credit card bill or the time she backed her car into a light pole in front of a new boyfriend. But she will never wipe the memory of her decision.

So why that poor couple in Cairns had to endure the humiliation and public shaming of a court trial for taking a very safe option to end a pregnancy is just awful.

In Queensland, we’ve been told we can’t change archaic abortion laws because it is felt that the changes wouldn’t get the full support of all MPs.

Most of who are male.